The New Not Normal Pt1

It's been almost a year since I last posted.  I'm not sure why, time runs away and writing this blog is always at the back of my mind in the "to do later" bit of my brain.   Well I'm here now and although I've had plenty of time in the last seven or so weeks (for obvious reasons) tonight it is.  I've split this post in to two sections, the before and after the C-word.  Previously the" C" word would have meant only one thing to me, now it means one word to people globally.  Whether it be Covid or Corona, this "C" beats all others.

I finished the last post when I had just agreed to take on a new plot challenge.  A bigger plot, a better plot, one I'd been eyeing up for a while.  It was mid-season - May - it's the time when you should really start planting your seedlings, including anything you may have started indoors, on the windowsill or in a little greenhouse.  I thought I'd hang around on my old plot with my little seedlings until at least the autumn and in the meantime work on the new plot as and when.  That was not to be.  I had to move from my plot to the scrub land of doom as soon as possible.  Well fuck me, if that wasn't just the crappiest thing ever?    The scrub land hadn't been so bad when it was offered the people before me but they hadn't been for almost a year (no pressure on them then) and now it was horrendous and the pressure was on me to move and quickly at that.  All is not fair in love and turf war.

I spent a back breaking few days, killing weeds, strimming and digging some beds on the new plot, deciding that I would try and work only half of it that year.  I had to dismantle my metal raised beds, move the soil and replant my little babies where I could.  I was not happy.  I was exhausted.  I think I  may have used the original "C" word a lot.

May is near July right?  July is my birthday and what better birthday present than things for your new allotment?  "Things" being a new bigger she-shed, some scaffolding boards for raised beds and a shit load of compost.  The glamour.

Fast forward a few weeks and it's starting to really take shape.  I order some plug plants (I love you  Rocket Gardens) to catch up on a late start to the season.  Even this half worked plot (my old one was a quarter plot) was bigger than I'd ever managed so I had great expectations of growing success.  Then it rained.

I had been spoilt in 2018 with a long and glorious summer, hot days and nights from May until the 25th August when after a long hot and dry summer ( I remembered this date as my plot friend and I made a last minute summer get-together party)  it rained for the first time in months.  Obviously.

It rained continuously the Summer of 2019.  Day and night and when it wasn't raining it was cold and cloudy.  Things either didn't grow well or at all.  I got two courgettes from one plant and nothing but mildew and rot on the others.  Vegetation mainly rotted or was eaten by slugs and other pests.  I did manage to grow some fennel - thank you allotment god -  and some other bits and bobs but it was nothing like my first glorious year.  I'm bored of saying it but here goes -  if this would have been my first year on the plot, I may have given it up as too much hard work for little reward -  but I know that when the sun does shine a bit and it doesn't rain 24/7 then I can grow, I can really grow.

May to June 2019 - I nearly killed myself doing this 

Birthday Building

She-shed to end all she-sheds 

Fennels of Joy

Not the best haul ever but not bad

Be Careful What You Wish For - Juliet shall have her plot Part II

I sort of knew I'd outgrown my old plot when one courgette plant last year took up what felt like 6 square miles, same for squash.  My little corner plot (next to the weed tip/dump car turning area was I admit beginning to feel a little small.  I'd mentioned in previous posts about not realising that triffids actually grew as opposed to the leaf stripped vegetables you buy in the supermarket.  There would really not be enough shelf space to display more than one cauliflower if they kept with it the leaves they grew with.  I though that vegetable beds plus half a dozen or so trugs growing various crops would suffice.

I'd been offered another plot earlier in the year, a man I had never met had sadly passed away.  It was a long rectangular piece and it only needed "digging over" they said.  I did go and have a look but for one person it looked like "digging over" is what I would have been doing for a very long time to get that particular plot into shape, as any allotmenteer knows, leave it for a couple of weeks and the plot looks like it had never been worked on.  Brutal.  It was also situated next to a plot where a couple of dog haters resided.  I'd had a run-in with them early on in my allotment life and the experience had left me shaken.  Just no.

Diagonal to me was a nice but very overgrown plot.  Two large squares with a step in between.  You couldn't actually see that this is what it was as it was so neglected but it did appeal to me in that slightly OCD way.  I like things boxed off and squared.  I also like boxes, but that's probably another blog or a therapy session.  That plot though was given to two couples to work on last August.  They came to the allotment party in the August full of hope and rotivational speaking (pun intended) and then they were never seen again.  Ever.  August to February came and went with no sign of them whatsoever so then I began enquiring about its availability.  The stock answers to my questions were given out  (paid their subs, family issues, starting soon) but still nothing so I pushed and pushed (along with an allotment friend whose plot I would next to if I did make the move) until the end of March and then finally found out (by a third party as opposed to the powers that be) that I could take over this plot with the caveat of having to vacate mine as quickly as possible for new people,  Er hello?  It's now the end of March/beginning of April and therefore (small planting window) by this point I had planted my seedlings, sown more seeds and added compost and food to the beds in readiness for the growing season, not to mention the makeshift pond I'd made to save the tadpoles that had been laid on some tarpaulin.

I feel my stress levels rising.  I am also going away for two weeks.  I decide to ignore the pressure on me to move as quickly as possible, cheeky fuckers. I am in a defiant mood.  I will not kill myself moving over to this new plot (translate as this move is going to kill me).  I wobble.  I look at my old sweet plot as opposed to the jungle I had lobbied hard to acquire.  I have to ring my sister.  I feel sick.  I don't know where to start.  What have I done?

I mean, why?

My beautiful baby 

Pottage Industry

I've been checking the back of my seed packets regularly to see when I can start sowing them.  I feel a real allotmenteer would save most of the seeds from their last crop and lovingly dry and store them.  I do not feel as though I am a real allotmenteer yet.  I feel like I am still playing at it.  I'm also fine with that.

I started a few weeks ago with the sweet peas, lots of sweet peas.  They gave me immense pleasure last year throughout the summer and lots of other people too as I gifted as many as I’d kept.  The thing about sweet peas is that you have to pick them pretty much as soon as they flower in order for them to keep on producing flowers otherwise they just wilt and seed pods are produced and goodbye flowers.  Seed pods, those things that hold the seeds - something I should have actually stopped and thought about instead of trawling seed catalogues for yet more sweet peas - although why deny myself a shopping opportunity?  It's a tough one.  The old plants were yanked up and put in the compost bin.  I am not proud of this and I will try and do better this year on that score (I tell myself).

I watched some videos on sowing and growing the peas.  Last year I just planted them straight into the soil and hoped for the best.  Not knowing what the seedling looks like is tricky though, I could be nurturing weeds (again) and pulling out the good stuff.  These seedlings are now sprouting and growing and growing.  They're not looking like they do in the videos.  They're long and thin with just a couple of leaves on the top.  I'm not sure how that's supposed to work.  It'd be like planting cooked spaghetti.  I do a little more research.  My north-facing house that is surrounded by large trees is apparently not conducive to growing things.  Anything.  Obviously, I face palm myself.  This is why I wanted an allotment in the first place.  These poor leggy things were just growing and searching for any light they could find.  Duh.

More research on the internet.  Grow lamps.  Who knew?  Last year I planted most of my stuff straight into the ground so this interesting (shopping) world of hydroponics is new for me.  It's an investment.  Everything I have bought this year for the allotment is an investment and I need to invest plenty.  "Investment" is a good justification word.  Amazon same day delivery and I receive the grow lamp.  Looks like a desk lamp with a clamp and two bendy arms and funny coloured bulbs.  The instructions are minimal being "1.  Plug in and bend the lights in the direction of the seeds", and "2. Good for cucumbers, tomatoes and medical cannabis".  I'll stop there.

Ninety percent of my seeds are now sown.  Now I've got my heat mat and grow lamp I am the sowing wonder woman.  I have planted lots of flower and vegetable seeds now that I know they've got at least fifty percent chance of actually growing and I am feeling invincible.  The bathroom has been turned into a grow house.  Pots, compost, vermiculite and propagators on the floor, around the bath, by the sink.  Luckily this is not the main bathroom.  The lamp produces a lovely violet glow, visible through the window to any passers by on the street behind.  I reckon it looks extremely dodgy apart from not having silver foil over my windows.  I am waiting for the police to knock on the door and when they do, I cannot wait to show them how much better my new crop of sweet peas are doing.

Definitely not a sunbed glow

Bean a while

Time really does fly.  The last post was in early October and as I remember it I was winding down for the winter.  I'd put my plot to bed quite early on as I'd harvested the buggery out of everything I was growing and I was definitely not growing something for "over wintering", mainly because I don't really know what it means as I've not opened my allotment bible recently (see second post) to see what I should be doing in October/November/December. I  planted some tulip bulbs in containers and randomly around my plot in November - I have this fantasy that come April my plot will look like the Keukenhof Gardens (see below)  - I then gave the plot a quick tidy, leaving the kale to its own devices and letting the green manure grow at its will, planted four cabbage seeds and left it until last Sunday, 20th January.

My plot in April 

I tell a lie, we held an allotment party for Halloween, that was my last proper day out on the plot.  When I say "we" I mean an allotment pal and me.  For the purpose of this blog she shall be known as Quincy, as she does have a lovely quince tree on her plot.  Quincy and I have now organised two events on the allotment.  A summer one, hurriedly  put together as it seemed a shame that no-one had planned anything from the heatwave that was May until 17th August.  On the 17th August we held our late summer allotment party and it rained, obviously.  The second party was for Halloween.  It was fun, we invited allotmenteers and their kids.  It was unseasonably cold that afternoon having been particularly mild in the days leading up to it.  A few kids came, carved out some pumpkins - these were bought -  I hadn't grown any.  Some allotmenteers did attend, although not as many as we had hoped (and bought alcohol) for, even though this time we had advertised well in advance on nicely laminated posters on the entrance gates.  Quincy and I drank a lot of Aldi Spiced Pumpkin liqueur, ate our cheese and biscuits and mused about whether allotment get-togethers were a thing of joy or a complete waste of time as we could have just as easily just sat in either one of our sheds and had a good natter.  We did try though.  Apparently God loves a trier.

Back to the present.  Winter neglect has been surprisingly kind to the plot.  The kale is still looking good.  I'm almost feeling guilty about pulling the plants up but as far as I know they're not perennial and I need to quit with this batch while I'm ahead and before they bolt (flower).  I left one celery in the patch of four celery plants.  Got rid of that on Sunday.  The celery took bloody ages to grow and took up a lot of bed space.  I'm not even a great fan of celery, less so because it took more than 3 months to grow.  The family that had the plot next to mine have upgraded to another plot and I apparently have a new plot neighbour.  I hope they like Radio 4 and Yorkshire Tea.

Shed's still standing, along with the Kale

9.30am Sunday 20th January

All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey

One of the monster courgette left on my table

How did it happen that one minute I was slaving in the hot sun at the allotment and the next thing I've already started seeing Christmas decorations around?

The plot has been slightly neglected over the past few weeks.  Things are coming to their natural end.  Family summer holiday and then periods of heavy rain meant a few weeks allotment free.  It was a wrench at first but then I realise as the days are getting shorter, so is my time on the plot.  I am winding down for winter and the plot is doing the same.  Harmony with nature and all that.

Autumn has brought me apples galore.  Not just my tree on the allotment, but the one tree I have at home and kindly plot friends leaving me bags on my table.   Pies, crumbles, chutney and for the birds.  Apples EVERYWHERE.  I'm over the apples.  Pears from a neighbouring plot (paid for with pear chutney).

Autumn also brought me butternut squash, 4 in total although just those 4 took over what looked like half an acre.  I got lent a water butt in the scorching heat so I repaid the kindness with a squash.  She wasn't sure what to do with one as she'd not grown any so I just sharpied a recipe on to it.  If that's not eco packaging I don't know what is.

The courgette monster has slowed down, getting a few little yellow ones struggling  to grow, although I am being left with monsters from other people on my table.  What do they take me for?  They obviously know I cannot bear to see a wasted veg, more courgette chutney.

Dead sunflowers, heads huge and drooping, spilling yet more bird food out.  Had to cut them down with a hacksaw, how did I know the stems would be as thick as my arms?  Compost bin filled with just those alone.  Last of the beans and peas picked and frozen, lettuce and more lettuce and kale.  The kale is the gift that keeps on giving.  It's like cut and come again and again and again.  The celery has been growing since March.  It's an elephant's pregnancy so I am getting impatient and googling celery soup.  I have this vision that I will go this weekend and the celery crop will have died.  A two sticks up to me for not picking it sooner.

Tubs emptied, one bed emptied and green manure (who knew) a poo plant that you dig back in to the soil to add nutrients.  More radishes growing.  I will be the radish queen that can grow them all year long even if I gave up eating them out of boredom.  Kohl Rabi growing in a bed that has other things growing in it, could be weeds, could be beetroot.  The sticks blew away in the wind.

Wildflower bed looking sorry for itself too but as long as I can see but a single bee, it stays.

I've planted 4 cabbage seeds. |I have learned enough to know that these four seeds will produce four monsters if they survive.  I will not plant the one hundred and fifty that are in the packet and hope for the best and then having to sacrifice the babies when they take over.  Still traumatised about that from my sister's helpful but nonetheless distressing courgette cull.

This weekend I am armed and ready for a full day of reaping and sowing and tidying.  I mean business when I take my flask and the dog and put the radio on.  I've been collecting packets of tulip bulbs and I am going to randomly plant them around my area.  Not in the beds, that's for proper food.  If I am successful I will have my own little Keukenhof garden going on https://keukenhof.nl/en/.

Best Bird Feeder

Butternut Squash (without recipe)

No comment Carrot

A Mess

Chutney Making

When you leave the artichoke ❤❤❤

Ping Pong Radish
Only grew them because I like the name

100 Ways With Kale

There's this thing I haven't quite mastered yet called continuous sowing.  It does say it on the seed packets mind you - "sow every three weeks for continuous cropping".  This is to enable you to pick the labours of your hard work FOREVER or it would seem that way to me as I've done nothing but pick produce almost every day without continual sowing.

You work the soil, plant little seedlings and then you wait a while and then little crops emerge and you skip about the plot with your little trug picking bits n bobs over a few weeks.  Truth of the matter is on my plot most things arrive at the same time and they want to be picked NOW.

One day my courgette plants were producing little sweet yellow courgettes and a few flowers that I could pick and eat too.  Leave them another day and lo and behold the grow monster had been and these little sweet courgette have turned to marrow sized baseball bats.  How did that even happen? Go away for a week like I did and you come back to a plot that has decided it could take over the world without you.  I reckon that if I left it completely my plot and especially the monster courgette could be growing all the way into other people's patches joining forces to create a super breed.

After a week away my bean patch which had just been happily creating tendrils around a bamboo stick became a jungle of flowers and beans.  I have been picking them every day, dwarf beans appearing as if by magic and purple beans appearing in places you know you only picked yesterday.  I am sure this is no big news to a seasoned grower but to me its like some dark magic is at work.

Luckily the Vegan is always happy to take a glut of stuff and I have had to be quite creative with all my veg.  Soup, lots of soup.  Lot of roasting too in between salad and curries.  It was a surprise to me how I could not bear to waste even a seed of what I have picked.  I've nurtured these plants for so long so to just not use them or chuck them away saddened me.  It's also a wake-up call as to how much produce did go to waste in my household when I just went to the supermarket to buy it.  Much less of a connection to what you are eating.

The weather has been especially hot, this is good news for sun worshippers but not so great for me as you have to water the plot twice a day otherwise it starts to look Saharan and the sunflowers hang their heads in shame.  Luckily the hosepipe ban was lifted before it even started as lugging a watering can although doable would have also been a pain in the arse.

Tomatoes are also a pain in the arse.  I've grown a few plants from seed, staked them and fed them but I don't have a greenhouse on the plot and they need lots of food, light, water/not water etc etc to keep them in good nick.  I confess I just can't be bothered with the faff, this year anyway.   Some produce has done really well, others a disaster.  I'm perfectly ok with this as I have more of an idea of what works for me in the future except as one plot owner helpfully suggested "Won't be the same next year, this weather has done all sorts to the fruit and veg"

Courgette on steroids

Proud crop lady

.

.

Not so proud crop lady

Sow what?

The last few weeks on the allotment has been insane!  Insanely hot, insanely busy and insanely productive.  I may never be able to type that sentence again.  It could be arctic weather conditions next week - this is England - or global warming means that I shall be cultivating watermelons and pineapples with ease in the coming years|.

Crops are growing scarily quickly.  I have harvested radish already.  I'm now radished out, they burnt my mouth and I can't roast them or fry them in butter.  I have eaten a huge batches of lettuce (soup/salad/sandwiches).  I pick off  the outer leaves of my Kale every day.  The kale gets distributed frequently to my one vegan friend and another normal friend.  I am currently harvesting a few courgettes too before they grow into marrows (who knew?) and these are still tiny and sweet as I don't have the patience for them to grow to normal but not marrow size.  I just fry those in butter and scoff.  Not sure whether I'll ever get enough of a glut to make a chutney or a soup at this rate.

from L-R
globe artichoke-golden courgette-beetroot
fennel-little gem lettuce-plum tomatoes

I know enough to know that courgette flowers are a delicacy.  I've never eaten them.  Never even seen them for sale but any half decent Italian restaurant (in Italy) will have these on the menu.  I go first thing in the morning when the flowers are fully open.  I learn that I should not pick the females as the courgette attached to them will not continue to grow so I go searching for males.  The males are in the minority, obviously, these seeds are bred to breed.  Voila!  I pick the heads, look up a BBC recipe online and stuff them with ricotta and lemon, in a batter then deep fry.  No-one else in my household  wants to try these so I stuff them and then myself.  I don't eat batter these days.  Don't really do much of the anything flour, bread or wheat thing these days.  This is a real treat.

Flower to Mouth via cheese & fat 💗

My sweet peas are in full bloom.  These have to be picked every day to ensure a continuous bloom.  No hardship there.  The scent is divine and the recipients of a picked bunch are always thrilled.  I keep some for myself but I love distributing them even more.  I have a wildflower bed too, the insects are loving this.  The sunflowers have taken over but underneath are pretty little wildflowers.  They could well be weeds.  I am not dealing with that.  They can live amongst the wildflower for the time being.  My plot neighbour and I are always wondering whether we have pulled out a little growing delicacy or a weed.  We err on the side of weed .  If we don't recognise it and can't eat it straight away off it goes.

I've got a lovely bunch of sweet peas

My sister comes to visit the allotment today.  It's a red letter day.  She's a real gardener and she has grown things before.  She immediately pulls up huge weeds in my sweet pea bed that I had nurtured as some kind of bean as I have sown peas, beans and flowers in this bed, and informs me that in fact growing beautifully around my trellis in in fact bindweed.  Joy.  Tonight's job.