Our Allotment

This weekend Julie was at college during the day, so there wasn’t a lot of free time to visit the allotment. Nevertheless, the girls and I did manage to grab an hour or so to pop in and tidy up a little.

The girls were nervous about weeding, but once they figured out which was what they were pulling out tiny nettle seedlings quite happily. The Roo bimbled around as usual, helping himself to blackberries and walking on the beds to enjoy my reaction.

Our one unpleasant surprise was finding that someone (or, more likely, something) had uprooted two of the lovely asparagus plants so kindly donated by Bob. Judging by the shape of the holes and the copious prints left on the membrane nearby, our prime suspect is a local fox. I had no idea that foxes liked asparagus to go with their chicken. Urban foxes clearly have sophisticated tastes…

The uprooted plants weren’t far from their holes, and the roots didn’t look too badly damaged or dried out, so we re-planted them and gave them a generous splash of water. With luck they may pull through…

I remembered to take some photos this time, and in uploading them I came across a picture we took when we were laying the membrane last weekend. it was a rather bizarre-looking spider which Julie spotted. We’d never seen anything like it, but it turns out (thanks to Google) that this is something called Argiope bruennichi or the Wasp spider. The photo I took was blurred and black-and-white, but here’s a dedicated page…

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Julie discovered a couple of marrows in the back garden which had hidden undetected for long enough to grow to a remarkable size. Clearly too good for eating, the plan is to follow some instructions from the interweb to make these into marrow rum.

If you look very carefully at the bed next to the kids above, you’ll see little hints of green apprearing. Those are our “early” peas! Growing! If only the forecast for the next week weren’t as bleak as it is (ugh) I’d be reasonably confident that something might come of them…

My parents came over to visit last week. Dad had a school reunion in Brighton; Mum had the burning desire to see the plot and her grandchildren, although probably not in that order. Probably not. I’m sure Mum would have been happy to have spent more time working on our plot for us, but if I’m honest we were so happy having them over that we spent more time bimbling about together. And why not, eh?

 Even so, by the time Mum and Dad (and, to some extent, myself) were done we had three beds in a state ready for planting, and two of them were (at least partially) planted. Now, I know the growing season’s pretty much over, and the idea of planting early peas and salad crops might make some people smile in a superior fashion, but bear with us here. Our logic was that earlies require a shorter growing season than mains or lates, and we do get a longer growing season (on average) in the South-East than most places, so why not give it a go. Another thing to bear in mind was that these seeds probably wouldn’t have lasted until next season anyway. One way to be certain they wouldn’t grow would be to leave them in the drawer. Sticking them in a well-watered drill and keeping an eye on them gives them a chance at least…

Anyway, my Mum was impressed with the growing area we have available to us, and envious as anything about the quality of our soil. The implication of which is that, if we can’t grow anything here then we’re pretty rubbish gardeners. So, no pressure, eh?

The more attentive among you will have noticed that we prepared three beds, and will be thinking “so what about the other seven?” Well, the bad news there is that my folks reckon our plot is riddled with couch grass. This is a particularly tenacious weed which will insist on returning again and again and is unlikely to be discouraged even by repeated digging-over. Our neighbours said they’d gotten rid of theirs by digging out the roots and “disposing” of them (composting, perhaps? Burning? Who knows?) but since our plot was rotavated this isn’t going to be an option. Apparently having a couch-grass-infested site rotavated is A Bad Move.

Oops.

So plan… (erm… running out of letters…) G-ish is to cover the rest of the plot with light-excluding, moisture-and-nutrients-transmissive fabric which my Mum very kindly ordered for us from Gardening Naturally. This will effectively kill all the weeds and grass which are already beginning to take over the rest of the plot, leaving us with a more manageable third-of-a-plot with which to work for the winter, and preventing us from becoming despondant as the next year begins. The fabric arrived today, so we’re well-placed to lay it this weekend. Expect an update and some pictures then…

In the meantime, here’s us…