Tim was a little bit earlier than me going to the plot today. He had been busy preparing some pots to plant up some garlic cloves in an experiment to see the difference between planting garlic in November 2006 and planting it now, without a frost. I am then going to force Tim to eat a garlic clove of each to see whether there is a difference in taste. It should be interesting, especially as he doesn't really like garlic.
Tim and I missed each other this morning. That’s not the “miss” as in we longed for each other to be there. No, no, no. Rather, Tim was up the allotment before me then had to skedaddle briefly, in which time I turned up and thought that he’d been a lazy blighter and not turned up. I was soon put right by Mr Timothy when he pointed out that he had watered all the stuff in the greenhouse.
The greenhouse is crammed with pots, seed trays and cardboard toilet tubes filled with compost and seeds. Tim has gone a bit nuts with this growing malarkey. This time last year we hadn’t any ground to plant anything in. This year we are inundated with little hatchlings. You can see the glee in Tim’s eyes as he looks at all his little babies. I had brought up my Kelsae onion seedlings in a seed tray and had to create some room on the greenhouse bench. My efforts seemed a bit small compared to Tim’s, but then I am quite short and it’s harder for me to reach the top shelf of our bench.
I had also brought up some more household food waste to put into the composter, only it was a little too full. I took some of the compost out from the bottom flap of the composter and we were thrilled with the dark matter that came out. This was our very first compost and it looked and felt fantastic. We filled up a wheelbarrow and then we emptied it onto the top of our second plot. It looked all dark and rich and we felt really chuffed… until Anne guided a monstrous flatbed truck to her plot and emptied a load of well-rotted manure onto her patch. Show-off! Not to be outdone, we asked the driver for two truckloads next weekend.
It seemed that some animal of some kind has been eating our purple sprouting broccoli. At first we accused the blimmin' pigeons until we saw evidence of rabbit poo on our plot. We'll get them wascally wabbits!
We moved the big pile of weeds from the top of the second plot to the middle so that we could more easily prepare the ground for the spuds. We shifted the top layers but as we got deeper into the big pile it seemed as though it had broken down. The weeds that had been there had all but disappeared, replaced with loads of worms and what seemed to be more compost. How fabulous. As soon as the big pile of weeds had been moved we stormed through the ground, apart from when we hit the occasional piece of carpet. It began raining at around 3pm and we sheltered in our greenhouse. When we finally get our polytunnel we can work on the land when it’s raining. It will then be an all-weather allotment.
Tim snipped off the leaves off his beloved tomarillo plants in the greenhouse because the leaves had gone brown with frost damage. They'll grow back, though as little nodes have already grown out since last he had to prune it.
Before we left, I thought I’d plant up some carrots because my friends Bill and Jane had come up with the genius idea of growing spherical carrots in a window box. I realised that I had spherical carrot seeds (Paris Market Atlas carrots to be exact) and a window box. Tim and I planted some up in the greenhouse and would see what happens. We left the allotment thinking that we really need an extra day in the week (perhaps Plotday?) to get all the things we want to do done. A polytunnel, beekeeping (if we’re allowed), a shed, a composting area, fencing and an underground system of pipes? We’d better get a move on!!
Well, it was our chance to get back up on the plot today after both of us had spent a busy week at work. It feels like a break to be up there and the perfect antidote to work, with the combination of exercise, banter and fresh air... well, two out of three isn't bad.
As soon as I arrived in the morning Tim was shovelling a very large pile of well-rotted horse manure onto the top section of our second plot. It was huge. For thirty of our Welsh pounds, we got the same amount of high quality poo that Anne had received last week. Tim and I covered the ground we had dug so far with manure and found that we still had a massive pile left. We took 3 wheelbarrow-loads onto the Jerusalem and Chinese artichoke patch and still the pile didn't diminish much.
We continued to dig the top section of the second plot but it was proving difficult due to poor weather. The rain would pour down, stop, rain a bit more, stop, drizzle a bit and so-on. We kept taking refuge in the greenhouse which gave us a good excuse to have a cup of tea. We would rather have carried on digging but we could only do what the weather permitted.
The daffodils had come out and it looked like Tim was feeling a little poetic at one point during the day, perhaps inspired by Wordsworth. At another point, he noticed that I had come perilously close to cutting a slow-worm in half. I had dug into the ground where it had been hibernating and Tim had noticed it straight away. He took it away from me so that I couldn't harm it with my spade and hid it under a sheet of roofing.
By 4pm we had dug a pretty big patch of ground and covered it in the horse poo we had bought. It won't be long until the first-early spuds go in. Hurrah! We're going to be growing things again. We could almost smell the spring in the air... if it weren't for the horse crap.
