Saturday 2nd February 2008

Tim, Suey and I got up the plot pretty early today. To my immense surprise, Tim had managed to set the big bonfire, that we had been adding to since last summer, alight. It was great to see it smoking and burning away having been there for so long. I thought that it was too soggy to actually burn but burn it did. We had some digging to do so Suey and I continued to dig the earth where the fruit cage would be. It was so much weedier than the rest of the same patch. There was loads and loads of bind weed, brambles and just general junk in the ground. Where does it all come from? Why aren't vegetables as tenacious as weeds?

Tim had bought a load of fertiliser and I'd bought a load of farmyard manure. Tim sorted out some seed sowing in the greenhouse and tidied things up. He did that and I considered making the barrel sunk into the ground at the bottom of the plot very large water butt. There were holes in the barrel towards the bottom so I tried filling them with silicone. It wasn't as successful as I thought it would be. As soon as I injected the hole with a blob of silicone it just went straight through. I thought that it would create a big blob and it would fill the gap.

                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
The idea of a very large water butt was also scuppered by the fact that it was filled with junk that I couldn't get out. I was about to jump in to get it out until I found out that the water was so deep that the expression “fill your boots” would have taken on a different meaning.
                                             
 
                                             
 

Tim, Suey, Katya and I sat down for a tea break when Tim suddenly noticed a Bull Finch trapped and hanging from some nylon netting on the neighbouring plot. We sprung into action and got a knife to cut the little bird free. It really had got itself caught up. Apparently, if birds get trapped in this kind of netting then they will hang there and just die of starvation. Poor little thing. On the plus side, it looked like it hadn't been there long. Tim untangled the bird while I cut a little bit of of the netting when Tim couldn't untangle anything else. Eventually Tim got it free and it was sitting in the palm of his hand. Tim gave it a few drops of water to drink and spread it's wings out and then it suddenly flew away.

Tim wanted to sort out the asparagus bed today, getting rid of the weeds and and to add some fertiliser to the plants. This would make the asparagus the most spoilt vegetable on our entire plot. He did manage to de-weed the patch but didn't get round to the fertiliser.

By the end of the day, Suey and I had managed to dig the ground so that it was weed-free nearly up to the boundary of our plot. Tim had sorted out the asparagus bed and we left the plot after a hard days work.
                       
 
                                             
                                             
Saturday 9th February 2008

The fire was going once again today. How impressive! Soon we will just have ash rather than weeds. Well, maybe that's a bit optimistic seeing as we constantly seem to be digging weeds from the ground and today was no exception.

Tim was mixing together some compost with the fertiliser that he's bought last week. This was for the asparagus patch from which he'd removed a load of weeds. He was planning to use this mixture as a mulch and food for the plants below. As the rain or water fell onto the mixture, the nutrients would seep little by little into the ground. While Tim was doing all of this and spreading the mixture around, I was still on the fruit cage patch, desperate to finish the blimmin' weeding.

It really does feel like like a thankless task. No matter how many weeds we take out, a hundred more seem to germinate from seeds that have blown onto our plot from somewhere else. Oh well. At least this will all be covered up with weed suppressant and mulch soon.

The fire was still burning, despite the damp weeds and roots that I was finding.		  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
As I was adding stuff to the fire, we noticed that a mouse had taken up residence under a piece of carpet. It ran away and we managed to make sure that it was nowhere near the fire. We must have scared the living daylights out of it, burning it's home. However, it had been eating our broad bean seeds... little blighter. Tim eventually joined me in digging the ground for the fruit cage. It was one of those days where you have nothing else to report other than the fact that we'd been digging and removing weeds. It's very boring but it's absolutely essential to ensure that we get everything out of the ground before we plant anything else.  
                                             
 
                                             
                                             
 

Saturday 16th February 2008

Hurrah! The bird feeders were obviously going down well with the local birdies, although we didn't see any on our plot today.

We were on digging duties today. The ground was in need of turning over and de-weeding in preparation for the fruit cage, which just seems to be a long way away. We really want a polytunnel too but judging by the amount of time the fruit cage is taking (and we haven't even started sinking posts into the ground yet) I can't see us getting one this year. Maybe just one project at a time...

As we were cutting into the earth, we came upon two slow worms. They were extremely slow because they were hibernating. Because we were disturbing their slumber, we put them under a roofing sheet and they slithered off. We've seen so much nature over the past few weeks and it's really nice that it's on our plot. Birds mice, slow worms... I'm looking forward to a tiger and an elephant next.
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
It was another day of digging today and removing weeds. There was still a huge amount of carpet laying on top of the earth. It had been there for so long that plants had grown through the carpet. What had once been put down as a way of suppressing the weeds had actually weeds growing through it, anchoring it to the ground. It was an absolute nightmare trying to rip it out.
                                             
 

Tim and I took a look at the rhubarb that we were trying to force. We looked under the upturned waterbutt and found a small little growth coming out of the ground. Under the upturned bin, we found a much stronger rhubarb plant. It looked delicious, with thick bright pink stems and pale lime coloured leaves. It's incredible that you can starve something of light and it's still desperate to grow.

In order to ensure that we'd have enough mulch for the fruit cage, we decided to transport a load of wood chippings that the local council had dropped in our nearby parking bay. We made very many trips back and forth. By the time we'd finished we had a HUGE pile of chippings ready to spread across the fruit bushes and plants. It's going to look superb.

At around 3:15pm, a couple of university students came to our plot to film a project they were doing for their course. The light was lovely and it looked like a Michael Bay movie because of the setting sun. They went around filming our plot and they interviewed us for the cost of growing vegetables compared to the cost of buy veg from supermarkets. We'd never thought about it, really. It's more of a hobby than an exercise in being cost-effective. If you actually did total up the amount of money we'd put into the plot I'm sure we would be quite shocked. It's the same with everything, though. If you tallied up the amount a car costs you in real terms you'd be shocked; add up MOT, tax, petrol, repairs, insurance and then work out how much it costs per month. Yipers!

Although we couldn't give a total amount, the benefits of growing your own veg far exceeds any monetary value for us. We get exercise, we get outdoors, we have fun, talk to lots of people and we get loads and loads of fresh vegetables from a packet of seeds. It's incredible, really. Whether it costs a fortune or not, we love it.
                       
 
                       
 
                                             
                                             
Saturday 23rd February 2008

The first thing we were roped into was the shifting of a load of bark chippings from a car parking bay to actually creating a wood chip car parking bay. When I say “roped in”, Tim actually arranged it because he's on the allotment committee and in charge of work parties. With Roger, Charlie, Roger 2, Nigel, Katya, Tim and Sam, we all did our part to fill wheelbarrows with woodchip and wheel them down to the car parking spaces. It only took around an hour... but then I did turn up half an hour later than Tim so he had worked a bit longer than I had.

Having said that, I was the wife of our plot as I had brought up a big flask of tea and sandwiches. Tim just brings his brute strength. What use is brute strength on an empty stomach? After chatting with Katya, Nigel and Roger, we went to our plot and had a look around.

We took another look at the rhubarb and it was incredible just how much they had grown in just one week. The stems were taller and looked even more delicious than last week. I can't wait for next week. Yum yum.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             

The peanuts in our bird feeders were getting lower and lower. We noticed quite a few birds such as sparrows and blue tits visiting our plot. Encouraging birds should, in theory, help get rid of pests. As they are attracted to the bird feeders they might also find some snacky treats such as caterpillars and slugs.

We also saw some frogspawn in a nearby bathtub. This would be good news as well if we get loads of frogs because they could eat slugs as well!

The raspberry canes that we transplanted were sprouting, even the ones which didn't have rooting powder. It just goes to show that life is evident in so many things and even chopped up raspberry canes want to spring back to life. The rhubarb was beginning to look delicious as well, being forced under our bins. Yum yum! Garlic was also spring up at last.

We are really pushing to get our fruit cage sorted because the fruit bushes and canes that we already have will need to be planted up before the weather starts getting more clement. We don't want to disturb the fruit plants while they are flowering. We measured things out to find out where to put the various fruit plants and then continued to the dig the plot where our cage will go.

  
                       
 
                                             
We pruned and dug up three gooseberry bushes that were just planted in odd places in the plot. We then replanted them in a line so that they can be easily accessed in the proposed fruit cage. Tim and I did disagree on giving the gooseberries manure. I am not a fan of gooseberries and I thought that because they grew so well in the crappy clay soil, why give them any nutrients or conditioned earth? Tim thought that we should give them as many nutrients as possible because he is a fan of them. We ended up giving them some potash and fertiliser for the roots, watered them in and dug them back into the ground. We carried on digging until it started raining and then we packed up and went home.