Saturday 14th June 2008
Tim and I got up to the plot pretty early this morning. Early enough to go and check out our wine industry in the form of some tiny little grapes on our grape vine. At the moment, they look no bigger than little flower buds all clumped together. One day they will be smallish grapes because we never seem to be able to get large grapes... not that we've tried.

We had a spin around the plot to see what the latest was and our cabbages that we'd planted were doing well and looking very nice and cabbagey. The potatoes were beginning to flower and the onions were looking lush and green; their leaves have this lovely Mediterranean look about them. The shallots looked like a massive green explosion. The beans were growing steadily up the wigwams and looking very nice indeed, complete with their very own CDs so that not only could they have beautiful music within 10 inches of their roots, but also to scare the birds away.
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
The onions were looking very well with the Mediterannean green foliage sprouting out in their perfectly measured placements.   The shallots were also looking really good like an exploded firework of green spikes.
                                             
 
                                             
  Tim and I were having a look at the over-wintering onions and thought what a waste of time it was to be growing these overwintering vegetables because they just don't seem to do anything. We pulled a couple of onions out of the ground and soon realised what a stupid statement that was. They were really rather large and we had a whole patch of onions around the same size. They smelt very strong and I'm sure they'll add plenty of flavour to any dish we cook.

After reaping some onions we got down to some weeding. I got on with the carrot patch, which was looking very overgrown. I really have no idea how weeds become so prevalent. The carrots seemed particularly bad with one particular weed I'd never really seen before, or maybe I just hadn't seen it as rife as it was within the carrots. It always takes a lot longer to weed than you think. You have to be so careful not to weed the vegetables as well. I managed to fill half a trug with weeds from the small carrot patch alone.
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
  While I did the weeding, Tim used the newly created space where the overwintering onions had been to grow plant up some leeks. He did the usual hole in the ground with a dibber, then cutting the roots and the tops off the leeks before just popping them into the hole loosely. When he eventually came to water them in, the earth around the hole trickled in and buried the roots slightly.

I went to the bottom of the early potato patch, where no potatoes were growing, and started to dig the ground over. I added a little compost and also some sand, because the soil in this area is very heavy. In order to help provide aeration, it needs a good mix of organic matter and sharp sand. I forked everything in and broke up the large clumps of clay soil. I then got out the calabrese plants that I had been growing in seed trays and started to take the two varieties out. I had sown a LOT of seeds and didn't realise just how few plants I needed. It was pretty ridiculous, really, because out of around 100 plants all cramped up together, I planted out around 10. I know that some seeds don't germinate but that's wasting 90 seeds that I could have saved for next year.

                       
 
                                             
 
                                             

Also, the seed tray was absolutely root bound. The little plants were all desperately competing for the same water and nutrients.

These seeds were also quite expensive because they were F1 varieties. Although you can't save the seeds from F1 plants, they do grow and crop very well as they have been engineered that way. I do like the idea of organic but if it comes in the way of me growing vegetables easily then I'd much rather go F1. I planted the calabrese up and put swede in between each one to see if they would grow. I know root vegetables don't like being replanted but I thought I'd give it a go because they weren't going to do anything all crammed in pot.
                                             
 
                                             
The last task of the day was to weed the asparagus bed. It was looking very overgrown.. again. We cleared all of the stupid little plants out and it looked so much better afterwards. We left after admiring our work and went home feeling shattered.
                                             
 
                                             
                                             

Wednesday 25th June 2008
I went to get the wood I required for the polycorridor on Tuesday evening, using my work's van. After buying the wood just in time before the shop closed and getting up to the plot, I soon realised that I didn't have enough wood afterall. Aghh! I ended up going out once again and bought more wood and also bought some guttering and drainpipes so that I could collect all of the water from the roof of the polycorridor when it rained.

It just turned into an utter disaster. I got home, realising that I'd left the allotment keys in my car at work, hich meant driving out to my workplace, picking up the keys, going to the plot to drop off the wood and then driving back to work to drop the van off and pick up my car. Still with me?

I decided that I'd had enough today and it was only just 1pm.
                                             
                                             

Thursday 26th June 2008
Today I went up to the plot with Suey and while she painted the wood with brown paint, I continued to cut notches out of the ends and measured everything so that it fitted perfectly. It was a huge undertaking really because I had to get up high on a stepladder to put these bits of wood in, the weather was windy so it kept blowing the beams off the notches I'd rested them on and there was just so much wood to put up.

Still, I continued to put all of the wood together and made sure it was all structurally sound. It did take all day and I did have to step back a few times to have a rest and make sure it all looked okay. I was really pleased with it. It was very strong and I was looking forward to getting it all covered in plastic so that I could stick my tomatoes in there.
                                             
                                             
Saturday 28th June 2008
I got up to the plot this morning at 9:30am, raring to go. I put the last few supports in to make sure the roof was supported well and then started digging around the edges of the polycorridor so that I could removes all of the brambles and crap that was hiding under the ground. I didn't want anything growing through the plastic and tearing it. Tim had been ill all week, having not been sleeping very well and didn't come up until around 1:30pm, which is unheard of for him.

I spent the day just digging around and around the foundation area of the polydor. It always takes so long to get this kind of thing done. The number of weeds and brambles and flowering currant bushes just seemed to number in the hundreds, having resided undisturbed, underground for so long. I managed to get around 3 wheelbarrow-loads out without a problem. When Tim arrived he helped out but he started to doubt the polycorridor. He thought that the wind would make the essentially cuboid shape of the polycorridor not very wind-resistant and that the plastic would be blowing everywhere.

 
                       
 
                                             

He also said that he never thought the polycorridor would work. I was a little surprised at this because this isn't what Tim's said in the past. He's always been very enthusiastic about it but because he kept shaking the polycorridor in the direction the wind never blows and saying that “a polytunnel is curved so the wind just goes over it.” It kind of shook my confidence in the whole thing. I didn't mention that our greenhouse is virtually the same shape and hasn't blown over and the shed was built on the same principle, so I put it down to him being ill, tired and delirious.

The wind was picking up and I had thought that I would get this polycorridor finished in the time I had booked off from work. So, I got the plastic out of the packet and we stretched it out to the length we needed. We ended up getting Nigel and Katya's help as the plastic flapped around the place. The problem we had was getting it as tight as possible. Looking back now I kind of know what we did wrong but you do these things, thinking that you know the best way to go about it. We were trying to make sure that the plastic was weighted down properly so it didn't flap around the place and we tried to keep it tight going down the slope of the roof. Unfortunately, the plastic was so long at around 8 metres that it just flapped in the wind. We should really have pulled length of the plastic in sections, so that we could then tighten up the smaller areas to ensure that we could tighten the slope.

However, as we were going along and the plastic was flapping, I began to think that I needed to rethink the roof because it wasn't tight enough. Tim said that we would never get it tight enough and at this point I felt kind of defeated. I had never seen Tim this negative but maybe he was right? Maybe I was too positive because I never thought that it wouldn't work. Then suddenly to have the realisation that “this isn't going to work” come crashing down on you all of a sudden after weeks of preparation and a lot of money spent. I haven't got money to throw away on something that doesn't work. Maybe it wasn't meant to be. I had set my heart on getting some tomatoes in this contraption and the wind was telling us to eff-off. I had become so entranced in the whole polycorridor idea that I hadn't filmed anything all day, and that's unheard of for me. I was really down at the end of the day because it was just like having your dream shattered to bits after all this time (and all this money).

In retrospect, Nigel said that had it not been so windy that day, it might have been easier to tighten the whole thing, but a day up at the allotment is rarely wind-less. The wind is pretty unforgiving so maybe it does need more supports. Maybe I should stop being such a tight arse and get the right materials, otherwise it's just going to be a great big albatross up at the plot. I bloody hate seagulls so I flippin' despise albatrosses!