Cazaux's Food Factory

Signing off, and back on again

2012-01-16T11:41:00.002Z

Hello,

This blog is no longer Active.

You can follow the link below to its replacement.

http://littlebulmersfarm.blogspot.com/

Happy Gardening.

Cazaux

Rabbit food

2010-04-30T14:18:00.002+01:00

First crops of the 2010 season are ready for the picking.

Back in late March I made my first sowing of radish French breakfast. These were covered under fleece along with a disastrous carrot sowing; I think I have five carrots showing from two small rows. (Old seed and crap weather) and a very successful Salsify sowing (also old seed but these all germinated - go figure!)

Growing radish isn't a labour of love like your average Brasica. Along with Spinach which is also ready for its first cut of baby leaves, it’s probably the easiest and quickest cropper you can plant.

Both have the same growing/sowing instructions. Start by drilling a shallow line into your prepared soil using a hoe/bamboo stick (Whatever really, they will grow even if you leave them on the surface). Sow thinishly, cover up if you can be bothered and then keep the seed bed moist. After several days they will emerge. Thin the emerging seedlings to a few centimetres between plants. Then in just four weeks or so later you eat them.

Sow every where you have a bit of space, in my opinion there’s no point having a radish or spinach patch. Mine grow between potatoes, salads - anywhere there’s some free space. You need to grow a lot of spinach as it wilts down to next to nothing.

My wife loves the radishes and the kids love them because they can sow, grow and munch in a very short space of time and then plant something else.

How to eat them? Well they don’t cook too well like the winter Mooli. These are strictly salad fodder. The French get on their velo and ride to the bakers for a crusty baguette which is then buttered with Buerre Normandy. A little "salt well" made up on the plate and of course the radishes cleaned and de-headed. Crunchy, simple, and delicious! Goes down a treat with a pint of Abbots ale.

So the humble radish - nothing to get ecstatic about unless like me a few years ago, it was the first thing I had ever taken home from the allotment and I nearly pissed myself with excitement.

Spinach on the other hand does make me far more exited. This is another crop that takes on a whole new dimension when grown fresh. The leaves picked young are bouncy and snap with freshness. The taste is something you will not experience from the commercially cleaned, hydroponically grown vacuum packed isles in Waitrose.

Spinach is very versatile. You can add them to salads, Juice it; it goes great with fish steamed with a tiny amount of lemon juice and rock salt once plated up. I personally don’t thing red meat is its best companion. By far my favourite, and also the favourite of anybody I recommend it to. Is to lightly fry off some spring onions with lots of their green leaves too, blend the spinach into the onions for a few seconds and then crack open some gifted chicken or duck eggs and make a runny omelette seasoned with a little salt and plenty of cracked pepper. Fast food that I would take over fine dining any day of the week. Goes well with abbots Ale and grainy bread to lap up the juicy bits!

2010-04-22T10:25:00.004+01:00

Purple sprouting Broccoli – It’s a Sin!

This delectable vegetable was said to have been first cultivated by the Romans some 2000 years ago. Italians must have kept this a secret because it’s not until the nineteenth century that it began to be more widely cultivated in the UK.

Now I love Calabrese too, but comparing it to home-grown purple sprouting broccoli is like comparing a decent table wine with a cheese roll to an aged grand cru served with canapés of fois-gras.

The taste when cooked Al dante is exquisite. Just two minutes in a roaring pan of water without salt is all it takes. The flavour is a textured, unsullied succulent treat on its own. Add a little slightly melted salty butter and pepper and you could be making noises that people would pay a premium chat room to hear.

Getting it on your plate is another challenge. April is the time to plant the seed. Making sure you don’t get root rot from overwatering or choked from lack of, potting on as required. Then Planted at a whopping 60cm equidistance in June into deeply dug soil with plenty of the rotten down good stuff. Do a rain dance around them to firm up the soil, water in and net. Failure to net at any stage of its growth will see your efforts razored to stumps by its nemesis - the evil pigeon.

In addition to the pigeons you need to fight off Slugs, snails, cabbage white butterflies and white fly during the summer months. Keep the ground clear of weeds (mulching really does help) and feed with organic tonics and regular water in the summer. Then stake towards the end of summer as the plants become top heavy with foliage. The plants have to be big strong brutes come spring. Don't do what half the plot holders do and rip it up because it looks a bit droopy in winter or early spring. There will be a flush of new growth in spring which means the pants are entering the business end. When this begins I chop off the old craggy leaves and the plants put even more effort into bud development

Once you are luckily enough to get to the budding stage then be vigilant. Pick regularly and pick smart. Don’t cut the buds if they are too small or it will be a waste. More importantly if the buds are becoming loose and bobbly then the plant is doing its best to flower and cut these off without delay. The trick is to get them somewhere in the middle without letting the plant go to the yellow flower stage at which point you'll have no more lovely purple sprouting broccoli until the following year.

Farmer Hoofs

2010-04-19T09:25:00.004+01:00

Check out this farmers hoof.

Back to work with scraped knuckles and perma-dirt under the nails and skin.

I washed these for ten minutes last night and again when I showered this morning.

One of the plus sides of the sitting around watching tele or the go down the pub gang is that they do have lovely hands. Mine were too - but now they are f@'ked and I think I may have a bit of arthritis developing on the index knuckle.

Mid April

2010-04-15T11:19:00.001+01:00

On inspection yesterday evening I noticed that the Home guard Potatoes and a few other earlies have made it to the surface. I could just about make out the dark browny green leaves pushing though the soil in the raised bed planted spuds. This came as a bit of a relief as we ignored the advice of buying the hens egg sized tubers and purchased the larger ones from the East Anglia potato day. We then cut them in to chunks with three or more chitted bits on them before planting. Twice the seed - half the price, but only if they don't rot off of course.

One of the strawberry plants has flowered - these are now in their third year and look a picture of health so I don’t think I will change them unless they begin to reduce their yields. They have been getting regular bucketfuls of the noxious smelling tea made from all the weeds I have been digging up.

The weed tea stinks to high heaven. Max won’t go near it and a few plot holders have turned their noses up at sixty paces. But I don’t think the plants can smell it, and it must be doing them no end of good. It’s in a big green water butt and gets refilled with water whenever I take from it.

I dug out a couple of trenches twelve feet long and half filled them with manure and compost. Then back filled them and set up a bean frame with the help of railway Steve (he’s six foot four - a bean frame himself). There’s a lot of Steve’s, Bobs and Allen’s up the plot so each gets their own tag.

I'll be setting up another four frames for growing several different varieties for their pods, Shelly beans and dried for winter recipes and reckon I'll need to bring around 200 seeds for the supports and another 100 flageolet bush beans to plant between the sweet corn. I had been looking for Tarbais for ages without any luck. There was one French company willing to send them but 100 grams of seed would have cost almost twenty pounds with the postage. My wife found some tarbais in a Jardiland in France a few weeks back - she's a good gal.

The peas have grown an inch (couple of centimetres) since the weekend. I whacked in some stakes and netted up one side and it looks really smart. But ran out of netting to do the other side. Planted thirty each of Triomphe de Farcey and Major Bush beans that I had germinated and brought on in my little greenhouse. They went between the two rows of peas on Sunday and sparingly applied slug pellets to give them a chance.
Looking closely at the peas and it looks like something’s having a go at the leaves. There are small semi circular notches taken out of a lot of the leaves. Most likely a mouse or maybe something bigger. I can't really lay traps about because my boys would somehow manage to stand on one or play with them when my back was turned. So they are welcome for now to a free nibble, as long as they don't start killing the seedlings because that would be a declaration of war.

Plentiful Peas

2010-04-08T11:44:00.000+01:00

Question: How many peas should you plant from a packet?

Answer: All of them, and then some more.

The peas are up. I planted a packet a few weeks back and they are already a few centimetres tall. The variety was douce Provence. Apparently you can overwinter these but I have seen other plot holder’s attempts at overwintering this same variety and this winter must have been too much for them because their crops are patchy and many have black stem so I will stick with spring plantings.

The next week I found another packet of peas so planted those too. This time they were Feltham firsts

The onion sets and shallots I have planted have finally rooted well and are no longer being pecked at by the dirty pigeons.

But the Purple sprouting broccoli I planted several months ago is just putting on serious amounts of leaf growth. It’s annoying me as my plants are far larger than those on other plots around me but theirs are in full swing pumping out the good stuff whilst mine is just taking its time occupying the best soil on the plot.

Other sowings are now pushing though the soil including the radishes (French Breakfast), Salsify, Early Nantes carrots, spinach, baby beets and bolt hardy beats.

In the greenhouse the First bean sowings are standing proud (Triumph de Farcy and Major) both bush varieties. My little Jenson helped put together the Root trainers, fill them with soil and push the seed into the soil and water them in. Amazing how a four year old loves to help daddy. Whilst Max was very helpful to in sweeping the greenhouse floor and tidying up dads mess.

Also in the greenhouse we have Drum cabbage, Calabrese, cauliflower and Savoy all being potted up from their sowings.

Sixty four Swift sweet corn are in the root trainers. A tray of Swiss chard and salads galore.

This weekend promises to be kind, although Mother Nature has a nasty habit of breaking her word but you can live in hope.

April Attire

2010-04-07T14:54:00.001+01:00

Whoohoo. We are finally getting regular double digit days.

How many of you were becoming so desperate for spring that you contemplated sitting in your car, revving the engine thus releasing a couple of kilos of dirty-dirty carbon into the air whilst eating de-foresting McDonalds and drinking bottled water from a far flung corner of the Alps?

Well I thought about it! But in the end I didn't, but not on moral grounds. My wife had taken the car out shopping for the day, McDonalds chips are a bit salty for my liking and finally Evian is not as good as eau d'East Anglian water authority straight out of the tap.

Spring finally broke despite of my lack of efforts to speed up global warming allowing me outside more often. It’s not SAD I get its "four-wall" syndrome AKA "recycled air" dementia and I got it bad!

April may be the month of showers. For me it’s also the month of the year I constantly get my choice of gardening attire wrong. For instance a week or so ago I wore my Jack Pyke wellies to the plot. These babies are insulated which was great walking up to the allotment.

But by the time I got there and had dug over for a few minutes my poor feet felt like they were going to melt off it was so warm. The thermometer on my shed showed 17oc. That’s flip flop weather!

Then the very next day I look out of the window to beautiful blue skies so put on only a thin top and cotton trousers. No sooner had I left the house I felt a chill on the wind which I chose to ignore - putting it down to the early start I had made. This time, by the time I got to the plot I was cold to the bone.

The blue skies swiftly disappeared and in its place, a rotten grey overcast front formed.

I got rained on. Not just the speck of rain that catches you out sometimes, this was Mother Nature’s wayward sense of salop humour soaking me to the skin. My shoes caked in mud from the paths which just hoovered up the rain waters and turned back into slosh as I ran home.

I put on my pykes, changed into warmer clothing and made my way back to the plot. But the rain stops, the clouds part, the sun dips back into sight - and I'm wearing the wrong blinking clothes again!

Just a little longer

2010-03-10T13:32:00.000Z

Let’s not forget winter still holds the upper hand and is only very slowly beginning to show signs of releasing her grip allowing spring to break through.

Heavy ground frosts continue to check the growth of my purple sprouting broccoli. Icy Rain and winds have delayed the growth of spring bulbs and fruit buds.

So when I saw several plot holders using last years planning diaries to forge ahead with the planting of their early potato seed and sowing carrot, parsnip and beetroot seed unprotected I had to laugh (at them not with them).

Why go to all the trouble and back-ache of digging your plot and buying seeds only to guarantee failure or at the very least disappointment from germination failure and bolting beets? It’s difficult enough to afford the time with the plot what with the family and the job as it is. Impatience to get going regardless of the season must be reaching fever point but don’t get suckered in.

There’s really no need to use a calendar to determine when to plant first earlies. If the grass in the garden doesn’t look like it needs it first trim of the year then don’t bother about planting anything in the ground until it does. You may get away with a few peas and broad beans if they are protected by cover. Onion sets can go in too but in my opinion anything else would be a waste of time and seed. I hope they prove me wrong.

Everything will be later than last year, but surely it’s better to grow under the correct conditions than to plant now whilst winter remains dominant. On the plus side - The bugs must have taken a hammering this winter so organic gardeners may find it slightly easier when the weather finally breaks.

Forking Finally

2010-03-09T11:28:00.000Z

Popped over to the plot for a reccy on last weekend, expecting the usual flood plain of stagnated rain waters and frozen compost. I was in no mood to do anything other than dump the weekly contents of our food scraps onto the heap and head home. I'm not a SAD sufferer, but the last two weeks of February and beginning of March are grinding away at my resolve to be outside.

But what was this? To my surprise the skies were a wonderful hazy blue with the low hung sun doing its best to gently warm the super-chilled soil.

The rest-bite from a few days without rain coupled with some decent winds blowing through the mouth of the Thames Estuary had dried up the heavy clay on the paths somewhat. Enough so, that it didn't clump and stick to my boots as I ambled up the path to my patch on Plot 40.

I like to blame the weather on the state of my plot at the moment, but in truth I have been a little reluctant to starting the "big dig" this year. Overwintered perennial weeds are scattered all over. The heavy rains have brought untold stones to the surface. Its not a pretty sight!

So I found myself pottering and stood their pensively scanning my unkempt weed patch over what to do. After several minutes I dared to open my shed and pull out the digging fork.

Thinking it best to test the high ground I went to the top end of the plot. With the first stab, the fork sunk into the topsoil. I turned the earth and smashed the clump with the back of my fork, then pulled out a few stones and tap roots . Wonderful I thought as it broke into a mash of dark crumbs - the soil is finally improving after a couple of years adding all manner of humous, compost, manure and mulch.

Two hours later and several layers of clothing removed. I cleaned down my trusty fork having done the first couple of honest hours work on the plot this year.

The Vim has returned and I look forward to getting back over at the weekends until British Summer time kicks in and I'll have a few evenings a week to play catchup.

2010 - Third year for this soiler toiler

2010-01-22T09:24:00.007Z

The snow which gripped the nation has finally gone in East Anglia - Its gloomy outside but each day brings a couple more minutes of daylight.

A little stump no larger than a coconut is all that is left of our snowman, hopefully he'll have melted by the rain today and we'll have had the last of the snow for the year.

I'm sowing Salads, spring onions in the house and digging out my packet of Giant cabbage for planting this weekend. Apparently they can grow to monsterous proportions. Its way to cold to germinate anything in my little greenhouse outside so they will get a window box in an unheated bedroom once germinated.

The Brunswick Giant Cabbage

The search for sources of potatoes is back on, so as the get the best seeds available and to get them well chitted for March or April depending on the weather.

Winter seems to be racing along now and in only a couple of months the food factory will be back in full swing. It may be cold and gloomy outside but I'll have to wrap up and carry on with the preperation of my plot if I am to get the most from the short growing season.

Last year was my "year of the tatty". I went to the Suffolk and Essex potato fair on the 14th February. There were so many varieties of potato to choose from it went to town buying about 140 seeds of different type and varieties. If you are growing potato in your veg patch this year I would definately recommend going to one. They are organised events around the country where you can also buy seeds and tools.

My family had never been fans of the "new potato". Being tricky to peel because of its size and the fact they are not keen on eating the skins. However the "Pixies" were a great success. Their little pink eyes were a novelty to the kids who were happy to eat them mashed with skins on. The blight resistant sarpo's and the Mayan gold were the disappointments from the main crops. Sarpos being an inferior cooker and the Mayans being of good quantity but too small and in cumbersome for my wife and mother law to appreciate. The reliable Desiree was the most appreciated main crop for uniformity, flavour and minimal slug and wireworm damage. The Anya was to die for, a revelation in the kitchen.

I'll be scaling back the potato growing this year to about half of that of 2009. It was backbreaking work and brought a tear to my eye as my lower back popped on a couple of occasions whilst earthing up and had to take time off from work. Will be growing more Main crop than Earlies as they kept better but will have a small mixture to ensure I get to enjoy freshly dug spuds throughout the season.

If you are planning on growing potatoes I'd love to hear which varieties you intend to grow and why.

Solstice Week

2009-12-24T12:21:00.001Z

Where do you begin when you have left it so long? That uncomfortable feeling you get when you have left a promised call, email or letter in the back of your mind longer than was socially acceptable and the embarrassment/uncomfortable feeling you have which stops you from picking up the pieces and saying I’m sorry.

The blog, amongst many things has not been kept up to date for some time now. The plot is still there albeit under several centimetres of snow. Dormant, sleeping – but still providing tasty pickings of Brussels sprouts, Swede, leeks and cabbage on my weekly amble up to the patch.

For now, Nature has taken back the site; Foxes stealthily eying the fattened woodpigeons who have massed in numbers and swoop down from the bare trees to scratch out a meal on the naïve or lazy toilers un-netted brassica. Robins follow in the hope you will provide some much needed fat. Slowworms, toads and frogs take refuge in the warmer sanctuary of the composts. The low lying sun casts blue-grey shadows throughout the site, affording only hazy, almost insignificant light during the week of the winter solstice.

Spare a thought for the wildlife that reside in this place and rely on meagre pickings during these fallow months. Anything cooked and appropriate that might otherwise be binned in your household would make a welcome meal to our plots permanent residents.

With that I wish you good health and a bountiful 2010. One life, make it count!

Onion Harvest and Navarin D'agneau

2009-06-08T16:48:00.001+01:00

Its been a bit busy this last week. My contract at work has been extended until the end of the year which is reassuring. Being a freelancer its always a bit daunting as you enter the last weeks of your contract as to whether it will be renewed or you will be told that your services are no longer required. Fortunately for me I havent been without work since I left a permenant post several years ago and took a gamble on going solo. Nows not the time to ask for a rise though, just count your blessings that you havent become a victim of the resession. So high five, I'm surviving thus far.

My parents are also on their UK tour, currently performing child-minding and the likes around our house for several days so we went to the Science Museum in Kensington, lunch in Belgos and Hamleys on Saturday and Bowling on Sunday. Quite a weekend and as much as I love my lotty, it was a great couple of days out and a pleasant change from the norm.

Anyroads - Over on the plot the onions had tipping over by the score suggesting that they had given up on bulb development and were finally ready, they were planted on september the 16th last year. So as I popped over last week I pulled a couple, then some more and just kept going until I had a mountain of red, yellow and white onions. Glorious fat bulbs of the yellows and whites. The Reds were satisfactory but by no means show winners. The shallots were also ready so up they came too. I struggled to get them all into the boot of my car and the smell from several hundred freshly dug aliums lingers to this day. When I got the back home I let them dry off for a few days outside. I stuffed them into the gaps of the trellis in our fence to keep them off the ground. Then after a few days rain beckoned so I cut some lengths of cable and hung them in the garage to continue curing. About thirty of the onions had developed "Fat neck" which happens when the central stem of the onion develops a flower head. Lot of people throw them straight onto the compost heap and don't eat them. I say thats a ridiculous reason to throw them, you just need to eat them or make preserves as soon as possible before the central stem begins to brown and eventually rot. These ones have been cut back of their foliage and are being used as a priority.

I Popped over to the plot quickly again on Saturday evening to show my mum the progress. We had dinner planned for Sunday so we got busy filling up a swag bag.

Firstly I pulled a big Kos Lettuce which was actually for Saturdays supper, it was a little bit past its best so quite a few of the outer leaves were composted. we then grabbed several beetroots. These where the first beets I had taken this year. They came out of the ground nice and easily, partly becasue they have been growing in a raised be but also because of the rain these last few days. I have to say that these were much taster than last years. We shredded them through the roto slicer and nearly fainted when my wife, with her life long abhorance of beetroot tried a bit at the dinner table and proceeded to put some on her plate and finished the lot. The variety I'm growing are the ones with the white flesh and pink rings inside. Maybe it was the colour that put her off, I tend to think it was the over abundance of pickled beets on the canteen menu at school.

Then I moved onto the broad beans. These are the over wintered ones which are short podded and contain 4-6 beans in each. After that my mum picked a couple of small pots of strawberries, most of them made it home but wheres the fun in growing strawberries if you can't eat them straight from the plant?

The early Nantes carrots have been ransacked a lot of late. That day was no exception as we pulled another thirty or so of them. Then the peas......Oh my god the peas........I have only had a tasters of these so far, last years peas where very mealy so it was a joy to snap them off and munch on several pods right there and then, about eighty pods still made it into the swag bag - so sweat I could live on these for weeks.

Max has been growing turnips and had given me the all clear to bring some home too so ten beautiful purple topped specimens were taken out of his plot and added to the haul.

Lastly I thought I'd show off my first earlies to my mum so took out the trusty fork and dug into a pile with some Pixie first earlies. It was dissapointing to only find six or so worthy spuds for the swag bag. They are pretty though with little pink eyes. I will give these a few more weeks as the Maris bards and home guard seem to be doing so much better. Presides I had about a kilo at home from the previous visit so I resisted temptation to dig any more.

So what do you do with all these spring vegetables I wondered. Well my mother in law had the perfect recipe and at the risk of upsetting 50 million French people I will impart with one of their old skool favourite recipes named Navarin d'agneau - Spring lamb stew to most of us. Its a delicous mix of spring vegetables at their very best and brings out the very best in lamb.

Serves - Too much for six hungry adults

1.5 KG Lamb Diced - Large n chunky - big is better
4 Medium Onions (sliced fairly chunky - think one centimetre)
4 tbl spoons of Plain Flower
1/3 bottle of dry white wine
1 Bouquet Garni
50 Grams of Butter
80 Podded peas
40 Podded broad beans
500 grams of New Carrots - Topped and tailed in skins - Chopped in half or three
500 grams of New Potatoes - washed in their skins - chopped in half if larger than an egg
500 grams of Turnips - Topped and tailed, peeled - same size as potatoes
6 white rooted small beetroot (optional) -Topped and tailed, peeled- same size as potatoes
Salt and Pepper.

This works great in a big heavy casarole - Everyone went back for seconds and it went down a storm with some home made bread cut up into doorsteps to mop up the sauce.

Add half the flour into the pan and throw in the cut lamb and cover the lamb as best you can with the flour. Then add the four chopped onions into the pan and add the rest of the flour.

Turn on the heat on the hob to HIGH and add the butter - Brown off the meat for several minutes turning regulary to ensure the onions do not burn. (Its normal to see brown at the bas of the pan, its the flour, lambs fat and butter).

Add two large glasses of wine, then the bouqet garni and then add water so that the liquids are a tad above the level of the meat and onions.

Cover and simmer for forty minutes.

Add Carrots, Potatoes, Turnips, Beetroot and another wine glass of Water. Salt and pepper as liked.

Cover and simmer for thirty minutes.

You can turn it off now if you have pre-prepared this. Or if you are eating straight away. Add the peas and beans. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Turn off the heat - let it stand for five minutes and give it a good stir.

Repeat stirring "genty does it" after another five minutes and serve in deep plates with bread and the remainder of the wine.

Just the trick for a Sunday that was ten degrees celcius less than the previous week.

High point/Low Point

2009-05-26T16:08:00.000+01:00

Rob from A plot too far wished me a happy anniversary and asked me what were the high/low points during my first year attempting to turn dirt and seeds into something fit for the dinner table.

The Highs really outweighed the lows although there were a few; I had to think harder to include them to balance out the post.

High point/low point

High Point: Kids Got involved in the sowing, growing and harvesting which opened their eyes and filled their bellies with the freshest veg money cant buy and only a hop skip and jump (into a puddle) away from our family home kept them active and more importantly away from the play station and television.

Low point: Kids had a theory of why plant one seed when one hundred would be more fun. The carrots were a disaster as was the early salad sowings I didn't thin out too much either. The carrots came out in tangled clods looked like a banshees hand and were impossible to clean or eat unfortunately.

High point: Learning from mistakes was invaluable from planting spacing (see above) to calculating cropping times for follow on crops and grouping of vegetable types so that you can concentrate on a bed knowing all the plants need the same treatment. This year has been much more rewarding already and nothing has died (yet).

Low point: Grew three Aubergines outdoors and cropped one "bitter" aubergine. Haven’t bothered this year. May try them in the green house next year but they are off the food factory floor for 2009.

High point: Eating Sunday Roast with my parents with every single veg including Potatoes, Sweet corn, Cabbages, Swede, Peas and of course the courgettes which I took my own body weight home in Last Autumn.

Low point: Not netting up my Purple sprouting broccoli and finding it razored by the mauling pigeons and having to rely on handouts from kind plot holders to taste what I was missing.

High point: Taking in a fantastic evening over the plot with Michael and shooting dead several fat pigeons from their vantage points in the oak trees. We prepared them on the spot and had a barbeque of pigeon breast, courgettes onions and sweet corn. They eat our veg, we eat them.

Low point: Having prized marrow and produce pinched. They always took the best that I had and it annoyed me to think it was probably fellow plot holders rather than kids. The oiks that do occasionally cause a bit of hassle are more intent on destruction of property and kicking your veg about than pinching it.

High point: health and well being has been improved no end. With a farmers tan and losing a bit of weight I feel better now than I had for years.

Low point: Shed being broken into and kids tools being burnt in the shed was a "bad day". Fortunately I shrugged it off and bought some replacements so to the idiots who did it. I’m over it and you're still losers most likely doing community service by now……parp.

High point: Kindness in these times from complete strangers is a rare occurrence. Not on the allotment though. Far from it, I have seen sincerity; kindness and fellowship flourish into friendships in a short space of time. My boy’s love it too as there are so many kids to play with.

Low point: Weeds. Do they ever give up? I watched the gardener’s world and uktv gardening programmes in disbelief as they potter around doing the planting, potting up and designing. Not once have I seen them in a situation where they have left the kitchen garden for a split second to find half the plot has been swamped in Fat hen, dandelions, couch grass and bind weed.

High point: Seeing James happy as a kid with a box of matches with his new toy. Scorching up the weeds and his paths with a flamethrower.

Low Point: Driving up to my plot after several days of torrential rain only to get the car stuck in a rut and having to walk home and get the wife and mother in law up to help me tow it out. This caused a stupid argument over my stupid actions. Needless to say I apologised and no longer drive in the bog.

High point: Coming home from summer holidays to find that several plot holders had been kindly watering for me whilst I was away and the whole garden looking fantastic.

Low point: Spending several months looking after the pumpkin plant only for them to get a few nicks taken out of them and going mouldy. Still I had one decent one and you can only eat so much.

High Point: Appreciating the seasonal changes with every passing day leading up to the summer equinox through to the stillness of its winter opposite. With the exception of the bitter February it was always a pleasure to be in the open experiencing with new eyes the changing of the seasons.

Low Point: Tomato Blight - It’s a bitch.

First anniversary

2009-05-22T15:11:00.000+01:00

A year ago today I popped into the council offices and picked up two keys, signed a contract and handed over less money that I spend on a night out to the cinema.

Today - looking back to a year ago my life has improved and I'm happier for it.

Heres looking forward, not back to the next year. #

Chin Chin

May Cazaux Time

2009-05-20T10:29:00.014+01:00

It was a wonderful May evening and I have misplaced the keys to my shed. Not wanting to miss out on this fine spring sunset. I grabbed the camera and snapped away.

Heres a few pictures. The rest can be located here.

The flowers smell so sweety-sweet. Hello gardner, nice to meet. Berries are my favourite thing. Birds and flowers, it must be Spring.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four,
five potato, six potato, seven potato more.
Icha bacha, soda cracker,
Icha bacha boo.
Icha bacha, soda cracker, out goes Y-O-U!

I always eat my peas with honey;
I've done it all my life.
They do taste kind of funny
but It keeps them on my knife.

There was a young man from Prestatyn,
Who fancied he ought to learn Latin,
He said; 'I shall speak,
Of my hatred of leek,
But the Welsh don't have words to put that in.'

Sit while I sing you a fanciful song,
Which tells of the cabbage's lore.
It's not that exciting and not very long,
For the cabbage is often a bore.

How best to picture this much-maligned fruit
That has troubled the wisest of sages?
It is leafy and green and yet looks rather cute
When it's squashed in a book with large pages.

Fitted with wheels on its sides, it becomes
The most truly extraordinary car.
And when covered in tinsel and circled by plums,
It resembles a rather small star.

The cabbage was never the smartest of fruits,
But its uses outnumber its brains.
The leaves can be used to make edible suits,
And the stalk for unblocking the drains.

I hope you have learned of the cabbage's way,
And recall it if salads are bleak.
But now you should leave, for I fear, if you stay,
I will tell you the tale of the leek.

My Uncle Lionel
Is a spinach leaf,
The iron'll do you good
Boil him up for half a day
He'll taste like mashed up wood.

Beans, broad, the musical fruit
The more you eat, the more you toot!
Beans, broad, they are good for your heart.
The more you eat, the more you fart.
The more you fart, the more you eat,
The more you sit on the toilet seat!

Hot Corn, cold corn, bring along the demijohn
Hot Corn, cold corn, bring along the demijohn
Hot Corn, cold corn, bring along the demijohn
Fair thee well, uncle Bill, see you in the morning
Yes sir

They fell in love, then they married
A tomato bouquet she carried
Tomatoes cooked to perfection
Were served up at the reception
As they drove off they were showered
...Not with tomatoes but flowers!

Si tu me miras
Watching the sunset
Si tu me miras
Taking a picture
Of the sunset

Cauliflowers fluffy and cabbages green,
Strawberries sweeter than any I've seen
Beetroot purple and onions white:
All grow steadily day and night.

The miricalgrow of life.

2009-05-14T10:48:00.000+01:00

I'm expecting babies very shortly.

Isn’t it amazing that after nine months and several billion cells splitting, us human beans are able to make a mini us's.

Two eyes for watching television, two hands for playing play station, two feet for kicking people with on a Saturday night after drinking twenty pints of Stella. A mouth to swear with and ears to stick I-pod headphones in. Such is the miracle of reproduction and adolesance in our glorious twenty fist century thug land.

Only the other day I was in my local corner shop, three kids walked in and racially insulted the owner. Demanded he sell them Cigarettes and alcohol. I was happy to see Petre the owner flash his bat at them and practically threw them out.

Crikey - what has the world come to I thought? I must be getting old! Petre told me not to worry; he gets it all the time.

As I left the shop I thought to myself that When I was a kid back in the early eighties. We would have never in our wildest dreams done something like that, no way. We would have created a distraction and quietly just pinched a sherbet dip. No need for the insults.

I’m going off on one.....Back to the subject.

My babies by contrast have been ten months in making, it’s been a long and difficult conception, and in only a couple of weeks, I'm going to eat them with a cheesy béchamel.

Whoohoo, yep, I'm talking about my beloved brassica. Last night I made a very happy discovery - My Cauliflowers are finally heading up.

A few weeks back I blogged about these, so won’t repeat my self too much about the efforts involved.
I was considering giving up on them as my patience was running thin, and I need some space to plant out my gherkins. However, after much discussion about them with fellow plot holders, about these huge plants with nothing to show for them after so long, A few suggested that I might cut off a few of the outer leaves to stimulate/shock them a little bit.

Hesitant at first, because you are told they dislike conditions anything short of perfect. I decided to test this suggestion, and cut three to four mammoth leaves from a few of them. Michael keeps chickens and happily took these for them to peck on.

Any roads - A week later and I have half a dozen "farmer Fists" sized heads. The are very tightly packed and I am quietly confident that these are going to be beauties.

I picked off and disposed of several snails and bugs lurking in the bed. Looks like snail season has begun. Hosed them in Comfrey tea and threw in some blood and bones to the mix.

Another sight that brought a smile to my face, and will have my boys going mental do-lally is that we have a dozen strawberries turning from lime green to pink. Oh yes. Vanilla Ice-cream has been added to the shopping list.

The salad days are well and truly here now with Kos lettuce, sweet cut and come again, mountains of fresh spinach, radishes, basil, beet leaf, lambs lettuce, all year round salad and spring onions.

Turnips and Kohlrabi are beginning to fatten up nicely. I’m looking forward to a tagine couscous by my wife with these.

The over wintered onions, shallots and the not too rusty garlic continue to fatten up. What am I going to do with 200 onions? Maybe I'll take a load as a gift to Petre as payback for all those missing sherbet dips. He didn't escape the courgette glut last year and always asks my how my garden grows.

Garlic’s- R- us t

2009-05-05T14:59:00.003+01:00

As mentioned in a previous post the Garlic I planted last year was a mixture of heads purchased on a week’s holiday to Provence - France, plus a gift from my parents who live in sunny Spain. The holidays a distant memory now, but the Garlic plants, which until now have looked a picture of health, have served to remind me of that fantastic family break.

They where planted in the middle of September last year in the bed I had used to grow Maris Peer Second early potato’s and another bed that was used to grow Broad beans. Can’t remember the type of broad beans that they where as they where shop bought plants.

The soil is in good shape! The cultivation of the potato’s and the added compost and sharp sand for added drainage for both beds has changed the structure of the soil remarkably for the better.

We have had a stinking cold winter, but dry by all accounts which by most internet references suggests ideal conditions for getting the garlic off to a flying start and providing the conditions that are needed to split the bulb into several cloves rather than one large onion like bulb.

I haven't watered them directly this year, which should be fine as there is plenty of moisture below surface. So my question is what could have encouraged them to develop early signs of Garlic rust?

Spacing certainly isn't the issue as I have followed the 10 centimetre on rule and added a bit more for good luck

Could it be that the fat cloves of garlic which I planted were infected with this fungal infection and I should heed every seed sellers advice and only use certified virus free stock? I hope not.

Could it be that the water tank just up from me broke a few weeks ago pouring water through my plot for days on end caused the fungal infection?

Or maybe everybody that grows garlic suffers from rust and I'm rantign for nothing. I know Peter and a couple halfway down grew it last year and both theirs developed rust too but we had a very soggy spring in 2008 so I put it down to moist conditions, but maybe there’s more to it.

This is one of the painful moments of keeping a plot, the disappointment and realisment (yankism) that something you have had high hopes for is going to shit.

This is an extract from the most useful page I found whilst googling that answers most of these questions.

Puccinia allii (or rusty garlic): This fungus has caused major epidemics in California and some losses in Arizona. California isolates did not infect leek, shallot or elephant garlic. However, P. allii in Europe is extremely damaging on leek.

This fungus may over winter on dead plant material, in soil, or on wild hosts. When seed cloves collected from rust-infected garlic plants were planted in studies by the University of California, none of the plants that grew from these cloves developed rust (Counts out the infected bulb theory).

The rust is autoecious and same-season re-infection by urediospores is common. Severe losses are reported when excessive rain, fog, or irrigation are present (Looks like the water-tank maintenance fault then).

Highest infection rates occur at cool temperatures (50-59° F) and 100% relative humidity. Temperatures below 50° F and above 75° F inhibit the disease.

Symptoms: Initial symptoms include small white to yellow flecks and spots. The spots enlarge and become oval to elongate or diamond shaped and take on an orange cast as uredia develop. Later in the season, black oval to elongate telia develop. These telia may or may not break through the epidermis. Telia of a related species, P. asparagi, found occasionally on onion, tend to be dark brown rather than black. Heavily infected plants have an orange cast, outer leaves may yellow and wither prematurely, and bulb size may be reduced.

No resistant garlic lines have been identified.

More to the point, what can you do about it?

Organic control:

Nada, nil, zilch. You can try cutting back infested leaves which will have an impact on the size of the end product but it won't cure it. - I was hoping nature had the answer. Sounds like athlete’s foot for Garlic! Maybe I'll get some talcum powder and put clean socks on them daily......

Chemical control:

Dithane F-45 Rainshield at 2.4 quarts/A on a 7-day interval. The addition of a Latron surfactant will improve performance. Do not apply more than 24 quarts/A/crop or apply to exposed bulbs. Do not apply within 7 days of harvest. 24-hr re-entry.
Manex at 1.6 to 2.4 quarts/A on a 7-day interval. Do not apply more than 24 quarts/A/season or apply to exposed bulbs. Do not apply within 7 days of harvest. 24-hr re-entry.

Quadris at 6 to 12 fl oz/A on a 7- to 14-day interval. Do not apply more than one (1) foliar application of Quadris or other Group 11 fungicide before alternating with a different mode of action. Do not apply more than1.5 lb a.i./A per season of azoxystrobin-containing products. May be applied the day of harvest. 4-hr re-entry.

So this leaves me with four options, one of which I deplore as it uses a non-organic approach.

1) Napalm them with a cocktail of Dithane/Manex/Quadris - Not even sure if this stuff is available to average Jo – Occasional allotment gardener. Sounds more like the makings of a Molotov bomb than an answer to my problems.

Verdict: B"$%^ks to that, Id rather eat a creamed slug sandwich.

Who in their right mind would treat their crop with this poison? To me it’s like saying I have a sore throat and somebody advising you to drink turpentine as that’s what they give camels in Morocco after they have travelled through a sand storm. Sure your sore throat will go away, but you liver will pack up and you may get stomach cancer but what the hell, if its good enough for them camels why not give it a go?

Don’t believe me? Check this out on the Chinese grower’s choice Dithane.

2) Dig them up and consign them to a bonfire.

Verdict: To early to tell how bad its going to get.

3) Cut all the affected leaves off and hope for the best

Verdict: I want fat bulbs, cut the plant cut the chances of a decent crop and they won’t store.

4) Do nothing, leave them be and possibly mulch with potash -Bonfire soot and hope for the best. The chances are it will have little effect on the final crop other than reducing the size of the bulbs slightly and you won’t be able to braid them.

Verdict: Do nothing – Live in Hope – Stop stressing – Cazaux Likes.

The question is…..What would the infamous garlic farm on the Isle of Wight do in a situation like this?

Your advice would be very much appreciated.

Homegrown corn on the cob is out of this world

2009-05-01T09:31:00.002+01:00

Hands up who has ever grown Sweet corn and rushed home with a bunch of fat ears, ripping off the outer layers on route to expose ten inch yellow hand grenades, perfectly formed without a missing corn or a weevil in sight?

I have, it took me 23 minutes to get up and back from my plot, rip off half a dozen little beauties and back home again to a big old pan I started boiling before I sat off. I ripped off the outer leaves and threw them all in the steaming pot as quick as possible to get the sweetest corn that literally no amount of money can buy you from any market in the world.

This was the highlight of 2008's season; I can't recall anything that I grew last year that had the "Oh My God! Pat yourself on the back farmer - you've just cultivated sex on a cob" factor as I munched through three of them, butter dripping from my chin and an Ice cold beer. Max was just as impressed although he's six and had to settle with a soft drink, I think this was the day we both developed the obsession with corn on the cob.

On that 6th September 2008, I made a promise to myself to grow more than the 16 plants I had experimented with, and this year I will be hoping to beat the 23 minute bar.

Why is it so important to get them from plot to Cocotte in the fastest time possible? Well, it is because the natural sugars that are in sweet corns begin to turn into starch from the moment you pick them. You could do a taste test to compare that within just two hours, there is a marked difference with the taste that most people, especially sweet teeth would notice.

Leave it another day and 60% of the natural sugars that exist may have turned leaving you a very different product from your food factory.

The same can be said of peas, that's why many people adore the frozen variety as the farms scoop up the entire plants, shell them and fast freeze them within a matter of hours to capture the sweet flavours, but find the peas to pod from your local supermarkets and vegetable stalls quiet mealy.

Growing sweet corn is a doddle.

I Started by buying root trainers or you could use toilet rolls three weeks back, then placed a single seed into each cell filled with general compost, planting 64 in total. Then I take a pencil and push them gently into the compost, cover with a bit more compost and drench them with warm water from the kitchen sink. Pop a lid on your sowings and leave for a week or so.

After a week or so you should find most of your sweet corn has popped up and you can take the lid off and drench them once again in Luke warm water but leave the lid off this time.

Wait another week and they should be six inches tall and if you are feeling confident that we are going to have the hottest summer in living history then you can prepare to plant them out now.

You can prepare the plot for them by digging deep and incorporating as much organic material as possible. I personally dumped four bags of horse muck and a couple of barrow loads of home brew compost. Then I borrowed James Mantis and tilled the area and piled it up so the bed was raised above the natural level of the plot. I cover the area with gardener’s membrane and slit holes every 18 inches (40cm) leaving 22 Inches between rows so you can sent you kids in to pick them.

From the 64 I planted I was happy with 63 that germinated.

Last weekend I planted five rows of nine plants, I have held back four in-case a few don’t take and gave the remaining thirteen to Bob, he gives me way too much stuff so it was great to repay the compliment. I think he was happy as he was still chitting his corn (Something I don’t bother with).

According to many threads you can plant closer than this but in doing so you run the risk of reducing the yield. At these distances you should expect 1.5 (Average) cobs over your crop so I’m going to be eating plenty come August with a bit of luck and some supercharged summer days.

Cauliflower rant.

2009-04-22T15:06:00.001+01:00

Im back from holidays in Mexico - Its been a couple of weeks - Time for a post.

In about a month’s time, I'm hoping for a return on my investment of time and efforts with the over wintered cauliflower experiment. They are looking very healthy now but with these vegetables being particularly fussy and the odds stacked against you in many respects, you can only do what you can do and wait several months before you find out if you did it well or you ended up with a sweaty sponge of minuscule proportions.

Growing the humble Cauliflower it’s kind of like going to war as a Spartan. Death or Glory. Actually is nothing like that at all as Cauliflowers can't throw spears and don’t look menacing enough to be considered a warrior race. But in essence - You either fail miserably or glory in your marvellous achievements’.

Mine have been in the ground since August last year. I started them from seed in June. I have watched patiently, weeded regularly and protected the bed with a "ring of Steel" to fend off early sabotage attempts by feathered brassica jihadists.

Throughout the winter I watched over the caulis wondering "what’s the point of this over wintering ball hocks". They just sat there without much sign of growth, which then ground to a complete halt whilst being battered by cold harsh frosts, snow and no sun light.

One gave up the ghost and popped its clogs two days before Christmas. It was like loosing a family member. Its death cannot be explained. It looked in good health a week before hand, I found it keeled over looking rather slimy so I pulled it out and buried it in the bean trench so at least some good will come of it - for the beans at least. Not that I'm in the habit of burying family members in my bean trench so it wasn't really like a family member really at all, more like a pet goldfish or something I wouldn't think twice about lobbing in the bean trench if it died.

Then as the frosts rescinded, the surviving brood have had treats of blood and bone meal, well rotted manure and rain water from my butt (water). I have even given them a dose of diluted seaweed concentrate which is like a natural anabolic steroid for hungry plants.

Now the weather is warming and some serious growth has begun again, a new wave of lesser attacks have begun.

I have kept the white fly at bay with soapy water spray to clog up the little bastards breathing ducts. Snails and slugs found in the bed have been skewered onto a length of garden twine and their shrivelled remains hung up to ward off theirs friend and family.

Any outer yellowing leaves and the little suckers that sometimes grow at the base have been removed.

There doesn’t seem to be any advice in any of the publicised growing guides that I own so I have consulted Soilmans thread as he also loves the good fight that is the cultivation of Cauliflowers.

Hoeing this little bed is off limits, it's regularly hand weeded to ensure that all the available nutrients are available to my crop, and does not become a feast for the weeds which have gotten into full swing too now.

You can’t compare foreign imported shop bought mass produced long term vegegatbles that'll only cost you seventy pence from the non organic section of a billion pound a week supermarket. Home grown cauliflower is not easy, it can be a pain in the proverbials to avoid the pigeon attacks, adverse weather conditions, slugs and snails and if you don’t get their fussy little requirements’ just right, or forget to pick them on just the right day you still end up with a stinky - yellow - tennis ball sized - loose headed - crap end product.

Get it right on the other hand and you have bragging rights over your fellow farmers and gain respect from the old guard over the plots as you strap your gigantic beast like vegetables to the roof rack of your car and parade it around town playing bagpipe music from your cd player with all your windows down and a pair of ray bans on with one hand waving at the admiring onlookers.

Mine by contrast to Tesco’s perfectly formed jolly foreigners are 100% British and 100% organic.
There will be zero food miles in carting them home (Apart from the victory parade). Even if they taste like a cocktail of horse shit and seaweed and look like they have fallen out of the back end of a bison's bum they are going to get eaten.

So unlike the 65% of vegetables grown that never even reach your dinner plate there will have been a point to their existence.

If at first you don't suck-seed.

2009-04-09T09:38:00.001+01:00

A month ago I was wondering if the growing season would ever begin, now it seems to be getting ahead of me. Greenhouse is cooking on Gas now after the disaster a few weeks back.

First of the 64 sweet corns and 80 borlotti beans poked their heads up from the root trainers yesterday.

27 of the 32 Courgette seeds have germinated. These are from self saved seed from last season’s bumper courgette gluts. A few of them were left to get to monster proportions. The seed was saved for this years planting. They are really nice with a cold one toasted in the oven too with the smallest amount of oil and salt.

8 Market more Cuke's and 12 Dwarf beans have smashed through the soil in their recycled coffee cup pots

50 - OMG - 50 Pepper plants have germinated. It looks like a near on 100% germination rate. I'm going to have to find the time to prick these out and pot then into a root trainer before Sunday.

96 Blue Lake Climbing French beans planted last night.

80 Musselburgh Leeks have been pricked out into three large pots filled with quality compost which will be taken up the plot because space or lack of it is becoming a real issue

A friend has offered the use of his greenhouse in exchange for some of the extras. I tend over plant expecting only fifty percent germination rates but at this rate there’s going to be plenty of happy potholders’ come the seedling swap up the plot in early May.

Last year was my first and I was chuffed to bits that so many people kindly donated their extras to me. Along with paying silly money from garden centres for plug plants. It was the only way I was able to make the plot productive I hope to be able to reciprocate those gifts this year and help out some of the recent joiners who are frantically digging over their newly acquired starter plots.

Have you seen how expensive the veg is in the commercial garden centres this year? £1.99 buys you four spindly broad beans or six peas at home base - Incredible when for the same price, you could have bought a pint of broad bean seed from the Suffolk potato fair in February, that’s around a hundred and fifty seeds. The crop you get from four plants would probably cost you the same to buy the beans in a supermarket in the first place. They are taking the royal piss if you ask me.

I may ask the grounds man Bob if I can rent the road that was marked between me and my neighbour.

Like a lot of intentions on the plot, the road never got going, as the width was miscalculated. It’s too narrow to use without driving over my raised beds "Which has happened several times - grrrr". Not this year though, railway Steve gave me a length of steel track which is going to be buried into the corner that gets the worst of it.

Let’s see if they like driving into that instead. I will paint a bright colour so it’s clearly visible though.

Normandy Weekend

2009-04-06T11:42:00.001+01:00

We travelled to Normandy, France last weekend to see my wife’s family. The house we stayed in is her uncles, and I love it. It’s a Norman Farm house with several Hectares of land. The house itself dates back four hundred years with huge French oak beams and just oozes old charm. It has a brick fireplace and a bread oven to its side which makes you feel so comfortable in the chilly evenings. Outside the kids were fascinated with Jean-Marc’s three horses, cows, Chickens and rabbits. I was equally impressed with his Cave filled with wine and Calvados.

The best thing about France in my opinion though is not their fantastic wine or cheese. It's their roads. If you love driving then you would appreciate the French motorways which are not crowded. People don't drive in the middle lane creating road rage and the fast lane is just a pleasure to open up and give your motor a good workout. You are allowed to drive at 80 mph which means 90 mph and they have huge signs telling you that there will be a speed camera before you approach it. The only problem is that you pay for the pleasure with regular tolls, I'm not sure, but I don’t think you pay road tax if you are a resident in France so it would equal itself out as you pay when you use the infrastructure. You may even save a few quid if you don’t use the motorways that often.

We went into town to a Carrefour supermarket on Saturday morning. I went to the gardening aisle and was a little disappointed with the selection of seed available. I had to get something though and opted for some Mange tout, Onions and triumph de Farcy French beans. One thing I did notice is that the packets contain double the quantity than you get for the same price in England. I didn't have the opportunity to go to a garden centre as we were committed to seeing the family.

We arrived home around five o’clock on Sunday, I popped over to the plot for a quick peek. It always amazes me that even in the space of three days you see a marked difference in your veg.

The Radishes are quite visible now and the foliage has grown enough to cover the small drills I made a few weeks back. All the little spring onions have grown to about four centimetres and the Nantes early carrots have pushed through nicely. Soilman was happy to see his carrots had germinated under a cloche. I didn't use one and they have still come through although they are not as big as his so I think they would have liked a bit more heat.

I was surprised too, to see that the first early potatoes in one of my larger raised beds have begun to poke through the soil. I thought I had planted them a bit deep and they would have taken another couple of weeks but the weather has been kind since mid March so that has probably helped them along the way.

The Cauliflowers I over wintered are doing well now. I don’t think it will be too long before they begin to form their heads.

I have figured out what I sowed in my mystery raised bed now. I drilled several rows in a moment of seed frenzy three weeks back and forgot to label them up. There’s a row of Lambs lettuce, four rows of spinach and a couple of rows of beetroot. All of it has germinated in some fashion and the first true leaves on the spinach are beginning to form.

Lastly I noticed that the broad beans have begun to set white flowers which hopefully means that my over wintered experiments have by in large been successful. A few fellow plot holders had grown various brassicas over winter and they have bolted as soon as the weather turned milder.

So off I went home to check out the progress on the greenhouse seedlings;

Kohlrabi - Developing second sets of true leaves - will be ready to plant out at the weekend hopefully.

Tomato's - Only five plants have survived after the disaster - Four of them are doing well, the seed wouldn't budge from the last one for weeks and it tiny.

French Beans - One has germinated - Only planted last week.

Salads - All have germinated - Will have to give some away as I over planted.

Leeks - Look Crap after being smashed up. Have sown some more.

Peppers - over thirty have germinated over the weekend.

Calabrese - again thirty have germinated over the weekend.

Cabbage spitfire - Looks great, these are developing their first true leaves, ones near the windows of the green house looked parched but they will recover. Took lid off now.

Bortolli Beans, sweet corn, cucumbers, courgettes - Nothing yet only planted last week.

Basil - Growing slowly.

March Picture Gallary

2009-03-24T21:02:00.006Z

Peggy suggested that I should post some pictures.

I agreed it was about time I remembered to take the camera.

So heres a few snaps from this afternoons bolt up to the plot to pick up my seed box.

http://picasaweb.google.com/CazauxFood/March2009CazauxTime

Its all a bit brown on the plot - I'm sooo looking forward to seeing my scratch of a patch become an oasis of green.

Nature sticks it to my Food factory.

2009-03-24T11:36:00.002Z

So like any other day, I return from work last night after a long slog, hoping to kick back and relax before the next instalment of Groundhog Day, the elements provided a nasty surprise for me when I got home.

Apparently the wind picked up yesterday afternoon, and during the course of the evening it caught hold of my little greenhouse and tossed it about for a while. There was no damage as such to the greenhouse but inside was a whole different story.

The Staging at the back of the greenhouse had been knocked for six and along with it the majority of my seedlings that were coming on a treat. They had been upturned in their pots and scattered all over the floor.

To say I was major league peeved off would be any understatement. I’ve lost all my salads, Sage, Thyme and Tomatoes (except a few tomato's on a windowsill indoors). I managed to save about half of the kohlrabi and some of the basil looked salvable.

Thankfully the leeks were ok; they had been on the bottom shelf and managed to avoid natures little rabbit punch to the solar plexus.

I went into salvage mode, repotted the Basil, firmed down the few kohlrabi that survived the assault and threw the rest into a large sack for the local recycling centre.

The survivors got special treatment last night and spent the night in the comfort of my house. My wife must have felt pity for me because she didn't complain about the uninvited guests and I got a hug which cheered me up.

Lessons Learned: No point in crying over spilled milk. I'm going to move the greenhouse into another location and bolt it down so securely, that even if we get a storm of biblical proportions my greenhouse will remain a safe haven for the seeds I'll be sowing this evening. Just for that Mother Nature, I'll not be recycling for a week.

In less that on hour Spring will have arrived.

2009-03-20T10:53:00.001Z

A monumental event occurs for all budding gardeners and vegetable plot holders on this day.

The vernal equinox occurs this morning. As the sun crosses the celestial equator at 11:43 GMT we will officially be in real spring. Not the meteorological spring which marks the seasons by dividing the seasons into four tidy three month periods but REAL SPRING.......

This has the old stomach butterflies’ whipping up a frenzy providing a moment of anticipation for me.

The greenhouse is alive with the emerging seeds that have been carefully planted over time since February including Kohlrabi, Early peas, Leeks, the first salads, Tomatoes, peppers, Sweet Basil and spitfire cabbage.

I can begin to think about Brussels Sprouts, Calabrese, next years sprouting broccoli, Dwarf French beans, Paris silver skin onions, cape gooseberries and so many more of the seeds that have been burning to escape from their foil wrapped imprisonment.

Over on the plot, the Kelvedon early peas are beginning to emerge, Radishes are showing their true leaves and have been thinned out. The early Nantes carrots are beginning to poke their feathered foliage through the soil.

Only three more weeks to go until my favourite day of the year. The day we get our evenings back and we finally get to spend a little time pottering around after work.

Happy Days!!!

So it’s been a month since I last posted.

2009-03-16T14:34:00.001Z

So what’s been going down on the plot since the big thaw?

Well, for a start I now have a lovely new machine called a rotivator. It’s a 5.5 hp beast.

During the winter months I have been hand digging with what felt like no end in sight. Pulling out bramble clumps and perennial weeds from the new section of my plot and digging over the existing parts and adding in my home made compost and bags of well rotted manure.

A couple of weeks ago I removed the carpets that covered three of my raised beds. I have added some seaweed granulised fertiliser into these and have begun this years planting.

I raked over and hoe drilled several rows into one of the raised beds in preparation for the first sowings of the year. Into which I have sown four rows of French breakfast radish - Do the French eat radishes for breakfast? Three rows of Nantes Early Carrots and a couple of rows of White Lisbon spring onions. These are all quick croppers, chosen on purpose so that I can use the bed again in June for something else.

The following week I prepared a second bed in the same way as the first and have sown true spinach, some corn salad and bolt-hardy beetroots.

The over wintered Onions, Garlic and Shallots are growing big guns. Fantastic green leaves and the Shallots are showing several shoots on most of the plantings. The drainage I worked hard in achieving by adding several sacks of sand and the bitter cold weather looks like it will reward me with a bountiful crop in early summer.

The over wintered Cauliflowers are putting on new growth now too. I have several of these. It was hard to believe they would ever get going again after watching them just sit there without any sign of getting bigger since lat last year. The pigeons began their assault on them in December so they are all netted up now and have make a remarkable recovery.

I have planted out a row of Autumn Bliss raspberries, two red currant and two black currants in a section which has been given over to fruits. I have ordered three blue berry bushes which should arrive this week. Will probably sink some large containers in the fruit area to grow the blueberries in. They need a highly acidic soil to really get going and I don’t think I could modify and maintain my soil down to a ph level of 4.5 very easily.

The Summer Strawberry bed has settled down from the digging up and replanting late last year. It was a real mess with all manner of weeds and grass. The Plants set dozens of runners to so I though the best approach was to dig them up, add muck, and plants them back through gardeners membrane and provide a mulch of wood chip to make it look nicer and to hold the membrane in place.

On the 8th of March I planted twenty or so well chitted tubers of Maris Bard, Home guard and another I forget the name of. These went into the third raised bed. When they begin to poke through the soil I’m going to mulch up with straw and other organic materials.

That same week I also dug a narrow trench and planted a hundred or so early peas.

I went over on Sunday this week and gave the rotivator a good working out, or rather it pulled me around for an hour. I'm happy that I first dug the plot over taking out the majority of the roots and weeds as these machines have a bad reputation for turning your weed problem into all out weed warfare by chopping up perennials into thousands of pieces which in turn each grow into a new weed.

The over wintered broad beans were a bit of a hit and miss. It’s my fault really, I hoed the bed just before the killer weather that we had and the loosened soil allowed the ground frost to get at the roots. I probably lost half of them. I grew some space fillers in the greenhouse at home and got them planted in

I have given my Sons a raised bed to do what they want with. Max planted four broad beans I had left over; he has replanted some Rainbow chard for another of my beds. He managed to pinch one of my potato seeds so that went in too. He also planted several sun flower seeds. I had to prise my seed box from his hands as he was about to empty out several thousand carrot seeds in there too. I'll give him a hand next week so he doesn’t repeat last years over seeding.

So it’s been a while and I hadn't blogged for a month because I thought I had nothing to write. Then you get it out of you and you realise that quite a bit has gone on really. Won’t leave it so long next time.

Happy Gardening - Spring is finally in the air.

Mr Potato Head

2009-02-13T19:14:00.003Z

I'm Going to the East Anglia potato fair tomorrow. I feel like i'm 7 years old and its Christmas eve.

Dear potato Santa,

Iv'e been a very good boy, please can I have the following for valentines day?

Love Cazaux.

Name Type Qty
Amorosa First Early 6
Accord First Early 6
Riviera Frst Early 6
Maris Bard First Early 12
Maris Peer Second Early 12
Wilja Second Early 12
Anya Second Early 12
Pixie Second Early 12
Mayan Gold Early Maincrop 12
Desiree Early Maincrop 12
Galactica Early Maincrop 6
Sarpo Mira Late Maincrop 12
Sarpo Axona Late Maincrop 12
Golden Wonder Late Maincrop 12

Fresh snow Rulz

2009-02-03T19:59:00.006Z

We have had some incredible weather here in Essex over the last few days. I couldn't wait to get out and about in it. You don't see this every day, so we wasn't about to let it go to waste.

Here's a picture of my eldest son who has been with me on many weekends getting this scratch of land usable. Max was really excited to be knee deep in the lovely fresh snow instead of dirt. He was especially happy I was not digging or working on the plot so we could concentrate on the important things like throwing snow at each other, rolling snowballs into huge boulders and leaving them on the paths to melt, in say a June..... he he he - chuckles...

Looks like I'll be on the sidelines for a couple of weeks whilst this lot melts and the soil becomes workable. Hope this dosn't kill the broadbeans, they were the winter "experiment" - under the waterbottles to the left. Surely the garlic, overwintering onions and shallots will be loving this?

I wouldn't want to be at the bottom end when all this begins to melt as they will be flooded for a while.

My plot is right at the top of this amazing landscape, we had great fun with a closely fought snowball fight on the way down and had giggle.

In the winter you dont see the foxes roaming the streets like you do in the summer

They retreat to places like this.

Check out Mr fox halfway up the path.

Sorry, can't say that they are my favourite animal in the world, they turn out your bins and crap on your driveway for ten months of the year. I won't mention the pet rabbit meets hungry fox tragedy of 1999.

As much as they get a bad press from me and so many others, I hope he finds some food and is not too displaced by all the snow so he can live to crap another day.

spuds-R-us.

2009-01-30T20:26:00.007Z

A close friends partner has given me 15 tubers of the Maris Bard first eary potato. Thanks a lot.

I was going to grow a couple of varieties of lovely new potatos this year so I'll only need to look for one other other when I visit the Suffolk and Essex seed fair in a couple of weeks time.

My wife Steph thinks I'm joking when I told her we are going the potato fair on the 14th February. I'll post some pictures of that romantic date later on next month.

She dosn't really enjoy working in the garden, but prefer's me gardening to gargling beer down the booza and she happily tucked into pretty much all the veg I came home with last year. I'll slowly work on her gardening phobia. Hopefully, she'll evolve into the keen assistant to me, head gardener by the time that I retire in twenty five years or so.

I'm blinking rambling again -

No I never ever ever do a thing about the weather, because the weather never ever does a thing for me.

2009-01-30T10:31:00.001Z

Being English, I have a mild obsession with the weather. Have to say that I'm at odds as to what we can expect here for the next ten days.

On the weather front. One update, you are looking at two weeks of sunshine and cold but wind free days. (My favourite digging conditions) then on the very next forecast it changed to snow starting on Sunday which will drag and continue into the end of next week.

So you cross check this with the internet sites such as uk.weather, the BBC and weather.com to find that between them it says it might be sunny, or it could rain, or we may have snow, or just overcast with some fog. We have French television in our house so I also watch the Tv1's "Meteo" to gauge the weather in Calais, which is often more accurate than the UK forecasts for some reason.

Saturday seems to be the best shot for some decent digging weather. The rest of the week will be a rainy, sunny, snowy, foggy, dry, damp, windy, calm, bitter, mild one.

So wrap up warm, don’t forget the sun cream for the sunny bits, Chap Stick for the snowy/frosty bits and a torch to find your way home in the fog. Incredible!

Garden life - The elevator pitch

2009-01-20T13:06:00.008Z

Go figure? Last week my wife agreed that I could get a small, inexpensive polycarbonate green house for the garden, I was more excited when it arrived by courier the next day than when we took home a brand new BMW from the showroom a couple of years ago. That’s pretty weird by any accounts isn’t it? So I am asking myself the question why an aluminium frame with cheap plastic windows could do that?

I mean in my teenage years what I wanted changed every five minutes. Gardening was a chore you did to tap your parents up for some cash to go out somewhere. Gardens were for playing football, sneaky cigarettes and putting tents up in.

In my twenties I wanted a career path, to get on the housing ladder and to drive a nice car – the sort I bought would have been beyond my wildest dreams. Gardens were still a chore but you could enjoy social barbeques and the nice old couple would pop their heads over the fence and hand over a paper bag of home grown tomatoes and runner beans - Half went in the bin, not appreciating the care and attention that old Mr "whats-hisname" provided his plants to be able to give them to me.

In my thirties I have slowly woken up to the fact that I will not be a famous sports-star or the next Richard Branson - Infact I am pretty crap at most sports and I'd rather eat a dog shit sandwich than go to the gym.

I don’t know what made me apply for a plot, it just happened, I picked up the phone without really reading "The new Hype" or watching the endless celebrity chef's and household favourite gardeners programs - it just happened. It just so happened to be the best thing I did last year.

A lot of people won’t understand, fair enough, each to their own. In my pursuit of happiness I have found something that I am pretty good at, is dirt cheap (sorry), and allows me to spend quality time with my boys without the distractions of modern technology.

It's much healthier than watching somebody else do it on the idiot box, I'm fitter than I have been in ages without stepping into a gym or pounding a treadmill, and have experienced my first harvests - some good, others not so good. But the experience has been a wholly enjoyable one.

Maybe I'm just getting too much fresh air these days. Note to me: Stop ebaying gardening products.

Or Maybe when Barrack Obama takes over the Western world, it seems fitting that the most famous phrase from the United States Declaration of Independence rings true to me today . "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ".

- Now thats possibly what its all about, I could have picked up the fishing bug, or Golf, or bowling or hunting with rifles but this hobby clicked first and it makes me happy. Cars to me are things you use to get from A to B in. (And loading up the boot with well rotted Horse muck).

Mid January Plot Progress

2009-01-19T11:54:00.000Z

My new starter plot is slowly beginning to resemble a pile of dirt, which is exactly what I want it to look like, ready for the mass of spud planting I plan for March/April.

There are so many brambles on this new plot! I am having to alternate my digging styles to slowly clear the plot of this evil perennial weed and its good friends, the equally undesirable bell-bind and couch-grass.

I now remember exactly why I wasn't too fussed that I gave this third back to the Council when they said they had an oversubscribed waiting list. The oddball couple who took it over gave up without so much as clearing a metre but they did leave me several dozen empty cans of lager and wine to dispose of - bless them. So I decided to take it back on when their tenancy was terminated.

The rest of the plot is dug over composted/mucked/limed as and where it was needed, so I am ready of sorts for springs planting bonanza.

The new bit is around ten by ten yards. So far I have filled fifteen or more wheel barrows of the dreaded bramble roots, couch grass and bind weed roots and hidden them along an unused and overgrown border of the site, but that's only a third of my plot done. I have put some back breaking efforts in an attempt to level out this third. The bottom corner was sunken and the top part of it raised, so that by just walking the ten yards width the low point was half a yard lower than the highest point. Its still not flat by any means, but its a lot better. There's only so much topsoil you can move from the top end other wise my plot would level out at the point of the subsoil.

I have dug my fork in deep and turned the the middle thirds topsoil upside-down, removing some of the roots but not concentrating on this too much. I'm hoping that when I start re-digging this third that it will be much easier to separate the topsoil from the roots, so as to avoid removing too much precious soil as they are removed. Its seemed easier on a little bit I tested on Saturday.

Just like when I began last may, it looked like an impossible task. But every time I manage to get my trusty fork out I make a little dent, on Saturday I got the impression that progress was finally being made.

New years reading tragedy

2009-01-09T10:51:00.003Z

this year my parents bought me this book for Christmas.

I was really enjoying reading it on the way to and from work. Then on Wednesday evening as I was getting off the train at Leigh, it slipped out of my hands and fell down the gap and landed (opened) on the track. I watched in horror as the train began to move slowly. It thudded every couple of seconds as the wheels and several hundred tonnes of steel and passenger ran it over, then again, and again twenty or so more times until finally the train cleared the platform.

I jumped down and retrieved my gift. It was split in half and the pages on the second half of the book looked as though it had been passed through a shredder so I had to chuck it in the bin.

I was gutted. Will have to pop down to Waterstones and pick up another.

Saturday

2008-12-16T09:34:00.002Z

Crikey - My wife gave me a green card to go up to the plot the whole day on Saturday.
So I wrapped up, got Max ready and we made our way up to the plot.
It was freezing, soggy, windy and grim beyond words.
So we turned around and went home.
I ended up doing more chores around the house, my wifes an evil genius.

Sneaky Wednesday up the yard

2008-12-11T15:31:00.000Z

I had a rare day off from work yesterday.

Max was playing Shepherd number one in his schools Christmas nativity and I promised to be there for the big event. The play didn't begin until half past two in the afternoon so I was looking forward to several hours of allotment rearranging.

That plan was scuppered when I was handed a list of man-chores to complete by the Mrs.

So it was up at 6:30, drop her off at the station. Get home and feed, cloth, clean and taxi the kids to school and nursery. Shot up to the supermarket for dinner and to buy some energy saving light bulbs. Back home to sort out the mess I’ve made in the garage, fit the new light bulbs, rewire some plugs and finally at 10:30 I finished with a cup of tea and a slice of toast with a good inch of peanut butter.

Changed into my digging gear and made off with a flask of coffee.

It was a fantastic morning. Not a cloud in the sky and no wind. Its was cold - maybe three degrees and the air was so crisp but dry. Pockets of frost were clearly visible on the streets where the sun had not reached. The sun provided hazy lazy daylight and a pale moon was locked in the sky.

Upon arriving at the site I was happy to see somebody had left the gate unlocked. The old padlock may as well be made from dry ice it’s that cold. Our plot is long and I’m right up at the top which bugged me when I first started but now I know it was a blessing. The lower (entrance end) gets a lot of shade during the winter months and suffers from a long hard ground frost sometimes lasting all day. The plot is not flat either so all the rain water runs down and collects into the plots at the bottom, sometimes when you get unabated rainfall for days on end you end up with some of the worse positioned plots becoming submerged under water.

My plot is probably a good fifteen metres higher and probably four hundred metres from the entrance, there are no trees or buildings of any kind that can cast shadows but their is a wind breaker in the form of the sites mini Orchard and wildlife space which does a little good in stopping the winds from smashing up the hill.

I had a couple of jobs I really wanted to do. The first was to move the Compost bin onto the new plot and away from the shed. I haven’t seen any rats on my plot but I’ve heard they just love nesting under your shed and putting a compost pile which we recycle non cooked kitchen scraps is just asking for trouble. I was heavy. I managed to pull it onto its side and was about half way to its new position when a screw fell out, then another and finally the whole structure gave ant it just fell to pieces. On telling this to Trevor by mail today he came up with a "no Shit Sherlock comment that as a rough rule anything made of old pallets won't stand up to being moved - You heard it here first. Anyhow, lugging the pieces was a lot easier and now I have another job of rebuilding the compost bin.

It’s amazing how much junk you collect up the site. I know allotments are not a place where you take your shoes off to keep it clean but it was time to de-clutter and put things away and bunch stuff together to make the place well - more tidy.

I got to work collecting all the cane poles scattered about the place. Like any normal boy, Max loves doing kungfu/little John impressions with them and they end up everywhere.

There were maybe fifty or so empty bags from all the manure and compost that I have added. These all got tightly bunged into one bag; I'll give them back to the horse crap man so he can fill them up again. I also unloaded my last half a dozen full bags of muck onto an area I’ve been preparing for my potatoes next year

I have a lot of varying lengths of timber which I use for all kinds of allotment crafting from building raised beds to making frames to stop the pigeons becoming obese. All the wood was quickly piled up from the several smaller piles scattered around my plot.

Lastly I just went around for ten or so minutes bagging up empty cans of pop, Water bottles and odds n Sods which had piled up in my make shift bin to take home for the rubbish collector. There isn't a communal rubbish bin on site and you have to take it all home with you which is a bit of a pain in the neck.

Hardly what I would call spick and span, but as tidy as an allotment will ever be everything’s so wet and muddy at the moment so even when clean it kind of looks a mess.

The last time that I was over the plot I had begun to plot out the paths I will be making by using the timber to outline the growing spaces. I decided to make these more permanent so began digging trenches where the outlines were and sinking the timbers in at ground level. This took about an hour for each of the two large growing beds. By which time the sun had lifted the temperature a couple of degrees and what with all my digging and walking over the bare earth paths in the middle of my plot the paths began turning into slippy sloppy wallow which is exactly the reason I want to get them covered over next time with some membrane and a covering of chippings.

But there was no time for that. I had to shoot home and get showered up for the school nativity………

New plot = Aches and Pains

2008-11-24T22:07:00.000Z

I ache today, under my arms - which feel like lead weights. The back of my thighs are tight and niggles every time I get up and my necks a bit stiff.

I’m not complaining; it's the feeling you get when you have done honest days toil and it serves to remind me that this allotment lark can really keep you worked out, you just need to keep working at it and then It doesn’t hurt so much when you put in a mammoth session.

I was given the oldest rustiest petrol lawnmower by another plot holder who was buying a new one. It shakes rattles and rolls but the engine - A 4 stroke brigs and Stratton is a real battler as I found out putting it through its paces. I tackled the new plot which had weeds, brambles and all sorts waist high in places. This old machine was set to its highest level and I yanked it back and forth over the growth, then raked up and lowered the settings and did it again and again until the plot turned from hippy length to us marine crew-cut.

Max and I got a controlled fire going and we threw all the debris we had collected on top. It never really got a flame but it smoked and you could have baked some nice spuds in the centre.

The stripped plot is rutted and is maybe a foot (possibly more) higher on its left hand side than on the right. It has mounds and ruts which look to me like some kind of machinery piled up earth on one side when the plots were stripped in March this year using heavy duty plant tools.

I'm not going to use chemical warfare, roundup or machinery to prepare this land. I'll dig every last inch by hand and remove all the stones and roots. It’s going to hurt a lot more but on reflection, one of my favourite bits is the preparation.

I also dug over two existing beds (leaving the Sprouting Broccoli and leeks in peace) . They got a good mucking.

Max pulled the rest of the turnips. Is it normal for a six year old to be addicted to turnips?

I dug out every last strawberry plant and runner, gave it all a good turning over, mucked it and added compost. We put membrane over the top and replanted thirty of the biggest plants into holes we made in the membrane and gave the rest away to various plot holders.

Trevor gave me half a dozen cabbages to plant. But they will have to go in next week. By the time we finished we had been there since nine in the morning and it was getting dark.

My Empire Expands.

2008-11-21T14:52:00.002Z

I have been politely but persistently badgering the local council for several months in the hope of adding to my plot. Well after shed loads of calls, emails and finally a choice argument with the man who runs the show I have finally got another third/starter plot which completes a 10 rod strip.

10 rods is a pretty large area. I'd say it was the about the size of a public swimming pool. That’s about 2700 square foot or approximately 250 square metres.

The previous tenants were scumbag’s. I'm over the moon that they have been given their termination as I didn't like my kids having to see them. They would only occasionally turn up and waste no time in opening a bottle of lambrusco and several cans of lager. Shout at each other, roll around the ground a bit pulling out couch grass strand by strand, shout at their kids, open another bottle of lambrusco and several more tinnies and finally pack up the kids in their car pissed, and drive home, most likely via the off license to spend their benefits on cheap wine and craggy over strength lager. You would have had to have met them to fully appreciate the quality of scumbag I am talking about.

I felt sorry for the kids, they were both under ten and you could just see they were innocent enough but their dirty mouthed alcoholic parents were rubbing off on them - as I said poor kids.

As you can imagine the new third of my plot hasn't been cultivated and will present quite a challenge. If only I had it during the summer months I could have had a chance of doing something about it. Better late than never, now I will have a good go at it tomorrow as long as it doesn’t snow. I will be up at the crack of dawn wrapped up warm with a pot of coffee armed with an old lawn mower to cut it all down to size.

I'm going to use most if this new area for spuds next year. Borough Market in London sells heritage potatoes. Does anybody know if you can use market bought potatoes for seed? I'm aware that it’s not recommended but some of the varieties they sell are not readily available through seed suppliers and would like to give some of them a go. When should I buy them to begin the chitting process?

Better late than never.

2008-11-21T12:01:00.000Z

Seems that the allotment blogger’s are going into blog slumber!

It’s been a while for me since I last updated. Darkening evenings sadly mean its night time before I even think about leaving work these days.

Throw in the rain that’s guaranteed to start on Saturday morning and end on Sunday evening and a couple of weekends where I have had to work or couldn't get over the plot because of other commitments means I haven’t really been there very much at all.

I have managed few very quick vegetable raids. We made Cous cous which required turnips and celery so Max and I picked a bunch of them. All the celery has now been eaten; I love the stuff dripping with peanut butter.

I still have some calabrese which is sprouting here and there but it’s definitely on its last legs. The Brussels sprouts are ready now, as are the leeks and there’s still a load of Swede sitting happily. The sprouting broccoli is starting to spear and the some of the leeks are big enough now although I'm a bit disappointed with the size so will look at moving them and feeding them something to fatten them up for next year.

I popped over last night in the dark to get some winter salads - I’ve been growing radicchio and some green salad variety which looks like a gem as it hearts up nicely. I forget the name but they were great when we used them as a substitute for pancakes with crispy duck, the last of my cucumbers and hoi sin sauce. I'll be having a nice prawn cocktail with more of this on Sunday. I also picked the last of my headed cabbage. It was small and my wife laughed at it because it’s not going to feed the whole family so I'm thinking coleslaw and defrost some of our sweet corns with breaded chicken, in other words home made KFC.

Weather forecasts’ suggests near zero degrees tonight. Crikey!

Good Deed - Seed Saving

2008-10-23T09:18:00.000+01:00

Beanz

I'll never forget watching superman II as a kid and just before the baddies smash to earth stuck in a bit of double glazing there’s two southern cops talking about what they are going to eat.

One says "Beanz, Ah can't eat no Beanz, Come out in a rash if ah eat those beanz".

I must have been seven years old although I can't remember much else about the detail of that film that line will stay with me forever as every time I think of beans, that quote registers in my memory.

Beanz - I love em and have grown lots of beans this year.

In the tradition of seed saving I have dried or am in the process of preserving them for next years growing.

I have three varieties of Runners

Aintree
Polestar
Red Rum

Two climbing French beans of unknown name (They were kindly given to me from other plot members so will ask them to verify.

One French Dwarf.

Here’s a picture of some I’ve potted up for storage.

And another drying, I’ve used those sachets of silicon you get with new shoes to help draw out the moisture. They work a treat.

HELLO WORLD

2008-10-22T18:31:00.000+01:00

I recently added one of those web hit counters because I beleived I was speaking to myself, which would be mad, but then again im blogging about vegetables so I probably am, so there you go.

I have begun to get a few comments from people which is reassuring. To be honest I would blog anyhow because I quite like it but it is fun to get some feedback etc.

To my suprise I'm seeing a few from far flung destinations are visiting my blog.

Well I'd like to thank you for looking me up and please do leave a comment or if you blog yourself then let me know because Im a bit of a blog junkie these days too and love reading them.

Manic Sunday

2008-10-22T17:30:00.000+01:00

Sunday morning was a little hectic.

Steph and I put together a new bathroom cabinet which was a bit of a nightmare really.

Hundreds of screws and drill holes later we had finished the base unit but it had to be attached to the wall because it only had two legs for the front of the unit to stand on.

Another hour on and we finally finished that job and got cracking with some others.

I put a few pictures up in the bathroom and one of those swivel mirrors.

Then I fixed the TV cable in Max's bedroom and put up curtain poles and threaded his new curtains.

Tidied up and loaded the car with his old carpet and the old draws from the bathroom for the allotment.

After all the domestic chores were finished, I was given permission to pop over the plot for a couple of hours.

The old carpet won’t be used for a while so I dumped it in my gravelled raised bed which is empty at the moment as I'm not brining any plants on.

Then I redug over the bean area again removing even more bell bind roots. I emptied out a bag of manure and spread that over. Think I'm going to pant more onions in this little area. You can't have too many I guess.

After that I dug over the raised bed where the cucumbers and courgettes were and planted a packet of Sutton Broad beans. It said on the packet to wait for November. I personally can’t see a problem doing it now so in they went while I had the time and daylight on my side.

Railway Steve gave me a load of those ten litre plastic water bottles you get in Water dispensers. I sawed the end off these and placed them over some of my winter lettuces. I would need three times as many to cover all my plants but some are better than none.

I used these to cover half my peppers this year and there was a marked difference in the yields and plant growth between those left to the elements and those covered in these mini greenhouses. I’ve also seen Ralph had used those plastic mini tunnels to protect his peppers and chilli's with fantastic results so I will make some of those over the winter months in my garage.

hen I had finished doing that I moved onto the brassica's removing the yellowing leaves which should help reduce the possibility of disease or infection. Some of my sprouting broccoli has begun to produce small amounts of buds and the Calabrese continues to provide side shoots which in my opinion are better than the main head they cropped a few months back. I'm not sure how many more side shoots the Calibrese will provide or when to dig them out. There doesn’t seem to be much advise on this when I Google it. I'm wary of leaving them in for too much longer in-case they start to get infected with some brassica disease that may carry over to future crops so they may get composted shortly. I'm sure it won't harm to wait for another couple of meals worth and you cant seem to buy them at all so I'll keep an eye on them and if any of the Calibrese start to look iffy then I will shred the lot and compost them.

Last of all the jobs I had been putting off all day and for many weeks for that matter. The shed was in a right two and eight and something had to be done about it. So I pulled everything that was strewn across the floor and brushed down the floor which was covered in dried mud and dust. Then I got the drawers I'd brought over from the house and set about finding places for everything again. It only took about half an hour to get everything ship shape again. Doubt it will last though as I have a habit of throwing everything back into the shed before I leave for the day and the kids.........well don't even go there.

Roast chicken was on the menu so I picked some Brussels, dug some Parsnips, took the last of my cabbages and a larger swede before making my merry way home for some well earned grub.

LABP08 Festival

2008-10-20T16:58:00.000+01:00

I went to work on Saturday morning. Something I don’t like doing because weekends are reserved for family/fun time.....yeay......and keeping up with the household admin/chores......boooo....

What with the credit crunch and so many colleagues up shirtz creak I decided it was probably not a good time to try and get out of it and so I made my way into grey old London Town (actually the sun was out) at stupid o'clock in the morning to assist in the migration of several thousand trades from one platform to another and provide liquidity reports from our sub ledger. The good news is that it went positively and I got paid for it.

How much of that last paragraph does the average green fingered blog reader understand? and What has that got to do with allotmenteering.....Burger all, except that if I can convince my wife I wouldn't have had that extra cash if I hadn't been to work she may let me spend it towards a rotivator, and it won't disappear into the dreaded savings account where it will be saved up for the impending rainy days or Steph's next assault on Bluewater shopping Mall.

Saturday the 18th October marked Leigh Allotments Autumn Potato bake party. I made it up there with Max just an hour before they were to begin.

Lots of other plot holders had been collecting combustibles for the fire and the pile was pretty impressive. But nobody was there so we decided to take down our bean wigwam.

I managed to pull the canes from the ground and cut the string which bound them together. Max was on bean duty; he dutifully sat down and ripped them off the stalks making three tidy piles of beans, beanstalks and the odd bits of string.

I began digging up the overgrown the bean area, it had become quite weedy because the wigwam design doesn’t lend itself very well to easy weeding so I had pretty much just snapped the bell bind as it began twining up the canes to keep the growth down. There was a mass of bell bind roots which I knew would be there. It took a good three quarters of an hour to dig over and remove the majority of it which was a long time considering it was a little more than a metre squared.

Anyroads, by the time we had finished clearing up the beans into the compost heap several thousand people had arrived for the event of the year. Robbie William's had flown in from LA and was warming up his vocals for the "BP08" Baked potato festival.

The pyrotechnics team were setting up the laser display to be headed by Jean Michel Jacques no less.

Unfortunately we had to turn away 6960 people because we only had a few baked potatoes and not enough sausage rolls to go around. Robbie and the lights fantastic got lost somewhere in the departing masses so we were left with thirty or so plot holders, a few visitors and a rip roaring bonfire.

Still it was nice to catch up with several people I hadn't seen in a while and Max won a pair of Bart Simpson sunglasses in the Childs raffle so he was well chuffed. Everybody agreed that Robbie was infact a nob with a silent k anyhow. The baked potatoes looked suspiciously like supermarket bought but I didn't eat there anyhow as my lovely wife had cooked a special meal of monk fish and curried mussels with some of my home grown leeks and celeriac. YU-um

Dammit - Mouldy pumpkin

2008-10-20T11:58:00.000+01:00

The last of my pumpkin pickings had a couple of tiny little bites taken out of it over the plot a so I picked it and have had it on shelving in the garage.

I took a look at it last night and was disappointed to see that the fruit has begun to go bad. The two areas with the bite marks have dark bruising and the top has done a little brown and is soft to touch.

Such a shame as Max was going to take this one into school to carve it for Halloween. I can't give him the mouldy pumpkin for Halloween carving. It would make for an authentic living dead zombie pumpkin with ooze and flies buzzing around but I don’t think his mates would be too impressed though. So I'll do the right thing and keep the seed from my putrid fruit and cast the remains into the compost heap.

I have another, but that one is a picture of health even though it was picked several weeks before.

It’s a small hundred weight with a fantastic shape and I was really looking forward to trying a few recipes’ I've seen on vegbox. It's only fair I give him that one as he's been telling his school friends about his amazing pumpkin he's going to bring in. So no more home made pumpkin ravioli until next year.

Hmmmmm.

I've had another good clear out on the plot.

The cucumber finally got it. I had one last large gherkin sized fruit which went into the swag bag.

The two remaining courgette plants had half a dozen strange shaped fruits that were curly, thin at the stem but fat ended. They were begging to be picked so up they came.

The peppers under the large water bottle cloches were stripped off still green. The plants are not going to survive that long and something ate half of one last week so I'd rather have green peppers that half eaten or frost blackened ones.

My late peas provided forty or so pods. I really had no expectation of these at all given they went in so late.

Dug up several parsnips for Sunday’s dinner. I'm loving these and they just keep getting better.

Bagged the last couple of squashes. These will be for my little one Jenson, who loved them last time I was eating one he came over and practically ate half my dinner.

Lastly I pulled a celery for some crunchy peanut butter snacking with a glass of full fat milk. (Who said Celery had to be healthy)

With the exception of the peas which are flowering like crazy and hold loads of sugar snaps waiting to fatten, all the cucurbits were on their last legs so I ripped them all up, removed all the string and supports and threw them into my compost heap.

Summer crops are officially finished apart from the beans which are turning papery brown in their pods for storing. I'm going to tear them down on Sunday and dig over.

Quick visit

2008-10-03T09:46:00.000+01:00

Michael popped around my house yesterday afternoon. He's got a plot half way up/or down the site depending on which entrance you take. He's going to be doing a bit of painting and decorating for our living room.
After he'd taken a look at what we wanted hime to do we popped over the plot for twentry minutes.
He was going to get some beans but his like mine have pretty much gone past their best so he's going to let them fatten up and keep the seed now too.
I decided to cut my last pumkin. It had a couple of little bite marks on it, I think maybe a mouse or something had a go at it so I snipped it off. It not the biggest of pumpkins in the world but I have another at home so thats plenty.
I also cut a cabbage for tonights dinner. Only two left now that have hearts, I have another four but they wont be ready until spring :O(.
Mike was over planting out his overwintering onions with his wife. I gave him a bit of netting as his was a little short for what he needed. Then I pulled a Swede for Michael and we went home.

Changing seasons

2008-10-02T11:33:00.001+01:00

I don’t think I have previously appreciated the switch from summer to autumn like I am right now. This year it’s been all too apparent given all the time I now spend out side and the efforts I am putting into growing my own.

When you are an office worker it can sometimes go practically unnoticed until the day its gets a bit chilly and you put on a jacket for the first time, the heating may go on occasionally, the garden becomes something you can see from your back window but you rarely venture out there. You keep your head down only noticing he days like Halloween or Guy Fawkes Night, then onto Christmas.

This year I'm noticing the slow down in growth of plants, the shedding of leaves and the falling of fruit from trees. The birds are silent and the air becomes earthier as the flowers retreat. The mornings are darker and the evenings shorter. Too bloody short to pop over to the plot after dinner and the kids are tucked up for a couple of hours....grrrr...

Since the weekend I have been to the plot for a grand total of twenty minutes on Tuesday to check on the onions and garlic, which I'm happy to say, has, in the main part, begun to emerge quite nicely.

The place seemed different now though.

It was quiet and I was on my own which was unheard of a fortnight ago. Save the foxes which seemed over the moon to have finally reclaimed their playgrounds as they weaved in and amongst the paths, through the plots and into their dens of over grown brambles. Only stopping to stare at the intruder walking up to his plot.

At 18:20 PM, the sky was a heavy grey which was rapidly darkening as the night claimed the day.

Gone were the tomatoes ripening on the vines, what's left are those who left them to their blighted doom.

The runner beans are long, no doubt stringy and fat with their crimson beans. I bagged several fat pods for seed saving.

My Defender F1 courgettes which have served me so well are now down to two plants, I cropped another four before laying the ones in my raised beds to rest in the composter. Nobody is getting these courgettes mwwwwar, they are all mine, mine I tell you.

A quick check on the winters;

The Brussels sprouts are doing very well indeed. A couple more weeks I think then we can begin eating these.

The Caulis have enjoyed the extra rainfall and have doubled their leaf growth. A couple I planted in the summer are heading and will be taken home at the weekend.

The Parsnip growth isn't looking too bad at all. I've had a few already which where ok, but now want to let some frost get at them as it is supposed to improve their flavours.

Somehow I planted way too many Swedes. Neighbours and Friends beware, what else am I going to do with forty Swedes.

Two more cabbages are ready. These beauties are delish. I refuse to blanch and freeze them because I don’t like eating mush so we have eaten a lot of cabbage.

My last Pumpkin is no world beater. I would say the size of a basketball which is plenty enough especially as we have another sitting in our garage.

I had one decent sized squash; the skin has turned a creamy magnolia colour which must have meant it was time. So I bagged it up. There are three smaller fruits on the plant although I don't hold out much hope for them.

The Calabrese is hardly in Food Factory mode providing but it provides a side vegetable for a family of five once a week.

So that'll be Sunday sorted then. Meat and ten vegetables Allotment style.

Indian Summer in Essex

2008-09-30T15:50:00.000+01:00

It was a fantastic weekend in South East Essex, the mornings had a thick dew settled on the grass in my back garden and the sky was a picture perfect hazy blue without a cloud in sight. There was no wind either. My wife wants to decorate our living room so she set off early for the day to look at furniture shops and the like with our littlest one. I had Max for the day and he wanted to go up to the plot.

We took my mother in laws little Peugeot because I needed to get some manure from a scary old house up in Eastwood that sells the good stuff which is a couple of years old and cheap. Just 50p gets you a big sack of Shit. I crammed eight sacks into the boot and on the back seat "Sorry Belle mere". I'd never met the owner of the house before because you take what you need, and then pay on a trust basis by putting the change into his porch. But just as we was leaving today a silver haired guy in his sixties stopped to say hello that turned out to be the guy who sell's the manure. He told me he had loads and loads of it and would deliver if we wanted fifty bags or more at a time. That'll be useful in the future as it’s not really a good idea to load your car up with horse shit, especially when it’s not your own car.

We popped into the garden centre whilst in Eastwood where we found some found some radicchio and more purple sprouting broccoli - Yum; I'll have over two dozen of these for next spring.

Back in the car and over to the plot. On the way the radio the DJ was banging on about the Indian summer and how nice the weekend was, he got it all wrong with the Indian bit though as he was referring to India and how lucky all those Indians where.

In fact the Indian summer relates to the North American Indians who used the cooler but dry and hazy late summer months to harden of their squash and dry their beans and maize.

Over at the plot Max opened the gates and raced me to the top where our plot is, I followed up in the manure filled car very slowly so that he won - again!

There were a few children about and Max went to catch up with one of his friends.

I hadn't seen Keith for quite some time and he was there pottering around, we had a chat for a while. Keith had been to a local timber merchant where he buys up the seconds in decking for his raised beds. The merchant had a load of bits and bobs of wooden frames and the like which they delivered to the plot next to his. It was a free for all and I took several useful lengths to make netting cages. Gave Keith one of my Swedes for his Sunday roast and a packet of turnip seeds I had spare. Not sure if they will be any good this time of the year but he'll plant em any roads.

On to my plot and I thinned out my turnips a little more as the packet said one every ten centimetres or so, I have them at about every six to eight now so I will thin out once more when the time is right.

Then I Cut down a load of the strawberry growth and potted some of the runners. I may actually dig them all up and replant them in the same box but with the gardeners membrane spread about and holes cut into it for the plants, but not for now.

A few of the Garlic and onion sets had begun to sprout. Amazing considering I only planted them a week ago. These all got a good soaking and onto the beans which I am leaving on now for shelling and seed saving for casseroles and next years planting. Shirley grew way too many for her own needs and kindly gave me a bunch of beans for Sunday’s dinner.

Max and I planted out the Radicchio and we gave Shirley a couple of them to try. To be honest I have no Idea what its going to taste like so I will Google it and find some recipes that use it to get an Idea. We dug over the area and dumped two sacks of the manure into the area where three of my courgette plants have bit the dust, mixed it all up a bit and dug them in.

I'm down to just four courgette plants now and two of them are about to croak it. I will put them out of their misery once they have given me four last courgettes. It’s a bit sad really. I only have two left in the veg box and as much as we ate these this summer, we never once complained of having them three times a week.

The cucumbers seen better days too! There are two left on the vine so I fed the plant and keep it well watered in the hope they will grow larger than the gherkin size that they are at present.

We checked on the Squash and Pumpkin. The squash has been a little bit of a disappointment as we only have one decent sized fruit developed and a few little ones about the size of a can of pop but still green. The pumpkin has provided three basketball sized fruits. We ate one a month or so back. I knocked up Pumpkin Ravioli which totally destroyed my kitchen but was very nice and then I made soup with the other half which was lovely too. Another is on a shelf in my garage and the last one is on the vine.

We picked up some broccoli. I had harvested all the main Calabrese heads already but left the plants in which was a good idea because we now get lots of small spears appearing all the time. I don’t know why but one the purple sprouting broccoli’s has started budding too so we bagged this up for lunch.

The second batches of peas have a couple dozen pods forming and a load of flowers. I was giving these a soak when Bob and his wife came up to say hello. I showed Bob about the plot. He and his wife liked the sprouts and Swedes which made me happy because Bob's a bit of a farmer in my eyes. His wife (another Shirley) asked if it was not too late for the peas and salads I had shown them. I thought about this a moment and replied that it maybe but my expectations are now zero so If I have to dig up four mini lettuces for one meal or only manage one plate of peas from my entire row then I would be happy because I would have grown it.

Afternoon was becoming evening so we picked all the tools up and packed them into the shed. Took out the watering can and soaked the back of the plot with all the winter veg and made our way home for a sneaky Indian summer’s barbeque and the last of the courgettes.

Tour of my plot

2008-09-19T21:05:00.001+01:00

I remembered to pick up the camera at the weekend. Here's a few snaps of my plot over on Leigh on Sea Allotments in Essex. I would have taken more but the battery ran short so this is it for now. You should be able to click on the images to enlarge.

Up at the back of the plot I have a pumpkin and squash, two rows of calabrese (Broccoli), a row of celeriac, another row of celery and a couple of rows of leeks. The brocolli has been very tasty, my kids love it. Shame though as I have taken the first heads back to the house and the secondary headlings are not growing too quick. They will soon become compost fodder.

I haven't eaten any of the celeriac yet but the roots are fattening up nicely. I have only ever eaten this once on holiday in Italy this year and am really looking forward to digging some of this up for a lux mash.

One of my celeries was pinched last week, I hope it was a stringy one.

The leeks are growing nicely now after a slow start.

Here's one of the Raised beds in the middle of my plot.

At the back there you can see some runner beans loving the sun. If you look closely to the left of the beans you can see a sick looking plant, thats a salad I have left to bolt and hopefully I'll get some seed of that in a few weeks as its finished flowering.

In front of that I have a whole bunch of Swiss Chard. here are two varieties growing. My wife can't stand the stuff but I love it. It's gone down very well with the kids and work colleages too.

On the bottom right you can make out some broad beans. They are starting to rust in the picture. I pulled them out ten minutes later and bagged the last crop of beans for tonights dinner.

The empty spot in the bottom left was my beetroots which I pulled a couple of weeks back. The ones I havent eaten or given away have been pickled for christmas. I have planted some regular spinach in the void left by the beetroots and broadbeans.

Heres a snap from the front of the plot. They are making a site road next to my left, I'm not to fussed about the road but some twit keeps running over that raised bed with my salads in it.

As you can see I'm surrounded by unkempt plots. I'm not to fussed about the family behind me giving up because they made Wayne and Waynetta slob look like model citizens but It does p1ss me off a little when the council won't alow me to take on another plot due to the waiting list. "A load of twoddle if you ask me". They havent done anything to make these people clean up their mess and I'm having to maintain boundaries that aren't mine just to make it safe for my kids.

The courgette's are slowing down now. They have been amazing this year, a little too rampant for us to keep up with them for just our family. I have lost a couple of plants due to high winds and mildew in the last week but we still get enough, and a few extras for neighbors and friends. Here's a picture of one fattening up, it'll stay on there until I have managed to eat the dozen or so in the veg box at home.

My wife went to France a month or so to go shopping in Calais. She bought me whiskey, wine and some turnip seeds. What a gal.

Heres the onions, shallots and a row of garlic covered in a mulch of seaweed. not much to look at for the moment but this is going to provide all we need for the entire family if the pigeons don't keep pulling them out that is.

This Tyre looks like it came from a bus of some large vehicle. Its big and full of kitchen herbs. The gnome's named "grow-bag", he smells. Grow-bag's a right lazy sod - always sleeping off the night before.

I have two of these tyres found in an old unmaintained part of the site. They weighed a tonne when I found them as they, were filled with weeds, hardcore and topsoil. I like them mostly because they were free, they help contain evasive mint etc and they are pretty comfortable seats too.

I have another one I grow spicy salad/stir-fry leaves and I melon which is a healthy enough plant but hasn't done much except produce walnut size fruits before dropping them.

Some french beans ready for picking.

A late crop of peas, just beginning to flower tucked into the corner of my garlic bed.

Here's my brussell sprouts, a few weeds about around here I know but I have a job, wife and kids too you know so these little monsters have been spared.....For now at least. They are doing really well to though and some of the little cabbages are almost ready for the pan. We love sprouts so these are probably staying strictly in the family, even my wife has been asking if they are ready so they had better be good. A nice chap named gardener Pete gave them to me and I negleted them in their starter plugs for weeks so I hope it didn't stunt them too much.

Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Vampires beware

2008-09-19T12:25:00.000+01:00

Well All the Alliums are now in. Sunday morning was fantastic. There was little to no wind and the sun was shining

I began with the big strip I used for my potatoes and sweet corn. This area had been fully prepared a few days back and was ready for planting.

I drove several one foot long garden canes into the ground and doubled this up at the opposite end of the strip to make some rows. Then I searched the shed for about twenty minutes for my garden string. After twenty minutes of opening boxes and falling over stuff my son had left laying around I finally found it.

I tied the string to the corner cane and worked down then sideways to the next one and then up again. Repeated this until the end. I barely had enough to complete the job but it looked nice.

Using a bit of birch branch for a dibber, I whacked in the lot. A hundred and fifty onions, Fifty Shallots and thirty Garlic Cloves.

I didn't finish there either. I drove in another sixty garlic cloves into the raised beds that I had the tomatoes in.

I rinsed out and then threw all the seaweed over the top of these new plantings and spread it out as best I could, feathers, shells and all.

Luvvly Jubbly.

When I returned on Tuesday the seaweed had dried out and something had pulled out several of the bulbs. I replanted them where I could but now have half a dozen Garlic bulbs to plant but don’t know where they came from. I'll keep hold of them until I can see some growth and use them to plug the holes.

Ripping out the old and planting the new.

2008-09-16T17:06:00.000+01:00

The potato strip and corn bed were both empty. I re-dug them both over to a forks depth, removing any stones and the odd white weed and tuber. Breaking it up was really easy mainly due to the amount of compost and mulch I had been using when growing the potatoes and sweet corn. But also because potatoes are a good crop to naturally improve your soil too "so I read". When I had completed the digging I threw four bags of sharp sand over the top and then another four big sacks of composted manure over the top of the sand. This was all raked up and down the strip until it was well broken up.

With all the tomato plants cut out I got to work on those two raised beds. Each one was dug over. I only had one bag of the manure left so I threw that and half a bag of compost into one of the beds, I have a late row of peas growing in that one so was careful not to disturb them. The other one didn't look like I needed to put anything in so I just dug it over.

That done, the front of my plot looked a bit empty but it was nice to see it all tidy again. There’s something charming about a prepared area.

I had offered to look after our boys and some kids of friends of our on Saturday morning. We hit the park for an hour and then went down to Chalkwell beach. The kids had a great time and I bagged up several bin liners of seaweed to use for mulching.

The kids were picked up after lunch and I went over to a garden centre in Eastwood to have a look about. They had onion sets which are supposed to be more reliable than seeds and are earlier to harvest apparently. So I picked up the following;

50 Senshyu Yellow
A Japanese over-wintering variety, reliably producing a heavy crop of semi-globe-shaped, straw-coloured bulbs of excellent quality, which should be ready to harvest in early July. The young growth can also be used as Spring Onions

50 Radar
A very popular over-wintered onion which gives superb pale to mid brown skinned onions from mid July. The round bulbs have firm flesh with a delicious mild taste and will keep well until autumn. Green bulbs can be pulled from the garden from late May.

50 Red Electric
An Early harvesting red with excellent flavour. Produces a symmetrical, globed shaped bulb. Can be planted autumn or spring

50 Shallot Jermor
The very best for flavour, Jermor is a true French long type, bred in the southern Rhone valley. The copper skinned bulbs have a crisp, pink flesh, tinged white.

I also picked up a couple of salad plugs; I can’t remember the names right now so will update the blog when I have made a note of them.

We bought a load of Garlic in Provence on a holiday visit to a market in July and my parents brought some back with them from Spain. When we got home from the garden centre my eldest Max and I carefully peeled maybe a dozen of these into single cloves and bagged up the biggest cloves for planting out. I'm not sure of the names but they sure are big cloves. I had around eighty cloves in total and a load of spare bulbs to give away.

I popped over the the plot in the afternoon but had little time so I dumped the seaweed behind the shed and put the onions, shallots and Garlic into the shed for safe keeping.

I planted out the Salads into the Raised bed that had nothing added to it, handed out the spare Garlic bulbs to a few people who were up the site and went home.

Tomatoes – Cazaux’s Ten Commandments

2008-09-12T15:20:00.000+01:00

The tomato plants are now down to one Sungold and a couple of Alicante. The rest having been struck down by the blight or spent of fruit.

I’m going to chop these down this weekend too.

Still I have had it good for a first year and many lessons learned. Must have had several kilos of delicious tommies so I will use what I have learned next year to improve the soil, spacing and general growing conditions.

1) Tomato plants need a lot of support; they need a good solid foundation. Especially when the fruits set as I learnt "the hard way". Next year I will separate the bush and vine types. For the vines I will create a structure similar to a runner bean system with solid supports at the end and in the middle. Around this I intend to use canes and lots of string to get some tension into the structure. This has to be done before you plant them or your tomato plants will look like a game of kerplunk come harvest.

2) I got the spacing all wrong too. With twelve plants planted four by four I don’t think it let enough air circulate inside the foliage which presented a few problems. The first being the plants grew so thick in foliage that I couldn't get into them to keep the side shoots pinched out which seriously restricted the air flow. My plants also grew over, into and around each other. I'm sure I could have avoided the transition of blight if they had been more generously spaced out. Next year I will be using the P=30-36" R=30-36" recommendation. I may even give them a little more.

3) Don’t bother with Beefsteak - This ain't the Mediterranean and I'm growing outdoors. Who was I kidding?

4) Pre-prepare the ground incorporating plenty of organic material a few weeks before you intend to plant out. This wont is a problem as I have about a half a tonne of rotting compost and more, lots more, to come.

5) Investing in the adjustable plant ties is a good idea. I have them now. I began tying with bits of string and that plastic coated metal but they cut into the stems as the plants grew. Also know your central growing stem from the branches. I mistakenly tied up the wrong bit on a few plants.

6) Keep on top of the side shoot removal. I wasn't and I think this was half the problem with the contamination. I know how to do it now. Don't be afraid to remove trusts after the fifth has set. How many tomatoes can you reasonably expect from one plant anyhow? This does not apply to Sungold. Just let them keep going. Don’t rip the shoots out; they should be pinched out to avoid stem damage. You can remove the branches below the lowest trust and any non productive ones. They make great compost as long as they are not diseased.

7) Mulch the plants with grass cuttings, newspaper shredding and compost to retain moisture and encourage stronger root development. Thankfully I did this and it probably was he difference between the crop I managed to harvest and having nothing at all due to high winds that kept snapping the cane supports.

8) Feed Feed Feed - Make a nettle tea or comfrey or buy tomorite if you must. When watering or feeding you should avoid the foliage (especially in the evenings) as the leaves may stay wet all night which encourages disease.

9) Chemical Warfare (Optional) - Once the disease has appeared the plants should be sprayed with mancozeb (Bio Dithane 945). Copper fungicides (Bordeaux mixture, Murphy Traditional Copper Fungicide) can also be used, but tend to harden the foliage and are best applied later in the season. Neither mancozeb nor copper is labelled for leaf mould control, but both are labelled for control of tomato blight, and if used as directed for this disease should give some control.

10) If the plant continues to deteriorate, destroy it before it spreads. You still have other plants, don’t become attached to them. They are not pets. You will not go to tomato hell. Encourage other plot holders to do the same. Too many lazy buggers on site who have left their rotting festering plants to keel over brought this problem about in the first place.

Ahoy me Blighty

2008-09-09T14:30:00.000+01:00

It’s such a shame about the UK Weather. Tomatoes have finally shown blight.

“A small miracle it’s only just happened really considering the downpours we've had the last month”. I'm lucky enough to live in one of the drier parts of the country. Still looking out of my window you would not think it was. Until of course you read the paper or watch the news and thank the gnomes that its not too bad here compared to the rest of these isles.

I have lost a beefsteak plant to blight completely. All the stems where blackening, the leaves mottled and the fruits had decided to rot. So this year’s beefsteak harvest was two (Which I ate, in my shed, while dodging another downpour). I cut the beefsteak plant at the base and hurled it rotten tommies and all into the non compostable bin. They will go into the household rubbish. Don’t want to put them in the recycling bags as I figure they may end up somebody else’s blightened compost if I do that. It’s a shame about the beefsteaks as this was the variety my wife was most interested in to make those "tomato au farce" which are so popular in France.

It’s not all bad though.

The other plants have had little damage so far and I have been careful in removing any foliage that looked suspect as soon as I have seen it. I have also removed any baby fruits now not as I'm sure that even if the blight does not take hold they are stopping the sized fruits from ripening. They are still being fed the nettle tea I made a couple of times a week even if it is raining all the time.

I have had a couple of kilos of the little sun gold cherries which are like sweets without the conscience. I used a bag of them last week to make a fresh pasta sauce with one of my onions, a couple of cloves of the Provencal garlic and basil from my planted herbs. The sauce went really well with the homemade pumpkin ravioli. Its not a difficult dinner technically but time consuming with the pasta making and rolling, the pumpkin roasting and filling preparation, the cutting out and all the washing up it made. I had no complaints when it came to the eating so I was happy.

Another half kilo of them went to work which I put into a bowl for people to snack on.

The rest are on the kitchen windowsill waiting to be munched.

The Alicante variety has been fantastic. They are a good size. Very tasty as they are, in salads and were used in the chicken dinner the other night.

Being a little a little over cautious maybe, I have been cropping them when they start to turn pink and then finishing them off outside on a covered window ledge by my garage.

Wheres the sunlight gone

2008-09-08T21:13:00.000+01:00

Crap, the Summers over isn't it

I came home from work today and sat down to one of my favourite dinners. Poulet Basques which homes from the deepest corners of the South West of France. A place where they regularly burn Estate Agents but know a thing or two about food.

Ingredients : fresh chicken with giblets weighing about 1.5kg cut into 8 pieces
225gm pork chops cut into small chunks
25 gm butter
olive oil
900 gm fresh ripe tomatoes skinned and quartered (from the allotment if you haven't been struck down by the bloody blight)
2 lrg green peppers de-seeded and cut into strips
225gm Wild mushrooms. (From the forests unless you know little about fungus then its probably best to buy from them)
150ml chicken stock
3 cloves of garlic crushed
some Thyme
Salt n pepper

Method : Preheat oven to gas mark 6 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Heat the butter and the oil together in a large flameproof casserole. When it is hot saute the pieces of chicken and pork together until they are golden. Do this in 2 batches if there isn't enough room. Pour off the excess fat then return the first batch to the casserole and add the stock garlic thyme salt and freshly milled black pepper to taste. Bring everything to simmering point then transfer the casserole to the oven cover with a lid and cook for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes add the tomatoes peppers and mushrooms to the casserole and cook for a further 40 minutes reducing the heat to gas mark 4 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

Like all food. This is good served with whiskey or large quantities of Ricard.

Any roads, after dinner I popped over the plot to pick some beans for tomorrow.

I took the spot light to avoid standing in Fox Shit.

Whilst the beans were looking handsome probably because of all the sewage openly floating around England, some t@sser had taken my Marrows and pinched half my sweetcorn.

I'm in a foul mood....

Caz

Stringy Beans

2008-09-08T16:58:00.001+01:00

My parents stayed with us a couple of weeks back. On their last day we had a Sunday Roast.

The joint was a fantastic Rib roast of beef. Twenty six quids English pounds of organically reared South country beef rib roast from Waitrose.

It was sealed in flour, pepper, cracked mustard, celery salts and other bits and bobs I felt like throwing into my pestle at the time.

This was the first time I have amassed enough veg from the plot for the entire dinner.

We had a Courgette roasted in olive oil and seasoned (Marrow sized).
A Cauliflower and blanched Cabbage.
Roasted Marris Peers
French beans and Runners

Every thing except the runners was really tasty. I hadn't a clue how to prepare them so I hadn't chopped the stringy bits off.

After telling Shirley this she surprised me with a gift of a bean shredder, it basically removes the stringy bit and slices em up into thin strips in one go. I had the demo and it looks like it will do the job nicely. I dug up a Swede as a thank you. Swede is one of my favourite veg and mine are fantastic.

Souper hero's

2008-09-08T16:17:00.000+01:00

A couple of photos of my boys;

Squash head.

and his loyal sidekick "The Courgette crusader".

UFO - Unidentified Foraging Object.

2008-09-08T13:36:00.001+01:00

Can anybody tell me what this unidentified mushroom may be?

I had looked through my book and searched t'internet but have come up with no conclusive identifiation.

Found in forest/woodlands in South east Essex on September 6, 2008.

Habitat: Oak and chestnut trees around. Growing on soil covered with your standard braken and leafmold

Has mottled top side a bit like tiger bread. Underside had a spongey greeny orange colour.

Smells like....erm a mushroom.
I found several of them about twenty metres from a small trickle stream that runs through the woods. They were not anywhere else.

Quite a few of then had bitemarks taken out of them. Not sure if it was the slug or the foxes but I didnt see any foxes climbing trees or white gloved badgers doing big box little box so if anybody can help me I would be most appreciative before I try licking one.

Quite a few of then had bitemarks taken out of them. Not sure if it was the slug or the foxes but I didnt see any foxes climbing trees or any white gloved badgers with a whistle doing big box little box so if anybody can help me I would be most appreciative before I try licking one.

Jungle Fever

2008-09-04T08:50:00.000+01:00

The long drive home from our holidays really zapped me. After spending so much time on the motorways we arrive home on Saturday the 2nd August in the evening. I needed to stretch my legs so thought I would pop over just for two minutes mind to the plot.
Bob was at the gates. He had offered to do a bit of watering while I was away and I thanked him. He told me that he'd helped himself to a few courgettes while I was away. No problem I said.

Michael's kids came running down the hill. "We've been watering your plot while you was away" Thanks kids. We had some courgettes said Grace.

I kept walking up and bumped into Shirley. Ooh she said. Ive been watering your plot for you, Its been really hot over here. By the way, I've had a few courgettes.

Although they were not all up the site I later found that Keith, Mick, James, Trevor, Eugine and Mark all said the same. They had all watered my plot and all of them had helped themselves to a few courgettes.

So as I walked the last 30 metres to my plot I thought I would be three foot under water and have several spent courgette plants.

I was wrong again. The place looked like a tropical Jungle. The corn had grown to six foot. The beans had twined around the cane supports and were nearly reaching the tops. Tomato plants were laden with fluorescent fruits, some of the sun golds where beginning to ripen but they had also got so heavy they they had snapped their support canes and I was going to have a job on in fixing them up. The beautiful potato plants had all fallen over - I thought this meant they were dying. The cabbages where perfect specimens the size of bowling balls. My eyes bulged with amazement.

Sadly half of my caulis had bolted, these we going to have to be composted.
At the back of the plot I could not really see much for all the weeds. I was going to have to sort this out asap.

The biggest surprise of all though was those damn courgette plants. I was wrong again about having none left. but these weren't courgettes - these were blinking marrows. Chris had been cutting them to keep the plants producing and they were layed out in a row. Twenty or so, huge! On every plant there was still more growing by the second.
I packed these up into a couple of builders bags I had from some split compost bags I had bought. They weighed a tonne. Well not quite but after nearly breaking my back dragging them back home I weighed them in at 42 kilos. That's about six stone I think.

Holidays are great aren't they!

2008-09-03T16:46:00.000+01:00

Quality time to spend with you family is really quite precious in this hectic age of ours. Italian Ice-cream - Simply one of mankind’s best creations! We went to Tuscany for a week and then onto Provence in the south of France. The car journey was long but we had plenty of breaks and the kids had the portable DVD player in the back for distraction.

We visited San Giminiano, Sienna and Como. I adore the North of Italy. There was a Market in Como where I found a stall selling Bortolli Bean Seed. Naturally I bagged some.

The second week in Opio Provence was great too. I picked up a couple of kilos of fat garlic. No idea what the name was but thought it would be nice to plant some and hand some out to the people on the allotment.

Two weeks just never seems long enough.

I dreamed of the allotment the first three nights wondering what state it would be in when I got back.........After a week it was all but forgotten. Holidays are great aren't they!

Can we drag the UK over the the left of Italy. Theres a big gap there. Im sure we could fit.

Courgette Bonanza

2008-09-03T15:06:00.000+01:00

I didn't think it was humanly possibly to grow too many courgettes. We are a family who love em on the barbeque seasoned and oiled, my mother in laws ratatouille is to die for. They bake well, soup and sauce well.

Well I was wrong.

Not at the beginning mind you. I watched impatiently as the first flowers developed. Then to my great excitement the odd fruit became finger sized. And then rotted.

More came, More Rotted. Something was wrong. I was disheartened to say the least.

I removed the mulch of manure and replaced with a mixture of compost, sand and grass cuttings.

Bob showed me how to "Sex em up" as he called it. Bob's a left handed, slightly dyslexic East ender who moved out just like me. Double plot - old school - no boxes. Bob also gets on really well with Michael but loves ribbing him about his girly boxed plot. (I like Michaels plot by the way) he's got fruit trees.

Any roads I’m off track so - "We sexed em up real well” this involves pulling off a male flower, ripping off the petals and what you have left on the stalk is the flower equivalent of the erhem Harris. Then you gently pull open the female flower (the one with the fruit) and give it a jolly good jab with the male.

In doing so I created a monster, several of them.

The plants kicked into Food Factory mode almost over night.

I was picking them in the evenings. Every four days each plant the planned would provide beautiful small fruits with the most amazing flowers, taking them home and showing the family my perfect specimens. We were happy to add these to our daily meals.

But then they changed gear and each plant (Yes I planted several of them) had between two courgettes pumping out every four days.

Then I read some growing guide about courgettes and it suggested feeding them every couple of weeks with a standard tomato feed.

Can't do any harm I thought so in went one cap full as recommended and one for luck.

The next week I took home thirty four courgettes. No sooner had I picked them the next set would start to jump into action, the plant would grow a couple of inches, set new leaves and several new flowers would form. They all but gave up producing male flowers after that and I have not looked back.

Neighbours started getting courgettes, fellow allotment holders, family, friends and work colleagues. I was walking home one day and was waiting for the traffic to provide the gap I needed to cross the road. "Nice Courgettes" said an elderly gentleman on a mobility scooter. He had the lot.

It wasn't that we weren't eating any ourselves. On no. If you are what you eat my entire family should have been British racing green. We were off on Holiday towards the end of July and I was damned if they were going in the compost bin.

I had begun taking home the larger broad beans too now along with cabbage and caulis. The potato plants were beautiful with purple and white flowers. The herb bed had filled out. Salads were coming into their own and being welcomed by the family. The French dwarf beans were being picked young. The runners were running. The beats were swelling.

I felt like a proper farmer I did.

Managed to keep on top of the courgettes and handed them out to various victims the Friday before we went on our family holiday.

Breathing, living and a lot of planting Early July

2008-09-03T12:01:00.000+01:00

Isn’t there a saying along the lines of if you are lonely get a dog, if you want to be truly happy get a garden?

My garden belongs to my children but the allotment, well that’s all mine. Since getting my plot I have become quite attached to it.

Breathing is a pleasure over there, the air in London is rotten by comparison. On site you can take in the sea air which rolls up from the Estuary - mixed in to that the perfumes of sweet peas, wild flowers and thousands of fresh plants.

I love being the first to get there on the weekend mornings so as to have the place for myself for a while before you hear the gates grate open down the bottom and people begin to trickle in.

The exercise has put me back into shape; I’m always on the move doing something or another. I hardly watch the telly; it’s an utter waste of time when I do.

It’s true what other blogger’s have said. It’s a place where you generally get the best out of people. Kindness community and respect are in abundance. Although sometimes you want that precious hour or so to do something, even if it’s just to clear your head from the shit day you’ve had at work and it takes you forty-five minutes to reach your plot because everyone and his dog or cat wants a bit of banter. I still haven’t worked out the technique of waving or nodding and moving on and because I’m a generally a chatty kind of fellow I know I probably cut into peoples golden hour by engaging them sometimes too.

My kids love coming over although. The site has a lot of parents who bring their children and they soon group up and explore the wild garden and orchard. There’s a small frog pond which my boys really like. The place feels safe and I’m happy to let them walk about just as long as they are well mannered and report back every so often. I have had lots of compliments on their behaviour, which makes me a proud dad.

Onto the food front; well everything is looking fantastic. I finally reached the back of my plot and planted two rows of calabrese, two rows of leeks and right at the back I have a pumpkin and squash.

To the other corner at the back I had been given an abundance of freebies. Two further rows of Leeks went in. Some more courgette and marrow plants were dug in. Brussels sprouts, Broccoli and Swede.

I have three sweet pepper plants and two aubergines.

Phew.

It seems the spell checker is not a fan of calabrese.

Marcus Golding

Stuck in the Mud June.

2008-09-02T14:21:00.000+01:00

During Mid June it seemed as though we were destined for a fantastic summer. Two weeks had passed without any rain of note, everything was growing nicely, the courgette plants and tomatoes were showing their first flowers. The potatoes had shown their first signs of haulm and I was busy preparing the area for the carrots and parsnips. I had been given a tray of Swede and some purple broccoli so had busied myself with watering, weeding and digging over a new part of the plot to accommodate these lovely gifts.

I had just about managed to plant these tasty goodies when the skies opened..........and they stayed open........
Several days of continued rain put the skids on the digging front but being the supercharged newbie that I was I would venture over at the moment the rain stopped long enough for me to do something constructive.

It was on one of these gaps in the deluge that I had the bright idea to take up the household composting materials in the little Peugeot I have. But no sooner than I had emptied the bags into the composter it started to bolt down again. I ran back to the car and revved the engine and was off.....for about two metres.......then the car stopped.......and sank.

I had to go home and bring reinforcements. My wife and mother in law came with me but no amount of my mother in laws revving while I pushed would budge it. In fact, it sank further.

Sooty soaked passed us, saw the situation and seemed to mock our attempts

So back to the house to find a rope. But all I could find was telephone cable. I braided this until it was several times in depth and tied the Peugeot to the other motor. The cable snapped and with it my patience. Thirty minutes later the rain had stopped but my rant had not.

This is when I met Eugene. He came strolling up the allotment as my wife was in her way to halford to buy us some proper rope. Eugene saw our desperation and came to the rescue by digging out some rope from his plot. Thankfully the rope held and the car was free.

An important lesson was learned that night and I will only ever venture up the plot if the ground is dry and even then only if I really really need to take it with me.

Two nights later I was up the plot again (by foot) and I could here Eugene chuckling to himself. Somebody else had got stuck in the mud. This time it was my turn to help so I scooted home and picked up the beast and the newly purchased tow rope. We freed the van from the rut and had the thanks of Michael. Michael was left to reverse the rest of the way down the plot and we thought he had gone. But he had only managed forty or so metres and had done it again so we got him out a second time.

Michael, Eugene and I still laugh at this. You live and learn.

Shaping up

2008-09-02T13:15:00.000+01:00

Cabbages & Cauliflowers went into my third and fourth beds respectively. A thin line of Florence fennel accompanied the Caulis. In amongst the Cabbage and tomato plants went a load of tine salads which my eldest had carefully planted.

I dug out (For the third time) a narrow strip of just shy of 2 metres by 5 metres. This was then supplemented with several bags of Wicks compost. Narrow trenches were cut into the strip width ways and my son and I plonked a load of Marris Peer seeds into the trenches before filling them back up.

There was still a gap left at the end as I only had enough for about three metres so in the gap we tightly planted the sweet corn we had raised a few weeks earlier and constructed a wigwam for the beans.

I had got to know quite a few more people by now. A couple named Barbara and Allen gave me more bean plants and so I returned the favour this time by donating some of the Swiss chard we had raised and some potato seed.

All the beans from home and the freebies were planted against the wigwam.

The tomatoes where putting on a good amount of growth so the support was changed to two foot canes and they where tied in. Barbara showed me how to keep them in check and half the plants seemed to disappear as we removed the side shoots. She also pointed out that I had tied in some of the branches instead of the central growth. Still they didn’t look too bad to me. And I was happy with the flowering.

Another two boxes were constructed and into on went four Defender F1 Courgette plants and a Spanish cucumber plant in the middle (Thanks again Barbara). Into the other went a dozen or so Strawberry plants.

We had a couple of deliveries where we could help ourselves to free fresh manure and the builders palates that everyone seems happy to use in constructing the must have compost pile.

I already had a small compost bin that I had salvaged together from an old broken plastic jobby. We have been collecting all the organic kitchen waste, garden cuttings and I have been collecting up all the free news papers that are handed out in London whilst at work. The bin was getting full so I would have to make something bigger shortly.

Three more beds where constructed. Into one went the beetroots, more salads, a bunch of radishes and the Chard. Into the next went some spring onions with the intention of growing more cabbage and caulis. The final one was lined with gardener’s membrane and filled with pebbles. The intention is to build this area into cold frame beds.

I stepped onto the bathroom scales. I had lost six kilos in weight in as many weeks. For the first time in a couple of years I noticed that my face had thinned out and I comfortable got into a pair of jeans I had never really felt like wearing because the tummy bulge meant the jeans got pushed down below the bulge and then the jean bottoms always got caught under my shoes as a walked. Stick that on your running machine LA fitness.

Not only that - everything on the plot was growing nicely and I could see the transformation taking place.

A Small Miracle - Bleedin thousands of em

2008-09-02T12:00:00.001+01:00

I had mentioned earlier that I had planted out some seed of my own into the starter plugs. Well on a fine Sunny Saturday at the beginning of June we sat on the lawn of the back garden and did just that with my elder son.

We peeled the green plastic trays apart and filled each compartment with the expensive potting compost.

The packets of seed that we had collected were a mixture of things we either really wanted to eat or took our fancy when we had scanned the seed sections at a couple of local garden centres.

In went a packet of sweet corn. My boy was good at this one. Big seeds one per pot...No problem.
Then Swiss Chard described by some as Spinach on Steroids, some green hearting Salads, a pack of French Dwarf beans, Parsnip seeds thinly and Beetroots.

Finally I had a pack of a thousand carrot seeds. We opened the packet and started drilling three to four seeds in each tiny pug. Then the phone rang and so I left my boy to carry on while I spoke to some Bangalore call centre from npower or some other company. I don’t know how you handle these calls but I like to let them speak, go through their pitch, get them to explain things in great detail so as to make the call last for 20 minutes or more and then say you're not interested. Put the phone down and break into an evil laugh.

My boy was in the garden drowning one of the seed trays with a 10 litre watering can. "I’ve finished the Carrots dad" hmmmmmm..... He had upped the number of seeds per plug by a few hundred each. You gotta love a six year old.

Back to the Future May 2008

2008-09-02T09:06:00.000+01:00

I'm backtracking somewhat to bring my diary back up to date.

As I have mentioned. May was mainly digging, sifting and building the shed.

I also began to feverishly plant seeds into trays, and because it is my first season I have cheated slightly and purchased some plug plants to help me along.

I decided on a mixture of raised beds and direct planting. The first four raised beds I made were squares of 1.6m. The frames where built on the grassy paths that run both sides of my plot. These were then heaved into place, battened down and levelled as well as I could. Each box was then supplemented with three 90 litre bags of wicks compost which I found to be the cheapest I could find at four bags for a tenner. The compost was then dug into the boxes to mix with the topsoil I had cultivated.

I planted three varieties of tomato plants; these were Alicante, Sun gold, and beefsteak. Tiny little plants staked to the flimsiest foot long cane supports you can buy at your local garden centre.

Into the next bed went some broad bean seed. I could not recall ever eating these before. A quick internet search told me they were highly regarded by some when young and have a history of some 6000 plus years of cultivation.

Being the new kid on the block meant meeting lots of other people. I had been working flat out for weeks during every moment of my spare time and my beginner’s enthusiasm was being noticed by "the others".

First there was Shirley. She turned out to be the Allotment society’s financial representative. Shirley has been on the site and her father before her for decades. She looks after an adopted cat named Sooty. The cat lives on the site and when every body had left in the evenings and I toiled away until the light faded I would often see Sooty with a prize field mouse or whatnot.

I met Keith who had begun at the beginning of the year. He has a half plot with raised beds and had done exceptionally well. With his salads, cabbages, potatoes and everything clearly well established I was impressed with his efforts. Keith gave me a paper bag with some dried peas in which I accepted gratefully. My first gift. Planted into the bed next to the broad beans that very same Day.

The good Fight

2008-09-01T16:54:00.000+01:00

♫ Dig, dig, dig goes the shovel.

♫ Fork, fork, fork goes the….er fork.

♫ Tap, Tap, Tap goes the h – h – h- hammer.

♫ Have a beer, Tidy up, Shut the gates.

The weeds declared me a tyrant as I swept through my land cleansing it of unwanted tribes.

I murdered the couch grass, slaughtered the brambles and snapped the necks off the bind weed and hacked it back to it mother root and char grilled her for good measure.

They gave nearly as well as they got with their cunning operation Annie Lennox.

The rake deserted me – Just as well I said, I don’t want anybody on my team who is not 110% committed.

During one rain swept Sunday, fortifications went up in the form of a B&Q shed. Then I dug in on the one time nettle strong hold and posted my allied forces, Tomatoes.

The Adventure Begins

2008-06-25T14:09:00.000+01:00

At the ripe old age of thirty three I have had more than a few ribbings from the city boys and girls at work when I tell them I recently took over an allotment.
You see I am a city boy too. Born, work, breathing in but now commuting from the Las Vegas of Essex - Sarfend on Sea.

You will never hear me put our great capital city down either. I love London with all its history, commerce, pace, wealth and energy which draws in its millions of young vibrant subjects from around the globe "and Essex" striving to succeed in the arts and commerce. I am extremely proud to be part of this.

So you may wonder why somebody like me would have wanted a patch of dirt not turned over since the days when Anglo Saxons of Prittlewell inhabited the lands. Covered in brambles and weeds with tree roots as thick as a Halfords customised exhaust pipe "Much loved by the local boy racers". The clay earth so caked from heavy machinery ripping through the overgrowth that it would give a pneumatic drill a run for its money. Full of half buried treasures like fence posts, barbed wire, mesh, glass fragments and London bricks.

My reasons where simple, with weight gain being right at the very top the pile. Working long hours staring at a screen, drinking beer on all the social nights out, watching too much of the idiot box on the evenings in and trying to be the best FIFA 2007 player in the world on the PS3 far too long all contributed to me becoming what is commonly known as a fat arse. I hate the Gym, I'm in the bottom half of below average at football. The swimming pool is always full of screaming oiks and you can never do lanes.

I do enjoy trying not to kill green things with some success in the garden. Apart from applying five years of grass feed in one go a couple of years back turning our lovely green garden into a scorched death patch for the rest of the year I have had many a happy day cutting, chopping and planting in our little garden. Having two sons though means they need their play space and cultivating anything in the garden short of the few borders and shrubs we have would take valuable playing space away from them which wasn't an option.

Spending time with the boys where you can really communicate with them and teach them to listen and learn is really important. So a combination of several reasons brought me to the romantic notion of contacting the local council and signing up for project Lotty in April 2008.
So on the Friday of May 11th 2008 when I got the calling to say I had a chance to take on an allotment it dawned on me that there would be blood. On Saturday I armed myself with a book on the subject at hand and bought half the seeds at Homebase. Sunday morning came I took my six year old over to the plot equipped with a wheelbarrow salvaged from a skip which went sideways. Loaded into the wonky wheelbarrow went the fork, spade, a rake, two cans of diet coke and a huge sheet of tarpaulin.

The adventure began.........