Mr Potato Head

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.