growing from seed

It's been a long hard winter, but it seems like there is now a light at the end of this long damp tunnel. We've now had several days where that large bright orb has appeared in the sky.

I really felt like we were all groping our way around the surface of the earth with our eyes blinded from glare - hands out pumping the air - exclaiming "too bright! too bright! what is it?" as we emerged from our caves of darkness.

Yes, I do hate winter in England THAT much. And as we've not had a good summer in - is it 3 years now? - I think we are owed one this year. 

So it's now march, and it's time to clear the dead tomato plants out of my greenhouse, reshelve the grow box and plant my seedlings along the conservatory window sill.

I didn't do a seed order at the end of last year. That was a combination of not having time, and not needing too many new varieties. I had a lot of left over seeds, and I also had a lot of my own harvested and dried seeds. 

I was particularly proud of my runner beans. I don't like them... I don't like to eat them - and yet I grew them. So I let them all dry on the supports, then I harvested them and popped out the gorgeous seeds. Black and purple seeds - really pretty. I took a photo of how beautiful they were, and decided I'd probably give them away.

Then I foolishly packed them away and forgot about them.

Fast forward a few months. I took out my seeds and inspected them.

My beautiful purple seeds are infested with bean weevils. They've made horrible little holes in each one of the shiny and opulent beans. I sadly divided them up and separated the good seeds from the bad ones. Then I put the good ones away again.

God, I am so stupid!

I've just looked at them again, and they are totally ruined. There must have been a few undetected bean weevils in the pile of good beans. What I have now is utter desolation!

So. No runner beans from THAT batch! Well - maybe just one. For some reason there has been a runner bean sitting on my bedside table for 3 months. It's now beankinds last great hope!

But we move on!

At the end of last growing season, I sowed green manures on several of my plots. I used winter tares, field beans and hungarian rye. Then I didn't go back down to the allotement for - oh - 3 months? Whoops!

My Father-in-law opted to do some digging a few weeks ago while the rest of us went to Bluewater to go shopping. I took him down to see the lay of the land and tell him what he could dig. I was very worried about what I might find!

Luckily, everything was pretty tickity boo. The field beans had been the least successful, but the other green manure had nicely covered the area. He was able to start digging them in for me.

He only got one row done, because the ground was SO sodden that each forkful he tried to turn came up clinging to the tines. The claying ground was so heavy that it was far too hard for him to dig it over. But it was a great start.

I really need now to get off my behind, and get the rest of it going. We've had clear weather for over a week now, and with any luck the ground will have dried out enough for digging.

So, next task - adjust my plot rotation grid and print out this year's fun filled vege fiesta!

Not long ago I took possession of my very own veg-table, which is a raised vegetable bed on legs. It's the brainchild of one of my clients - Veg-Table ltd, and after doing the website for them they let me have one to play with. It was one of those designer/client relationships that just works perfectly, since l just love to get down and dirty with the onions.

But since it was October when I got it, I was slightly at a loss as to what I could stuff it with over winter. The cat decided it made a great hidey hole, but knowing that he's only interested in something for about 2 days in the first place, I knew that it wasn't a good investment to use it as a cat house.

The veg-table sat in the backyard so long that I had to keep dragging it around to stop it killing the grass. As it was, I made 4 little marks in several places when I didn't move it often enough.

There isn't a lot that wants to grow over the cold months, but there are a few things that might be successful, so I decided to try growing shallots and potatoes. These things could be destined to fail, since the potatoes are the leftover ones from chitting that didn't fit into the allotment and have been sitting in the shed since June, and the shallots should have been planted in May, and got left on the shelf until they  started growing by themselves. 

I picked the potatoes up from the allotment, there were now only about 6 of them. The mystery guest who has taken up living in shed had eaten the other 16 of them. The mystery guest has also been leaving a really horrid pissing smell in there too, so I guess I need to take steps to evict him. But anyway, that's a job for another time. I saved the last potatoes to plant in the veg-table. 

I also found some old garlic cloves that I'd gathered from a previous crop, so I tossed them in as well. 

The cat approves of the finished result - he was delighted to see what was previously an interesting cat house is now a giant toilet. So clearly a cover was required! I managed to find an old and rotting trellis to use, so now he's sitting on top of it, while the cross-struts snap one by one under his weight.

A visit to the allotment discovered that the old pea patch was now growing new pea plants throught the pile of turned dirt and old plants. So I decided to liberate them and see what happens. I've now added them to the veg-table as well, and am wondering if I need to construct a cloche over the top. The pea plants were growing quite happily without cover down at the allotment. But they were growing up through a lot of dead material, which could be keeping them warmer than the surrounding area. But that could work well with  the veg-table as it is, since its design is supposed to retain warmth too.

I'll just have to keep an eye on them and see if it works!

Now that I've discovered I am ill, I need to milk this condition to the fullest until friday at least (which is probably the point at which the doctor points out that I just need to stop eating bolognaise for the rest of my life so quit whining.)

So instead of working today, I indulged my inner child, and played in the dirt.

Or put it in another flavour, I went down to the allotment and spent a contented two hours digging and planting. 

I've managed to dig over and plant the green manure for hungarian rye and winter tares in two rows. There are two more to be cleared - one will have field beans in it, and the other I am not sure yet. I've missed my chance to plant crimson clover, but I didn't have any empty rows back in August. And since it was the bean row this year, there is little point planting field beans. I need to work out what to do with it quickly though, as unless there is a sudden burst of forgotten summer stuck in the pipes it will soon be cold dim November and nothing is likely to want to grow.

Having dug and planted, I tucked my new seedy babies in with some perforated cloche plastic. That was to stop birds from eating the broadcast seeds. cue photo...

Plus while I was there I constructed a nifty little grow tent for my courgettes, which look like they want to grow. "It's a bit late, fellas." I said to them. Glancing around quickly to see if I'd been caught chatting with my veg. Fortunately not. I was considering whether I should cover over the last few rows of late carrots. I might see what I can construct when I go back down.

I've still got to take down the runner bean frame, which is leaning like a crazy drunk, and still full of beans. They are no longer edible, although that status is debatable even when ripe. I grew them because I love the flowers, but as they ripened I left them to sit on the vine as I really don't fancy them. We had plenty of tender green beans, both dwarf and climbing. Why ruin a perfectly good meal with a runner bean?

Now that they've dried and shrivelled, I've harvested them, and fallen in love with them all over again. Aren't the seeds gorgeous? You know what that means. I am going to end up planting them all over again just because they look pretty!

I've collected all the french bean seeds too, but stupid me didn't divide them up. They all look the same, whether they are blue lake or corona d'oro (climbing) or tender green (dwarf). I am hoping that when I plant them in the conservatory they get to a point where I can tell them apart before I plant them out. I don't mind the climbing ones all mixed together, but I do need to put the dwarfs somewhere else. (We welcome you to munchinkin land, la la la la...)

Next year I've got to grow "purple queen", a purple variety. Sadly the purple is lost in cooking (just like purple sprouting broc) but I am sure they'll look beautiful on the vine. And there is an Italian bean that Jamie oliver was raving about the other night that I want to grow. Those ones are red and white and looked divine. All that lovely colour disappears when cooked. How silly of nature.

The word brassica makes my husband snigger, but this is a picture of my lovely brassica's ready to plant out this Sunday. I've got chevalier calabrese, purple sprouting broccoli, brussels sprouts, and several different types of cauliflowers.

Last year I had amazing luck with the chevalier calabrese, it sprouted huge lovely heads, then after harvesting those it pumped out side shoots like crazy.

The purple sprouting broccoli was good too, stretching to 4 harvests of tender heads.

I only got two cauliflowers last year, but they were both good. I planted them too close together, so they struggled for room. In fact, all the brassica's were crowded, so this year I am going to give them all more space.

I am emminently more organised in terms of what goes where too. I have grouped the last harvesting ones together, so that as the early harvests are finished I will have a large continuous space for green manuring over winter. I was too late last year, and couldn't get hold of the seed when I needed it either. This year I've got it all ready.

Not that you'd know it from my radio silence, but I've become white the allotmentophile lately. As the days have lengthened, I've been slipping down at 7pm to search and kill slugs and to dig out the remaining plots.

I gave up on the carrots since none of them decided to raise their heads above the crusted ground, but when I dug over the area I found quite a few of last years crop. Which means that it wasn't the best place to have planted them in the first place.

I've got my first lot of leeks planted out, plus the courgettes (zuchinni), winter/butternut squash and pumpkins.
The pumpkins almost met a bad end. I planted them out last monday, which was the 12th of May. Theoretically, frost was no longer an issue. Sadly on Tuesday night the frost struck, and the leaves were badly burnt. But out of 8 leaves, only 4 were affected so I have pruned them off. The pumpkins now live in the tent, which is roomy and i expect that they are organising parties with the locals.

The beans were lucky, the frost didn't affect them. Some others on the site lost most of theirs which is very sad. The ants are farming aphids up them however! I've been researching homemade pest controls lately, since a friend shared the recipe for garlic wash with me. That one was shown on Gardeners World, and so far seems to be working very well for controlling the slugs. I have been using pellets. I'd like to switch to the garlic wash when I make it, but I put more pellets down last night when I checked my courgettes and found that their lower leaves were stripped and patchy. I've got coffee grounds down, which seems to have some effect. It's hard to tell when there are also pellets - I really should set up a proper test with pellets, coffee and garlic wash.

Previously the tent had been over my "seed bed". The quotes around that indicate that it did not behave as expected! The carefully weeded bed proved to be not so carefully weeded, and among my 5 lines of brassica seedlings I found horsetail, potatoes and a HELL of a lot of spinach. It might be swiss chard, we haven't identified it yet. The previous owner of this allotement, Joseph was one of the "jamacian lads" - a group of old guys who seem to farm 3 things only. Potatoes, onions and spinach. From the seeding spinach on my neighbour's plot I suspect that these happily growing chardlike things will be likewise.

I am keeping them - although I've thinned them out around my poor brassica seedlings. The brassicas that I've planted out - brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli and cauliflower - are not doing nearly so enthusiastically as the ones planted in the seed bed. I wonder how much moving them will affect their growth.

The spinach planted at about the same time failed to come up in abundance. There are several small shoots now, but many gaps. I have some spinach seedlings at home that are thriving, and now need to be planted out.

I've got a patch ready now for my sweetcorn to go out, that is practically bushy now, and it's been ready to go for too long. I have two sorts so we'll see how they go. And my asaparagus has thrown up one spear, so I need to earth that up.

I took delivery of my potato order today. I ordered Desiree, but got King Edwards. But it's not really a big issue, since I only ordered Desiree because they sounded nice. Whether they were better spuds or not is not the issue. So my King Edwards are now sitting in the hurricane shelter with a cherry tree, 2 blueberry stalks, a redcurrant stalk and a black currant stalk. All waiting to be planted.

We spent this morning moving the compost heap from our backyard to the allotment, into my newly fashioned palletastic compost square thingy. It was pretty nice compost, considering that the bottom of it was quite possibly 3 or 4 years old. There is now a small family of mice who are probably wondering what on earth happened to their dining room. They live in a small hold beneath the now empty space. I was digging the compost out after removing the plastic outer with a real fear of chopping one of them in half as I dug. Luckily they live lower than ground level.

I got the rest of my seeds a few weeks ago. I have laid them out in order of the month they need to be planted out. The first set are March, so i have another month to prepare the plot. That is going quite nicely - I've turned over the first two rods. (Rods being a measurement used in allotmenteering, but I don't actually know how big a single rod is... I do know that my plot is 7 rods in size.) I didn't get around to planting any garlic, but fortunately I've now discovered that there is some growing in a neat row in the first rod. I need to move it, or rearrange my planting order since it's not exactly in the right place. I think it's garlic... it smells like it.

I have no idea what is growing in the back rod. It looks like pac choi, it's glossy and leef beet like. It doesn't smell like anything I recognise though.

I wanted to plant my seeds into biodegradable containers, instead of the plastic potting things I used last year (they are all falling to bits anyway). But biodegradable ones are quite costly, and I don't want to spend large amounts of money. So I did a search for "egg carton seed planting" and discovered a blog advocating using toilet rolls, or a neat way of folding newspapers. I have so many toilet rolls kept for craft reasons, that I am now looking forward to this idea! I will take photos to prove it!

And speaking of spending money, for my birthday I going to get a small greenhouse/growbox. How exciting!

Having taken over the new allotment, I have be busy plotting up my little rotation. Piles of pages of notes, and printouts of advise from different sites was starting get slighly overwhelming! It's like putting a jigsaw together that's made of magnets. Some crops want to be near certain others, and yet others hate the very sight of them. Or so it would seem from my research.

so I made it easier for myself, and made an illustrator file up so I could just slide the boxes about until they fit nicely. This is what i have so far...



Some vegetables I can't be bothered with growing, since I don't like eating them! I wasn't going to do potatoes either, since they are so cheaply bought, but for the goodness that they bring the earth, I decided that they were probably beneficial.

Rhubarb is only my list because it's already there. I need to cut it down and see how it goes. I HATE rhubarb! Visions of stringy, soggy stewed rhubarb from my childhood, with a vingary aftertaste, wallowing in a melting bowl of icecream don't help.

I am wondering if I should include raspberries and strawberries rather than something like jerusalem artichokes. I think that the raspberries would certainly take up a fair bit more space, and the beggars scratch the heck out of you for a not a big return.

You might notice also that there are no peas there. What a waste of time and effort they are! you pick and shell a bucket of peas to get enough for two small girls. Both of whom eye them up suspiciously and declare that peas are yucky. Even if they are home grown.

This post is a bit late in coming, but a few weeks ago i took over our new allotment plot. It became available when the gentleman who owned it died, which is a sad way to take over something. But I am looking forward to seeing it bloom again.

right now, the plot is empty. His wife and daughters cleared the potatoes, and the corn crop had failed. There are a few tomatoes that had blight, so I don't plan on growing any on the plot at all. I found the remains of some beet plants, but most have now been eaten away.

The shed is a piece of art. It's held up at the back by a large pole, and can't be described as rectangular. It has seats inside, and I think Joseph used to sit in there and keep warm. The sides were hung with sheets and carpet to keep out the breeze. Opening the door is like coming out of a hurricane shelter!

So far I've not done too much, but it's slowly taking shape. I've built my compost heap from pallets, and started to turn the soil over. Some parts are covered in carpet that my friend and I hauled out of the industrial sized skip outside a local building site.

The old plot now has only a couple of small calabrese and some brussel sprouts, which might not grow much larger.

I have plotted out my allotment layout, and the next step is to take some string and some stakes down to start dividing it up. Currently it is all seeded, with no walkways evident. I am going to chop it into wide slices and five rotations, plus a static bed. I did my seed ordering quite last minute, delivering it to the boss on the last night they were due!

There are not many things that can be planted at this late stage, but I am going to get some garlic going as soon as I've sorted the first bed out.

It's very exciting! I hope Joseph approves.

I haven't really updated you with all the goings on at the allotment (the whole two beds!). That's mostly because the weather has been totally shite, all my tomatoes got blight, and I need to end this sentence in flight...

With apologies to Chris W for the poetic miasma there!

Actually, the biggest problem has been that I kept taking photos on my mobile phone. And until now have had no way to get them off. Turned out it was a processing error. My brain wasn't processing the information at hand very well! But a final google of the right key words found the answer (did you notice that I used google as an adjective there? And I didn't use a capital letter or trademark sign? Google should really do more to protect their brand otherwise it will fall into mainstream use and be declared non trademarkable! But I digresss.).

So in full living (and some dying) colour, here are my crops! Brassicas and carrots first...

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While the tomatoes may have died, the peppers are looking lovely...

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And this is dd2's pumpkin...

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And here are some peas!

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I don't think I will plant peas again. They were lovely, but the effort put into shelling peas far outweighs the resulting meal! I am keen to try some interesting beans though.

The carrots were transplanted, and so they yielded some VERY interesting shapes! They all stunted at the point of transplant, and great legs, arms, willys - you name it.

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I certainly wouldn't do the asparagus peas either, for all they looked interesting, they were husky and unpleasant to eat.

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I did take photos of the blighted tomatoes - two plum bushes and two cherry's at the allotment and three in the backyard. But I refuse to put them on here!

The title is poor, I know. But I am so proud of my nice rows of leeks, tomatoes, aubergine, peppers, chilly, and asparagus peas. The nicely turned bed looks very neat and weed free (for now.)

The leeks I seeded before we went to Sydney, they were desperate to get out of the seed tray. Using the dibber was slightly more tricksy. Every time I tried to stick the leeks in the hole, the dirt starting crumbling in! Eventually they were all down, we'll just have to see how they grow. Some of them might have their roots facing the wrong way!

On the other side are the tomatoes and peppers that I got from homebase. Let me just defend myself here! We were away for the best part of the time that I should have been raising seeds. So I had to cheat slightly. And the 5 minute allotment does recommend getting plug plants anyway!

The asparagus peas I got from the school summer fair - along with two of the peppers that I seeded before I left. Jo managed to raise them nicely for the sale, and then I bought them back! They are smaller than the homebase peppers, so now the competition is on.

The chair (that's the metal frame you see) is part of the make and do mentality of the allotmenteer. Ali, who owns the allotment nabbed them all from her school when they were going begging. Broken chairs with a new life to lead! When I remember to take it down, I will cover those two plants with covers, held up by the chair frame.

Speaking of make and do, I have got into Freecycle. And so thanks to a lovely lady called Christine, I also have a nice chair to sit on inbetween gardening. I am still looking for more... anyone in the bromley area feel free to donate!!

Finally a good day, and the allotment starts to take shape. After the beautiful weather for the Summer fair on Saturday, Sunday was just as glorious. Leaving swamped husband to work feverishly on this laptop, I dragged the children down to the allotment to commence digging.

This is the before picture!


The girls were so helpful pulling weeds out - for about 5 minutes. That's the threshold of attention span. About 10 minutes after that, number 1 suddenly needed to do a poo. There is a toilet block on the allotment - it's entirely on the other side of the area, and it wasn't open. I rang swamped husband to come and pick up the girls, but he told us to go to the dodgy toilets in Elmers End where the gay guys meet. Charming.

Luckily for us, we ran into one of number 1's school friend's dad - coming out of his own allotment. They lived on the same street as the allotment, so we went down to visit, have some squash and use the facilities.

Overall, the loo break took about 45 minutes. So in the first hour of work, I'd done very little work! We went back down, and I managed to dig over half of the bed. It's back breaking work, and there is bind weed in there too.

Eventually, swamped husband surfaced, and came down to help. That was a slight mistake, as he has the "can't really be bothered" method of gardening, and didn't bother to remove the weeds as he turned the soil. So when he got bored and wandered off to erect a hammock, I redid most of his work.

By this time the girls are in "we want to go home!" mode. But the cavalry arrived - my friend and her two girls. This added another 2 hours to the potential work time, as the girls dug and watered their own hole together, then played school.

So now the bed looks like this...

I just read an article in the times about using the balmy nights to get your allotment going. It kept mentioning the long hot days, and I was starting to wonder which year it was actually written in, since that does not reflect the current weather report in London.

Everytime I went to step out the door, the heavens threw a bit more down. I'd have gone down and worked in the rain with no problems, but I had the small one with me, and she was sniffling and hacking a bit. It didn't seem likely that she'd sit in the shed and be calm, that is not a state of being that she exists in while awake.

So our plot remains unturned. I haven't been letting the weeds go under my feet though (like the gardening pun? I am really getting into this lifestyle...). I've seeded some brocolli and carrots in disposable cups in a tray in my back room (aka the playroom). I've got to shuffle some plants around and get some tarragon going too, and I've just noticed that I have no coriander growing at all. Which is a pain, since I came to a point where I needed it tonight, to mix with my roasted aubergine, garlic and pine kernals. It would have been nice to have been able to even start to feel like I am eating my own produce!

This morning saw me shouting at the squirrels from the upstairs bedroom. And unfortunately - caught in the act by my slightly eccentric neighbour. But I think she'll keep the secret, since she hoodles about yodelling for her cat, then talks to him loudly in baby talk that makes even me cringe. She also has very loud arguements in the backyard with her some time lodger, some time boyfriend, who is a local MP and used to live in the shed drinking whiskey. But that's a story for another time!

Meanwhile here is a photo of the peanuts that the squirrels have planted in my herb box.

Well - day one did not go off as planned. The heavens remained open with the trademark English drizzle pouring out. Slightly higher volume than normal in fact. We dressed down and set off for the allotment anyway, hoping that someone would be there, and that the gate would be unlocked, since we are not getting our own key until next week. But no joy, even the steadfast old guys were not stupid enough to think spending a day in the downpour would be fun. Hell on their rheumatoid arthritus I guess.

We set off for the garden shop instead. With a bit of research behind me, I've discovered that the royal horticultural society recommends starting with plants that other people have raised from seed, rather than doing the seeding yourself. Which suits me fine, since everything (other than the leeks) died in infancy. The garden centre was woefully understocked, to the tune of 3 mangy cabbages, so we had to resort to homebase. Which was wonderfully full. Came home with 4 tomato plants, 4 sweet peppers, 2 aubergines, 1 chilli pepper, and one dwarf french beans plant. Plus some herbs, since my attempts to grow mint were also failures.

Paul and the girls spent the afternoon clearing the walkway behind our shed, where our neighbours had dumped all their clippings, and the rubbish that had been behind their fence for years. Now I have to work out how to tactfully tell them to never do that again without resorting to banshee-like behaviour!

I spent the rest of the afternoon in the rain deweeding my vege plot in the back yard and clearing the area around the four carrots. Then I decided to attack the trees that my neighbour fails to maintain, and ended up sawing off several long branches. The garden now looks neat up high, with mounds of clippings on the ground waiting for someone to clear them away. Perhaps I should throw them all behind the neighbours fence...

Ok, so we're back in the land of blighty. At some point in time I'll update you on our trip away (worst floods in 50 years or so, what fun!) but for now I have a new passion. Our allotment.

As you probably have no idea, I've been trying to grow some veges in the back garden. Thanks to our trip away, most of the veges are casualties of my husband's inability to put snail pellets down. The last count shows 12 leeks, 4 carrots, 2 half eated sweet peppers, 0 courgettes and 0 broccoli. (I do have to admit that the broccoli was already dead before we flew out, but it sounded more dramatic.)

I had a hard time finding the vege plot where the 4 carrots were struggling through, thanks to the weeds that had swarmed down from the rockery like an army of ants. So you'd think that more gardening was probably not going to be on the agenda, but you'd be wrong.

A friend has just got an allotment which we are going to share. It's covered in grass, seeded rhubarb and raspberries, and it's all ours for the tilling! This Saturday I will be turning the dirt over and de-weeding one of the beds in preparation for something. Not sure what yet - it's fairly late in the season to be starting stuff, but I am sure there are a few things that would thrive. Unless I kill them off.

So I have decided to keep a gardening blog. Maybe I'll change the title of this one from the unhinged mother, to the accidental gardener. And I'll take photos of whatever comes up... I hope there is something for photographing!