Mid-winter crop updates

It was good to go back after two weeks and the weather was also decent enough. Understandably not many people around, only Geoff and me: a usual winter weekend.

While outside it is still pretty much frozen, the greenhouse thermometer recorded -5 to 30 degree centigrades since the last time I was there. However, nothing has really changed: no sign of either mushrooms or the chitted potatoes I planted in there a while ago, so I decided to put the space to a better use by trying to plant over the potatoes with quick crops.

As the Winter Gem salad seedlings were still the same size as a month ago, I decided that the only chance they might have to grow was transplanting, so I put them in pots. Plus, I have planted the remaining seeds on half the potatoes’ bed and the other half of the bed I have planted with Rapa Bianca Lodigiana – white turnips from Lodi, the nearest biggish town to my family’s in Italy.

There are several vegetables that can be planted in February, so I have washed some pot trays I got for free at Homebase last year (they throw them away, but seem to work very well for this purpose!) and planted chilli and aubergine, with some hollyhock seeds I got from a plant some three years ago, which are a bit old so they might not germinate.

I suspect there will be a lot more to do next week around the allotment and the garden at home, as I am expecting a few deliveries from my online orders!

P.S. This week we watched the last episode of Victorian Farm on BBC2. I will miss it. I learned a few things – for example that with water, soap and elder leaves you can make an insecticide for black fly and that comfrey, tallow fat and beeswax make an ointment for animal sores. I wish I could live a little bit more like that…

… for the good of my health and wealth! Or, gardening-related addictions.

I came home tonight and I was really tired, so I went on T&M website for some relaxing online shopping therapy.

While filling my shopping basket with all sort of exciting plants, I decided to have a look at my orders database for a quick check and I realised I was doing it again, for the third time: I am ordering the same plant over again! I have ended up with 16 plants of jasmine to arrive in the next couple of weeks!

I mean, this shows that I am consistent in my choices – which is good, but also that my memory is totally gone – which is really bad for someone who used to remember all birthdays and telephone numbers of all her friends by heart! Besides, not incospicuously, it shows that I am spending too much time on my sofa trying to relax!!

If days were long enough, I would be going to my allotment and use up those plants instead of accumulating them.

I have had enough of winter!

Nothing worth discussing

Weather is still miserable and the snow has not thawed yet: it is quite dangerously slippery so I did not venture to the allotment.

A pity though this is as it should be seed planting time, if I was at all inclined to look at the brigh side, I should think that all this freezing must have done away with a few slugs!

I am here on the sofa, surrounded by a few of my gardening books: there is always something to learn, but cannot bring myself to plan in any detail. Feel very lazy.

I mentioned a while ago that I would draw a map of the plot to plan my planting for this year: I drew it a while ago, and I have been loosely using it to plan space first for potatoes (when they seemed too many for the plot) and now for group B (beans and onions) for which I have the most seeds by far.

Here it is, finally scanned:

Somehow I needed to make it on paper. And I think I have not yet grasped exactly what would be the best way to maintain the whole planning and measuring system (this is real management consultant speak, isn’t it?!): I think I need to have everything with me all the time so that every spare moment I can use to reflect on what to do, and this means having:

• bed plan/map (this drawing)
• crop rotation leaflet (A,B,C,D being the rotation groups, and X outside rotation)
• database of stock (indicating plant family and planting time)

in my office bag, at the allotment and at home. A diary may help: got one for my desk in the office, but I am promoting it to a wider role in my life time-management efforts (alongside my Palm, Google and my LN calendar).

Oh mine, it is just Tuesday and I am so tired that I feel nauseous and faint. I wish it was summer and I could go and spend time on the allotment, in touch with the earth, surrounded by greenery, relaxing…

… but it is not summer and I should be planning how to get the most out of it when it comes!!!

My boss (bless her, a pretty amazing woman she is – with all she has on her mind, and despite travelling around most of the time, she has the energy to remind herself of my hobbies) brought in a packet of tomato seeds for me. I was thinking of that on the train, and it dawned on me (not a piece of news really) that I have far too many seeds, and that I do not want to waste them. Still, I have not really figured out succession planting. However, I should be ok with coldframes to initiate germination at any time, which may help.

Well, you see from the rambling structure of this post that I had better go to sleep now and philosophising about gardening some other time. Nite!

Crop updates, vagaries of the weather

I popped into the allotment on Sunday morning but did not last a whole hour: it was freezing cold, do not remember ever feeling so cold out there before!

No sign of mushrooms whatsoever, my salad sprouts are still there: green, not wilted but neither grown visibly – not sure what to do with them… will they ever grow further?

There was a feeling of spring, buds looked fat, ready to unfold and open up. I spotted what I thought was a bright pink piece of plastic, but when I went to pick it up I realised it was a rhubarb leaf proudly emerging from the manure.

The primroses around the pond are also doing very well, you can see the yellow of the flowers breaking out of the buds’ skin. I planted some seeds: primroses and cowslips as well. They need to go through a period of warmth followed by cold, so I covered them with a plastic bag and some fleece, and I will check them in a month or so before putting them out.

I ran home straight afterwards: my extremities a bit numb and the skin on my face feeling like cardboard. There was a good reason for all that cold: snow was on its way again – an unusual early February Monday in southern England!

Redesigning the pond area and other planting

Back from the holidays, I arrived on a beautifully warm and sunny day, so I spent the afternoon at the allotment, clearing the area around the pond.

I weeded it all around (three wheelbarrow loads of weeds!), used the biggest of the innumerable flint stones on the plot to draw a nice border around the rose bushes, hostas and other plants already there, divided the clumps of Primula vulgaris that were congested, hidden under the canopy of weeds, and planted them nicely all over the border: I am very pleased!

In the next couple of months I will plant wild flowers all around: chamomile – which I love – and a couple of mixed seeds packets.

Today I had also received a plant of gooseberry and three strawberries, so I planted those as well: I will be very well off with soft fruit if all those I planted are going to carry fruits!

As the day seemed neverending (I stayed until 5 and it was still light!) I also managed to put a little bit more order in the shed…

Look forward to the weekend, now, to plant the onions (they are taking the first place the potatoes lost, I will end up having too many!!!)

Planting daffodils and remodelling the pond

Fantastic day, the best of the last few months: impossible to resist the call of the allotment; besides, a visit was necessary as it is the last day before some holidays (perfect time of the year if you need to leave your allotment as very little is growing and very slowly anyway).

All the way from home to the plot I was nervous and worried to find something amiss again: since my auntie was burglared when I was a kid, I have always dreaded trespass to my property as a violation of my personal space… anyway, the greenhouse was ok, so I relaxed and could concentrate on work!

As the ground was thawed completely, I could plant the daffodils around the pond.

There is something I need to say about the pond: last year when I made it I was very enthusiastic but very naive, so I made two mistakes:

1. used the liner blue side up (the other side was black, I seemed to think that since the water is blue…)
2. did not consider the plot was on a slope

so I found myself with an unnaturally bright blue pond sticking out some twenty centimetres on the upper end. However, as I had digged myself to exhaustion those days, I decided to leave it as it was, a decision I have regretted since.

Today, however, I felt energetic enough, so I started working around the edges and lowering them without even realising: although it was awkward to be bending on the knees all the time (I’m getting so very old!) I enjoyed the process like a kid: I was all muddy and a little bit wet, but the pond was sooo nice!

That’s me with a rather silly face and dishevelled appearance, when I finally got home, pleading guilty with my husband, trying to avoid him getting upset for the amount of dirt I was carrying into the house on my clothes – again.