Reply to Don's Comment

Allotment (definition C/o Wikipedia): (gardening), in the United Kingdom, a small area of land, let out at a nominal yearly rent by local government or independent allotment associations, for individuals to grow their own food.

So now you know! :)

In my garden veg plot I have onions and garlic at the moment, and plan to grow potatoes (Red Duke of York maybe?), beans & peas, and perhaps some tomatoes and pumpkins/squash (being hopeful about the weather. Really not enough warmth and too much rain this year). And more raspberries since the kids love hunting and eating them. Apples going in the unfenced and so mostly unused (fear of runaway kids and the busy road) front garden, but they won't be bearing for a few years.

In the allotment... everything! More potatoes, carrots, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, broccoli, cabbage, more beans, more onions etc etc etc.

We have dreams and plans, you see, now we just need the weather and children to get over colds. They seem to be dropping like flies, in succession. Last night it was Pip and Spike... and as he's not on top form Spike has returned to having naps in the afternoon which is my usual window for allotmenting. So it's a bit of a non-starter for now. Ho hum.

Allotment Betrayal

We are sharing our allotment plot with a local school. We have been given half, they have been given half. We have been working darn hard on our half... well we had, up until about the middle of Oct, when it turned yucky and muddy and very cold. So I haven't been down there since. But up until then we had worked very hard to clear the surface and dig it over etc. The half claimed by the school was untouched.

BUT NOW... my partner in allotmenting went down there yesterday because a friend of hers was delivering a bunch of rubble for us to use to help our pathetic drainage. And the school side is completely cleared, completely dug over and even has drainage pipes running through it and out the other side to where, allegedly, the allotment chiefs are going to be running some drainage pipes.

I am really peeved because now we look like complete slackers and like we are totally unworthy of our half-plot. How have they done this? I mean, it is totally flooded, and theirs is worse than ours (even with the drainage pipes, because they don't drain anywhere yet). They have ice on top of their flooded mud. So HOW have they got it cleared and dug and drainage piped so quickly in such foul weather?

I bet they paid some gardening company to do it for them. That must be it, rather than just being two over-worked mums who have to bring children with them who are liable to fall in muddy puddles and need a complete change of clothes. And so by cheating and paying to get it done they have made us look unworthy...

I don't like it one bit. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. I was rather hoping they would be as... what word am I looking for? Overworked? Slow? Useless? Not keen on the cold and wet? Perhaps 'normal' is what I want. Please let our neighbours (who we haven't met, I hasten to add) be normal and not show us up every step of the way. Please, God?

Veg-Plot Review

I was doing a bit of clearing out of the garden veg-plot the other day, getting rid of the cosmos skeletons etc, and I found a treasure! One last onion which had been hiding under the thickets of dead scrub. It started out as an onion-and-carrot bed. Then I planted some cosmos seedlings in among, just to add interest later on... and then the cosmos got huge. They loved all the rain, I guess! They grew and grew and fell over and grew some more and sprouted roots from the stem and kept growing. I managed to get (what I thought was) all the onions and carrots out from underneath them, but yesterday I discovered I was wrong. Hooray! It's like finding a fiver in the pocket of a coat you don't wear often... well, maybe not quite the same financially, but I was chuffed to bits to find an extra bonus onion. And it was oh-so-oniony too... Not damaged from neglect and full of flavour. It was eaten that night. Yum.


So now the veg-plot has come to the end of the cycle and is bare again... well almost. I have planted 4 rows of red onions and 3 rows of garlic, which are all starting to sprout. So even in the depths of dark November (which according to a friend's gardening calendar is NOT a gardening month!) we have the hints of what is yet to come, if we can hold on through the horrid cold and wet and dark.

And I thought I would have a look back through my photos and see if I could pull together some pictures taken in roughly the same spot of the veg-plot through the months of this year. So here you go:

April. Newly planted potatoes, onions & carrots


May: Potatoes coming through nicely


June: Baby carrots and onions... and weeds


June: Potatoes geting taller


June



July

Sept


And finally here we are in November.

We wait patiently through the darkness for the turning of the seasons back to lengthening days and months which ARE gardening months. Not November though. And I am not too hopeful for December either...

Cold: virus and weather

We have had the lurgey again. This time it was Spike and Dude who came down with it. They are mostly over it, and just full of snot and coughing (as opposed to full of snot, coughing, fever and lethargy). Here's one of poor little Dude, who fell asleep on the landing half way up the stairs... Couldn't even make it to his bed. Must sleep now...

We have also had snow... ok, so only half an inch, and nothing like the exciting thickness that the Canadian cousins had been enjoying, but still very exciting. Exciting enough to stir Dude from his lethargy and send him hurtling outside to play... only to come back in 5 minutes later and spend the rest of the day on the sofa with a fleecy blanket absolutely exhausted!

Pip made a very impressive (?) mini snowman. Well, very impressive considering what he had to work with!

He also got the Chief Scout's Bronze Award at Beavers the other night... highest award a Beaver Scout can get! It means that he had got all of the Challenge Badges. Very proud mummy... Considering that I was a Brownie in my time, and a sixer, and only managed to get 2 badges. We were a very lax group and mostly just played games! So to have a son whose arms are covered in badges rather makes up for my underachievement.

Romanesco Broccoli

We found the coolest vegetable ever in a greengrocers in a nearby town... It was fractal broccoli! I searched for it on the internet and found out that it is actually called Romanesco Broccoli, and it definitely wins the prize for worlds coolest vegetable.

It is now our favourite vegetable, but it is not sold in our local supermarket, so we have to go to the other town to get it. So we haven't had it since and I hope that next time I go to the green grocers they have it again. They didn't have it in another grocers in another town, so here's hoping.

In other news...

We had a wonderful trip away over half term with our church... We went to a Youth Hostel and took over the whole place for three days.

Edinburgh Zoo

Bamburgh beach with friends

We had a halloween party for Pip which was a great.

Eating doughnuts off a stick

And Spike moved into a big-boy bed. Which means he can now get out of bed at 6:30 with the big ones... so they have been put under a new regime and are not allowed to get up until 7. Which I think is reasonable, but they think is tortuous. Hopefully they will get used to it soon!

No gardening news, I am afraid, because, as a friend's gardening calendar says 'November is NOT a gardening month'. Too much rain, wind and general nastiness for me. We have lost all the leaves off our bird-feeding tree though, which means we can see the bird feeders now, so we have started filling them again, and are enjoying watching the birds. We get greenfinches, sparrows, blue tits, great tits, goldfinches, and have even had a woodpecker (but not at the birdfeeders). And robins, blackbirds and collared doves pick up whatever falls out onto the grass below.

And that's the news from Lake Wobegon...

Autumn

The weather has been seriously autumnal. Which means leaves are changing and dropping and the weather has been unpredictable. It has been very windy, and rainy on and off. Not great allotmenting weather. I still have a stack of planks to transform into raised beds, and although I haven't been down there recently I can pretty much guarantee you that it will be flooded.

So I have been focussing more on the home garden. I have been trying to figure out how to create four distinct vegetable areas for proper crop rotation. Potatoes, followed by beans, followed by brassicas, followed by onions is the general 4 year advice... Not sure if I am going to be able to do this though.

I have planted my onions and garlic in old potato beds. I think I am going to put beans and peas in the onion bed... Not sure what I'll do with the bit I put the bean teepee in though... I really don't have a well laid out veg patch at home. Part of the problem is that we have a big rhubarb plant in an awkward spot that I have to plant around. I think I am going to dig it up when it has finished dying back and re-locate it... perhaps to the teepee spot... hmmm... this will bear thinking about.

Anyway, just wanted to let you see what's growing in the garden in the late October wind!

New onion and garlic patch.

Chrysanthemums

Feverfew

Dead cardoon flowers. New growth just visible at the bottom.

Raspberries are still ripening, and the boys still enjoy them.

Random and late gladiolus.

Short update

We went down the allotment (dow na lotment!, according to Spike!) the other day and took a few pictures to give you an update on where we are in the process.



Look! A path! Look! Dug over soil! Look! Gravel in a ditch to help drainage!



Look! Old boards out of which we will build raised beds! Hooray! Progress!

Also, Look! No flooding - although that has been reversed due to recent downpours.

Short post today since we are suffering from the tummy-bug that is going around, and GardenBoy is sitting in bed feeling very sorry for himself and I am being instructed to go and get him sustenance. What sustenance for a poorly tummy? Popcorn... Yes, he really is ill...