Yay! March!

It's March (as near as dammit) and I've been planting the first lot of seeds in mini propogators. Only a few plants of each, I'm going cautiously first time round and doing lots of successional sowings. My paper pot maker has had its first outing, and to my surprise the little pots are easy to make and seem to be staying in one piece. So, today I've planted:

Chili Pepper: Hot Tepin
Chili Pepper: Cayenne
Pepper: Summer Salad mixed hybrid F1
Tomato: Sungold
Tomato: Suncherry
Tomat0: Roma
Tomato: Garden Pearl
(so many free tomato seeds in gardening magazines!)
Courgette: Black beauty
Courgette: Golden Zucchini
Courgette: Patty Pan
Courgette: Yellow scallop
Aubergine: Black beauty
Cucumber: Marketmore
(I hate cucumber.... but I got the seeds free. Maybe the ones I grow myself will taste nicer)
Sweetcorn: Applause
Brussels Sprouts: Falstaff (the purple ones I have two packs of)
Cabbage: Golden Acre/Primo
Cauliflower: All the year round

I'll leave it a week or so before I plant the veg that needs to go directly into the soil. There's still a lot of preparation to do, and two large patches that need digging over.

Also, my seed potatoes finally arrived. I've put them in the new greenhouse covered with bubble wrap. Let the chitting commence. Also the digging, the potato bed is about a million miles from being ready to plant.

Rhubard!

Forgot to add... the rhubarb is coming up! No sign of the asparagus yet, so fingers crossed.

The Greenhouse Has Landed

I put together my heap of junk greenhouse from Argos today. It turns out that I did have all the parts, but some were wrongly labelled and the instructions said that I needed more 'joint A' than I actually did. I wait with bated breath to see if the thing survives the night. I certainly need some bigger pegs. Jim gave me a hand putting the thing up. It didn't quite fit together and may need some additional persuasion with a hammer. Masses of stuff to get planted. I have what seems like hundreds of packets of seeds all due to go in in Feb/Mar. Where did February go, anyway?

By the way last night I had a very nice meal of salvaged cabbage, leeks and spring onions fried until slightly brown and crispy, with pesto and wholemeal pasta. Even though I say so myself, and I am probably the world's lousiest cook, it wasn't half bad.

Jim tells me he's been made redundant, so he's probably going to be down at the allotment a lot. I hope he gets something else soon, but times are not great and I'm vaguely worried that my own job is on the line. Disgruntled Daily Mail reading guy was around too. He was bemoaning the latest break-in. I'm guessing he's one of those 'glass half empty people' since he never, ever seems to be happy about anything, but I've got to admit that it is irritating that the local criminals seem to have the run of the place. He regaled me yet again with the story of how three break-ins ago, someone called the police while the sheds were actually being broken into and was told that it wasn't an emergency. This, much more the actual break-ins, has caused a lot of upset, and I hear the story from different people about three or four times a month. Emails to reply to from the PSCO and Neighbourhood policing officer. If I can get them to come on site to maybe postcode some tools and show a presence it might make people feel a bit more secure.

Left my BlackBerry (not the good kind) lying around on the ground when I left and had to drive back to retrieve it. On Friday I had to drive back because I forgot to lock up. Clearly I am losing my mind. Senility beckons, it's all downhill from here...

Mildew and scones

Finally, a clear weekend after a fine week. Tomorrow I plan to spend the entire day on the allotment. Today a hair-dressing appointment, so I only had an hour or so to spend this afternoon. I used the time on my rather ill-fated brassica plot. Downy mildew has hit hard, and I had an entire bucketful of yellowing leaves to clear away. The broccoli isn't too badly affected, but the cabbages are disastrous. I picked a few of the smaller ones, but on getting them back home I found that the mildew had caused black patches on the inner leaves. The cauliflowers look fairly pathetic, but on Jim's advice I'll give them a week or two to perk up. The broccoli is looking okay, and there are sprouts on the way. The leeks have done wonderfully well and seem unaffected by slugs, mildew or pigeons. I also have a few surviving spring onions. Stir-fry tonight.

There are many wonderful and surprising moments in the life of the new gardener. The taste of the first strawberry, the fearless little robin landing just a foot from you as you dig, the beauty of a sunset over the substation. To these I add the discovery of the scones at the local garden centre, Huntingdon Garden and Leisure. These are the best scones I have ever tasted in my entire career as a human being on this planet. These are not the miserable, cold, doughy little things you seems to get in most restaurants. These are wonderful, crumbly, freshly baked, about four times the size of a normal scone and crammed with fruit. The only way to eat them is to cut them into slices like a small loaf. I may well start making special trips up there at opening time so I get my scone still warm from the oven. It is an utter mystery to me how they make any money out of them. As a loss leader perhaps - the garden centre is on the slightly pricey side.

My stone age knife, or possibly a rock that's been rotovated a time or two too many.

Interesting Weekend...

...well, relatively speaking. I started to put the greenhouse up but found it was short a piece. From the box it seems to have been returned to the store once already, resealed and put back on the shelves again. Not sure whether to return it or just try to replace the piece. it's a sort of corner joint - plumbers use something similar, an 'outlet 90' which costs about a quid and would easily do the trick. Irritating that stores do that though. It happened to me at IKEA once which meant a hundred mile round trip to get my item replaced.

The really interesting thing that happened was that I found what appears to be a stone age hand knife. I've reported it to the council and will see what they have to say. With any luck they will send a team of burly archaeologists to dig over the potato patch. I need to work out how to put pictures on this thing...

On the allotments my fellow plot-holders are starting to emerge like shy fieldmice coming out of hibernation. Mr Best-Kept was around, tidying up his immaculate plot, and Rose the lovely Chinese lady who started at the same time as me also came by to check on her site. Nobody else is mad enough to start digging yet - the soil is still too heavy and cold. We need a full week of dry weather for it to be really workable. I gave up after clearing my future greenhouse site.

I've pretty much written off my cauliflowers and cabbages, by the way. Maybe I'll give them until the end of the month, but unless they start looking a lot brighter they're coming out to give the broccoli more room. I planted them much too closely together. Now they're all affected by downy mildew, made much worse by the cold wet weather. The leeks are doing okay, mind, they seem to be fairly bomb-proof. I might have one for my tea. No sign of the rhubarb yet. All the established plants are starting to make a showing. I've ordered my seed potatoes. Still haven't made a proper compost heap.

Snow...

...and more snow. Everyone is sick of the snow now, even the new guy at work who just came over from India and spent the weekend making a snowman. It was a sunny day today for a change, and since I was out of work at 4pm-ish and needed to put out more sunflower seeds I walked to the allotment instead of going home. The round trip from work to town to allotment to home is probably about two miles all told, but it was nice just to be outside. It's a trip I hope to be making a lot more in the summer. The snow is mostly melted and the broccoli has a few unpecked new leaves, which is encouraging. I'm hoping it will rally once the weather warms up. From the footprints in what's left of the snow it looks as though I'm about the only person to have visited all week.

A bird just flew into my house, a rather skinny looking starling who I think is nesting in the eaves, managed to get into the loft and out through the loft hatch which I'd left open. However she soon managed to make an exit through the window. Now the baby birds outside are making a fuss - I hope she finds her way back to her nest.

(Thankfully) the cats were rubbish. The stripy one would no doubt have caught her in the end, but the cowardly one just hid under the bed. If I am ever burgled he will be completely useless. Now both cats have 'the rips' and are racing around the house with inflated tails. They are telling each other how awesome they were in the face of superior firepower.

Drama in the plot 15b household! I'll go and close the loft hatch now.

Snow

It's snowing like the clappers outside with a good six inches on the ground and more on the way. I'm tempted not to go into work, but since it's just a ten minute walk away I can't really avoid it. They'll probably send us home early if the snow keeps up, though. On the plus side the cold is breaking up the soil on the allotment beautifully. The rough clumps from the area I dug over on Friday are wonderfully loose. When I get round to digging it properly the roots will just pull straight out and the soil will have a fine, crumbly texture, like breadcrumbs. The garlic I planted at christmas is coming up nicely, little purplish spikes in neat rows. These are the first few months of gardening for me, and so far it has consisted mostly of putting dead looking things (sticks, dried up bulbs, oddly shaped rooty clumps) into the ground and keeping my fingers crossed. It's still a nice surprise when they actually start to sprout.

The Cop Shop

A quick visit to the police station today to provide a statement about my shed. A lot of burglaries in the area apparently, and there are going to be plain clothes and uniformed patrols about this week. PSCO Jim tells me they'll pay passing attention to the allotment, though I suspect any would-be burglars will be put off by the forecasted ten inches of snow. He was very nice, but clearly my shed is not at the top of their list.

I paid a quick visit to the allotment after I was done at the police station. No birds around that I could see but all the sunflower seeds from Sunday were gone. I filled up all the various dispensers and topped up the bird bath. Hopefully that should hold them until the weekend.

My lucky dip seeds arrived from Thompson and Morgan. Mixed peppers, tomatoes, lettuce, some dwarf cauliflowers and Falstaff purple sprouts - which of all the hundreds of varieties in the catalogue, is one of the ones I had already ordered. The plan, incidentally, is to plant as much weird shaped and coloured veg as possible to put off the light-fingered locals who see the allotment as a free open-air Tescos.

My brassicas are still looking very pigeon pecked and frostbitten. I don't know if they'll rally. The cauliflowers are looking particularly pathetic, practically nibbled to stalks. Maybe they'll rally as the soil warms up. Early days.

A beautiful weekend

Burglary aside, it was a beautiful weekend. A sunny Sunday, not too cold, made it ideal for digging over the corner of the plot reserved for my eventual greenhouse plus herbs, flowers and containers. Because I have one of the few trees on the allotment I tend to spend a lot on wild bird food. At any given time my apple tree hosts one hanging bird bath, a sunflower seed holder, a peanut holder, two coconut halves filled with suet and a suet ball holder. As a result, whenever I go down the the allotment I startle away a small flock, most of whom head off to the trees to wait impatiently for me to go. Not the robins, however. I've discovered that there are two of them, bold little things, quite willing to watch me do the digging and then swoop down and hoover up the worms as if they were spaghetti. They hover in front of the coconut shells like hummingbirds. I had no idea they could do that. A few other birds eventually overcame their shyness. They have clearly realised that 'the blue shed lady' is a harmless sucker who buys her suet balls in tubs of 50 from Petsmart.

Not to go into too much detail, but work was a nightmare this week. I've moved into a technical job I'm worried I'm not capable of doing. I was on call over the weekend, tied to my BlackBerry (not the good sort), watching the database error messages mount up. I wasn't sure whether I should go into work or if I'd be able to fix it if I did. Going to the allotment and just digging made me feel calmer, somehow clean.

The snow started about 1600, just a few flurries but enough to leave a thin layer on the ground. I carried on digging, just breaking up the ground more than anything. The last opportunity I think I'll have for a week, heavy snow is forecast, but at least I may have unearthed a few thistle roots and slug eggs. The sky cleared afterwards, and I saw a kestrel hovering in the air above me, just underneath the new moon. Whatever happens, life is still beautiful. Even if I get fired, even if I end up as a mad cat lady living in a caravan somewhere, sans marbles, I'll probably still be able to afford my allotment. Sometimes I dream about selling up, heading up to Scotland and buying an island croft, or spending three years on the National Trust careership gardener scheme and becoming a head gardener somwhere. Secretly, I suspect I'd be rubbish at it.

Burglary!

The shed was broken into the weekend before last - I'm leaving it unlocked now, on two occasions so far the thieves have easily bust their way past the padlock only to turn up their noses in disdain at my grubby wellies and bendy tools. I'm heading down to the police station on wednesday to give a statement to the local PCSO. I'd like to get an allotment watch scheme started - some nice publicity for the local police and hopefully a bit of passing attention too. I've bent the ear of Reg, the allotment representative, a couple of times now. Security is terrible, and the gate is often left unlocked or with the lock left on the combination. I suspect Reg will go along with it just to shut me up. He has been reporting it to the council and relying on them to report it to the local police, but little or nothing has resulted from this. When I discovered the latest break-in I was on my way to see my sister in London, so I asked a couple of friends of mine to pop over if they had time and fix the window, which the thieves had pushed in with an old fence post. My friends were, rather sweetly, quite outraged on my behalf, while I've got to the stage of merely thinking 'meh... here we go again' each time the shed is forced open.