Plodding on

Seven months since I last posted here, so Blogger kindly informs me, as it keeps track of my absence from its clutches. I've lost track of how many about-turns we've done as to whether we keep the allotment or give it up.  For the moment we've decided to stop being so...introspective about it and just get on and grow what we can in the limited time we have available.  Here's a quick tour of the plot in its post-winter state.

First, the brassica cage.  Actually the cage may be our best growing item!  It's stood up to some ferocious gales this winter.  We haven't had any real snow, however, and that's the weak point of any netting-covered structure.  I saw recently in the Harrod catalogue (that's Harrod Horticultural, not Harrods of London) that they've improved on the 'build-a-ball' construction of our cage and now sell a locking system that keeps the poles lodged more securely in the joining units.  Given how much it cost in the first place we're not about to abandon ours for a newer model, but I do have my eye on it for the future. 

Inside the cage from left to right we have kale, which has been a great success and kept us supplied with greens throughout the winter, although some of us more happily than others.  Let's just say that my husband doesn't share the love I have for kale.  Next is a row of what I was convinced was sprouting broccoli but which grew painfully slowly, failed to sprout, and is now flowering.  Then there's a row of something I will reveal in my next post, followed at the right by the leafy stuff which I thought was spring greens.  Really, I must label what I plant rather than thinking I'll remember.
 

Beyond the cage is the leek bed, variety Musselburgh.  They look like all of us at the end of the Scottish winter - a bit tattered, blinking in the stronger light of spring and realising we need to smarten up a bit because people can now see what we look like.
 

Then come two and a bit rows of overwintering onions, variety Senshyu.  They seem to be suffering from that other Scottish affliction, lack of sunlight and warmth.  Can you tell that it's still very cold here, and I'm grumpy about it?  Did you know that in this month's 'Living France' magazine you could buy a 'charming stone property with pigeonnier and pool, private but not isolated, near all amenities' in the Lot for 248,000 Euros?  To the right of the onions is this year's nameless garlic, probably feeling even more grumpy than I am.
 

Back to reality, and some rather late planted onion and shallot sets.  
They've since started to put out green shoots, so fingers crossed that they'll pull away.
 

A little bit of help from a labourer never goes amiss.  Our daughter was home recently from university for a few days and kindly set about weeding the strawberry bed.  This is probably the last year for this bed.  I'm undecided as to whether to take runners from the plants this year or start afresh with another variety.  The fruit hasn't been great, and I'd also like to extend the season with fewer plants of several varieties.  Of course I can't remember the variety I have at the moment, but I'm  sure I will when I start to look at catalogues. 
 

This was our surprise harvest last weekend.  Surprising because I have got into a mind-set of thinking that we are just doing maintenance rather than anything productive.  But we are actually eating what we're growing.  
 

From top of the 'display plank': what was meant to be spring greens turned out to be cauliflower.  Well, it would have been if I'd left it to grow.  There was a miniscule cauliflower head nestled deep inside, about the size of my thumb nail.  The leave were quite tasty steamed however, and made me realise how much waste there is in supermarket cauliflower presentation.

The rhubarb has suddenly forged ahead, and it's delicious.  The leeks are getting to the end of their run, so I'm going to dig up the rest next weekend and freeze them.  And finally the rainbow chard has made it through the winter and is fresh and exuberant, and very tasty steamed and sprinkled with chilli flakes. 

Throughout the winter I haven't felt that I needed to blog about our forays to the plot, but now that I've returned it's interesting how the act of writing seems to solidify and give substance to the scattered bits of activity that have been going on.  Now we just need a bit of warmth so that I can get that other allotment essential out of the shed - the deckchair.  Otherwise I'm going to be seriously tempted by the 'charming stone property', if a bit uncertain about the pigeonnier.  

Anguish and absence

Another long absence - this won't do at all.  I feel I owe some explanation, and it's been due to a combination of anguish (not too strong a word) and absence.

I'll take them in reverse order, but before I get onto absence, note my patriotic breakfast above from way back in July, during the Tour de France.  Blueberries and alpine strawberries from the garden - seems very far away now that we're well into autumn in Scotland. 

So, onto absence.  We've had a busy summer of being welded to our respective work desks, lots of travel to visit elderly parents, and much work at the allotment.  In early June we had a brief trip to France for a walking holiday in the Tarn valley.  We started and ended the trip in the beautiful city of Albi, and of course I had to take in some gardens while we were there.  Very formal and orderly, from the grand to the potager variety.
 

And back to the allotment.  We have committed ourselves to it in a big way this summer, and have enjoyed getting it into more productive order.  At the moment we're dealing with the courgette glut.  Some have escaped to become marrows - you can see the scale in the shot below if you realise that I have size 8 (European 42) feet. 
 

I love the artistic bunching of vegetables.  My husband thinks I'm mad.
 

And our shed has had a makeover - panels of wood replaced to make it watertight for the winter, and recently a bright but tasteful paint job, of which more in a later post.

And the anguish?  As you probably know - inescapable if you live in the UK - tomorrow we face a vote that will decide if Scotland will become independent and the UK split up.  I have found it impossible to have any creative, positive thoughts that would let me blog, but at this point I have to speak up for what I feel, and say that I am deeply upset and depressed at the prospect of losing my British citizenship.  Not only that, I am distressed for the sake of the future generations.  

If the vote goes the wrong way and is in favour of independence I don't know if I will have the heart to return to blogging.  I suppose the consolation with gardening and growing is being able to concentrate on something more eternal than politics and the ebb and flow of empires. 

Garlicking along

In January the annual allotment fee invoice came in, and we had another stocktake about whether we had the time to keep the plot on.  We hadn't got to the end of that when, what seemed like a week later, a red final demand notice came in.  The waiting list for plots near us is very long - between 5 and 7 years - so although we hope not still to be in Edinburgh by that point, we couldn't face giving up and plot and going back on the waiting list.  So here we are, committed for another year and watching the garlic grow.

I planted garlic on 4 January.  By 16 February it was showing green shoots.  When I was at the plot two weeks ago it was higher still, but I didn't get any photos.  I'm just about to go along for a morning's work and will check on its progress then.  Thankfully, despite the late planting we have had some days of frost to help bulb development. 
 

Meantime, potatoes have been chitting away.  Charlotte and Desiree, not too many of either because we want to leave space for more interesting things.  Not that a home grown tattie isn't a delight, but there are other things which cost more and taste of nothing in the supermarket. 
 

And finally - our new weed for this season.  Foxglove seedlings, liberally strewn across the plot by the wild floxgloves on our inherited weed heap/compost pile.  I'll dig a couple up for the garden, but the rest will have to come out.  It seems a shame, but they are definitely a 'plant in the wrong place'.
 

Persuasion

Here's something that might give me some enthusiasm for the plot this year.  Rhubarb compote, at 2 quid a pack!  One of our favourite puddings is stewed rhubarb over Mackie's butterscotch ice cream.  Try it - divine!  With rhubarb for the taking at the allotment we've come to take it for granted.  The prospect of having to buy it is rather horrifying.
 

It's a shed thing

The decision had been made and I was comfortable with it - happy even.  We had rationalised that with parental illness on both sides and the need to travel more frequently to help out in house and garden (and both parental houses have large gardens) our time for allotmenteering was going to be even more squeezed.  Add to that my husband starting a new job, and our wish to get out of Edinburgh more, and everything seemed to add up to a sensible decision not to renew our allotment lease.  

Having made the decision, I tested it out on my emotions when I visited the plot in early December.  What pangs of regret would I feel?  I tried not to dwell on the 'glad to see the back of', such as the endless battle with couch grass, the heavy soil, the feeling of obligation at spending sunny Sundays at the plot instead of out on the Scottish hills.  Perhaps because they were the only things growing, I did feel a pang about leaving the blackcurrant bushes and strawberry plants.  But once home again I returned to my calm, settled conviction that giving up the plot was the right thing to do, and began to plan for weekends away.

And then the gales came.  We dutifully visited the plot afterwards to check the state of the shed roof.  Although we were giving up very shortly, we didn't feel we could hand over a shed that we had let deteriorate through the worst of the winter months.  A section of tar paper had blown off, and it was decided that husband and son would return the following weekend to repair it.

They were out all afternoon, returning after dark.  A good, solid repair had been carried out, and another decision made.  We were keeping the plot for a further year, on the basis that so much investment had been made in infrastructure that we should try to maximise our return.

I sat and thought about the infrastructure.  Blackcurrant bushes?  Strawberry plants?  Two compost bins?  Posts for wires up against which to train non-existent raspberries?  There is nothing else - no paving, no fencing, no greenhouse, no fancy border edging or raised beds.  So I concluded that the only possible 'infrastructure' was the shed, and set about doing a mental U-turn towards planning and sowing.  And perhaps hopefully still some weekends out of Edinburgh.  

Another garden

For the past month, because of my dad's illness, I haven't seen my own garden in daylight, far less the allotment.  Instead we have spent the past five weekends here on Speyside.  So I'm more familiar with the progress of autumn in my dad's garden than in my own.

These photos are from mid-October.  The warm colours and late blooms are fading now, battered by rain and wind, and by the first frost of the year last  night.

 We'll see if the holly berries make it through to Christmas.  The resident flock of sparrows is very partial to them.  Some people net their holly bushes to preserve the berries, but I wouldn't go to those lengths, and certainly not when we're not here all the time to free any birds that might get caught up in the netting.

Dad is now out of hospital, so we may be visiting the allotment this weekend to see how the weeds are faring. 

Summer update - blackcurrants

Despite lack of blogging activity, things have been happening at the allotment.  It's not in a fantastic state, but it's not critical either.

Rather than try to update all at once, I'm embarking on a mini-series of updates.  First up, our bountiful blackcurrants.  Or they would have been if we hadn't gone away for two weeks just at the peak of the crop.  We picked frantically the night before, and I froze 9lbs of berries.  Our little camping chairs provided the perfect way to avoid back strain while picking.

When we returned, the crop was on the ground and the wasps were having a merry time.  I did take another 1.5lbs from the bushes and made a few pots of jam straight away because the fruit was so ripe that it began to spoil once picked.  
 

Difficult to know when to go on holiday as a gardener!  If we'd gone the two weeks before we would have missed the strawberries.  Are just-picked strawberries in smaller quantity worth more than probably unmanageable loads of blackcurrants?  There is complex exchange rate of gardening which I haven't fully worked out yet.

What crops did you miss by going on holiday this year?

Decision made - perhaps

All Spring we've been swaying one way and then the other as we discuss whether to keep on with the allotment.  First of all I was absolutely convinced that we should give it up.  We would have so much more time for all sorts of things we keep meaning to do but never get round to.  Escaping Edinburgh and going walking at weekends.  Staying in Edinburgh and discovering parts we have never visited in 28 years here.  Tidying the loft.  Painting the house.

My conviction was absolute.  Then we went to the plot one glorious May evening, and I wavered.  The next day I swung back to my original gut feel.  The following weekend I sowed lettuce, Swiss chard, beetroot, carrots, spinach, rocket, and veered sharply in the opposite direction. 
 

And so it has continued, and at the moment we are being swayed by a bountiful harvest of strawberries and blackcurrants.
 

We have more lettuce than we can handle.  Our neighbours are resorting to making soup with what we inflict on them.
 

The onions are filling out, and it looks as if we will have a crop worth lifting this year.
 

And even the neglected and weedy pile of earth (a former compost heap/weed dump of the previous plot-holders) has put forth a stunning display of self-seeded foxgloves.
 

For the  moment it seems as if we are staying put for another year.  But we still have to find time to squeeze in our list of 'must-do' and 'nice to do'.  A few more hours each day, and a few more days each weekend would be good.

First deckchairs of the year

Until now it's been a case of keeping moving to keep warm, but yesterday at the plot it was warm enough to take a break from digging and soak up the sun.  All of 10 degrees, but it felt blissful after a winter that has seemed never-ending.

Not much blogging has been done, but a fair amount of digging.  The blessing of this cold Spring has been that the weeds haven't got going, so digging the ground over hasn't been as hard as it might have been.  Hard enough, tho, and the ground has been hard through lack of rain. 

Below, the strawberry bed in mid-clean.  It's finished now, and plants dressed with sulphate of potash.  Couch grass seems to love strawberry plants, twining itself around their roots and popping up in mid plant.  I don't doubt that it will return to the fray.
 

The bare ground below holds the newly-planted potatoes.  Two rows of Red Duke of York, two of Mayan Gold (hoping that they will live up to Monty Don's praise of them), and one of Ratte, a salad potato.  The tubers had been chitting for so long that I'm concerned that they will be over-chitted - they had started to wrinkle up - so I hope they will get going and grow.

We have had a paltry harvest of brassicas.  The purple and white sprouting broccoli has still to sprout, and frost has killed most of the calabrese.  However some new shoots of calabrese have survived, as has the purple kale and savoy cabbages.  I'm in two minds about the purple kale.  It does look lovely as a plant, and steamed with a plateful of green lentils, but it made a bizarre addition to my traditional Scotch broth, turning the whole thing a pale lilac.

As for the leeks, they have sulked all winter.  I'm making the best of it by thinking of them as gourmet baby leeks.

There has been curiously little sign of life at the allotment site over the past few weeks.  The weather has been fair, if bitterly cold, and it seems as if people are reluctant to emerge from hibernation.  Everything feels suspended, and it's been difficult to think ahead to a time when winter will end.  When the temperature rose during the night yesterday, with rain and wind, I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder in 'The Long Winter', when the chinook started to blow.

A hazy shade of winter

A number of song and book titles/lines sprang to mind for this post, among them 'All the leaves are brown', and '50 shades of grey brown'.  The problem with the second was that I anticipated a spike in spam traffic directing me to sites I really wasn't interested in.  In the end Simon and Garfunkel won over The Mammas and The Pappas, perhaps inspired by Dancing Beastie's 'The dangling conversation' post. 

So here's a stocktake of  a predominantly brown allotment, with a few tinges of green.

First, the bed that was reclaimed from under years of corrugated iron.  Mostly fallen leaves, but with worrying signs of creeping buttercup infestation.  Beside it is the previous plot-holder's weed dump, now mostly earth but given to springing to life with a lively array of weeds.  The year before last it was couch grass; this past season, out of nowhere, it was a fine crop of foxgloves.  We left these as bee-attractants, but it will need to be cleared soon and the earth sieved over existing beds.
 

Interestingly almost weed-free is the bed that had an application of home-produced compost in the autumn.  Spot the rogue garlic shoot.  The light grey substance is the indestructible remains of teabags.  We go through a whopping amount of teabags in our family.  The mesh bags which tear if you so much as look at them in the wrong way when making a cup of tea seem as if they'll have a half life of several hundred thousand years once composted. 
 

Well, this is pretty dull, isn't it?  You know you're a nerdy allotment person when you can write about a bit of bare earth with some grassy tufts here and there.  This is where our failed potato crop 'grew' last summer.  I have a suspicion that there are still some potatoes down there somewhere, and that this bed will benefit from a serious digging over in the spring.
 

Strawberry plants looking rather sorry for themselves, and with the ever-present couch grass making a come-back. 
 

This weed-stopper cover has been on since early autumn.  Who knows what's underneath?
 

Miniature leeks, anyone?  Probably put in too late, these have failed to thrive over the winter.  They may have a 'late surge', to quote Bill Nighy in 'Love Actually'.

Here's a surprise - something growing!  Purple sprouting broccoli and kale are holding out well under the anti-pigeon netting.  No sign of anything purple sprouting yet, and our life has not been in the mood for kale, but we may yet get something edible.
 

Not so with my eagerly anticipated calabrese, now blasted by frost.  A reminder that we are in Scotland, and that a covering of fleece might have been wise.