Bit by bit

A scant hour was all the time I had at the weekend for getting to the allotment. I did swither as to whether I should go, but I did, and was glad of it. By the time I walked there and back I had 40 minutes left for digging. The great blessing of this cold winter is that even the weeds have been stopped in their tracks, but that can't last much longer. So the obvious task to tackle first was the mess of dead, frosted red clover. It hasn't rained for weeks, and the withered plants were dry and stringy. But I dug and chopped and dug again, and cleared a patch that looks as if a bit of progress is being made.


The drought of March has broken at last, a little ahead of Chaucer's timing of 'Aprille with his shoures soote'. I'll bet those weeds are even now planning their takeover.

Skywatch Friday - corrugated sky

The clouds were low over Edinburgh yesterday, with a corrugated effect over the allotment site that I pass on my way to work. I thought they matched the corrugated iron that for some reason seems to collect on allotments. We're desperately trying to get rid of the stuff we inherited with our plot. I have decided that this will be the year that it goes. Watch this space.

More skies from around the world are at Skywatch Friday .

Beginning, middle and end

The first spears of the autumn-planted garlic mark the beginning of the allotment year for me. The autumn variety needs frost to get going, so I'm hoping for a bumper crop from this frosty winter.

In the middle are the autumn-planted Japanese onions, standing like troopers through all the frost and snow. I think I'm meant to be feeding them around now to kick start further growth, but I have no allotment time for the next couple of weeks. Let's hope they realise they're in Scotland and still have a bit of the winter left.


And coming to an end are the Red Duke of York potatoes which we didn't have time to lift in the autumn, and have taken a chance with leaving in the ground. Amazingly they're mostly unaffected by the frost, with only one bad tuber in every three or so shaws, and a good yield all round.


Right at the end, in terms of having had it, is the red clover sown in the summer as green manure. Time to dig it in now. It's suppressed the weeds beautifully, and I'll use it again in preference to field beans which allowed weed growth and were then a pain to dig in.

Tender

Cold February days are for dreaming of things growing. And who better to set you dreaming than Nigel Slater. "Just listen to this", he writes. "... a supper of golden pumpkin with a crisp crumb-crust flecked with parsley and garlic; a dish of emerald cabbage leaves with shards of sizzling ginger; a crumbling soft-pastried tart of leeks, cream and cheese; a bright carrot chutney on a mound of ivory-coloured rice to make your lips prickle."

Thank you, family, for my Christmas present.

The Heap (or, Ethical Dilemma)

The last real work done at the allotment was way back in mid December, on a day of fog and damp. Then after a month's gap I visited briefly a couple of weekends ago and that will have to do for the next few weeks while other parts of life have to be attended to. But all the while I've been looking forward to working on the next stage of dismantling The Heap, the huge weed pile that we inherited with the plot and have only added to over the years.

Removal of The Heap has been a problem. There is no communal green waste facility at our site, unlike other sites in the city. The large waste container is explicitly NOT for green waste. We don't burn our weeds, as we suffer at home from the acrid smoke blowing from a neighbouring allotment site. Some plotholders seem to regard a smoking bonfire as a necessary part of every visit, even tho the waste is too green ever to produce flame. Contrary to site regulations (oh yes, I know these regulations by heart!) they leave the heaps smouldering when they go home at the end of their stint. It's a real nuisance for those of us who live beside allotment sites. Smouldering bonfires mean having to take in washing hanging on the line, unless of course you like the tang of smoke in all your clothes.

So how to free up the ground occupied by The Heap, which would give us half a bed more of growing space? An appeal to the Council's allotments officer brought the concession that we could relocate green waste to marginal woodland ground at the borders of the site. Great, we thought. We'll do it slowly and spread it well around so that it doesn't impact too much on the existing grass. However, we've not been the only ones with the same problem, and not the only ones offered the same solution. During the autumn we noticed that there was wholescale dumping going on in the woodland ground, not just of green waste (of which there were mini Himalayas building up), but also of unwanted wood, brick and corraugated iron. We could either hold back on our green waste disposal while everyone else piled in, or get a move on. Civic togetherness is not a particular feature of our site, so we didn't hold out much hope for a reasoned, let's work this problem out together approach.

Hence my stint of moving the growing part of The Heap while permission to relocate was still available. Sometimes I feel I should have been a bit more principled, and held off while the issue was sorted out. Mostly I feel that I was doing what I had permission to do, and doing it properly. All the same, I didn't expect to face ethical dilemmas over a compost heap.

The photo at the top of this post shows The Heap after a couple of hours' work. Last April, before we'd done any relocation, it stood tall and proud. Over the course of the summer, before we stopped adding weeds, it began to bulge out from its iron walls.


Here it is once scalped:


A pleasant surprise was the cache of Charlotte potatoes, probably grown from a potato I'd thought too small to be worth taking home.


Now 'all' that remains to be done is to sieve out the residual couch grass roots from the rich, crumbly compost and spread it over the beds. I'm keen to get on with it, and to return this part of the plot to growing something other than weeds and a few rogue potatoes.

Greenhouse maintenance

Thank you to all who have left kind messages. Things are now improving, but with quite a way to go yet.

The greenhouse above is my Dad's, in the last few days of Britain's Big Freeze. Day-time temperatures on Speyside were around minus 13 C, and snow depth in our little pocket 18 inches to 2 feet. Since we were weather-proofing Dad's house, we had to weather-proof the greenhouse too. My husband is standing on a mound of snow that he's cleared previously from the roof.

In the shots below you can see the layers of snow. Not surprisingly, given the way the snow has fallen, the Cairngorm ski area has avalanche warnings in force. Although today the ski roads are blocked by 15 feet deep snow drifts. Lots of wry comments going around about there being no snow when you want it, and then it all comes at once.

Pausing the blog

Family illness means I'll be away from blogging for a while.