'Secret' Gardens

One way to increase your gardening knowledge is to go on a course, which I have done. Today. 'Practical Gardening in the Walled Garden, Meersbrook Park' for its full title. Six of us have joined up. We need another four for it to run. If you are reading this and interested, sign up now!
If it doesn't, then I have learned some things already from today. I may struggle to write them down however, as my 20 month old daughter has been inserting her tiny fingers in the keyboard of the laptop, and the 'a' key is dodgy. I'm typing very carefully but the the key keeps falling off, or not working.

I never knew that aspirin came from the Willow, or that you could treat bruises with Comfrey. I feel a bit daft admitting to that, as I'm old enough to know. I just thought it was a nitrogen fixer.

We'll be planning a herbacious border, doing a winter pruning, taking hand wood cuttings and naming grden plants using scientific names (it says here). I'm interested in veg and herbs primarily but this is all transferable knowledge.

So we'll be learning about composting and herbs, a bit of veg and studying weeds - otherwise known as 'plants you don't want just there.' Didn't know that did you?

Meersbrook Walled garden is run by volunteers, who took it over just four years ago after it was lain to waste. Hard to believe when you look at it now. The Japanese Garden is wonderful, and when you ask anyone there about it, you can feel the love that has been put into it.

After a bit of weeding, I was allowed to take home with me, an Astrantia, for my allotment. I shall sit it by the Lemon Balm on the border tomorrow.



Astrantias are superb perennials for under trees, on a streambank or in a moist border.

While botanical Latin tells us a great deal about a plant, few varietal names are as illuminating. The outstanding Astrantia major subsp involucrata 'Shaggy' is an exception. Instead of displaying the usual crisp symmetry and sharp points, the bracts are pinched in the middle and much cut, drawing out into wide green and white stars. Shaggy perfectly describes its unkempt look and rascally charm.

Carol Klein in the Telegraph, where they say you can buy one plant for about £7. I just got mine for nowt!

R.I.P Tomatoes

I couldn't agree more, M. As I was digging the black stalky remains of the tomatoes out to be burned I felt gutted. 'Every silver lining has a cloud', as M would say. We have agreed that planting in pots or bags is the way to go for next time.

However, the last of the summer sunshine has lifted our spirits and provided us with a crop of potatoes to last the rest of the year. Baked on the barbecue, less than a minute out of the ground, they were the best I've ever tasted.

There is still a lot of hard work ahead, but I'm looking forward to it.

Blight and Barbecues - An Existential Quandary

Nearing the end of today's spell on the plot, watching quicksilver droplets running over brassica leaves after their leap from the watering can's rose, I can't help it when my mind begins to ponder the allotment cycle from the point-of-view of the plants.

Does the blighted tomato really feel any different about its ultimate fate than the potato, the corn cob or the courgette? For each they have the same destiny, ripped from the ground and tossed onto the fire. Does it matter whether it is the Pink Fir Apple, given a jacket of tinfoil and placed on the barbecue next to a fine pork sausage? Or whether it is the blight-ridden tomato, its still green skin bubbling and blistering in the fierce flames of the brazier?

Ahem ... hem ... it really has been hot today and I forgot my hat.

No way, hose.

Now I've been inspired to post again, I'm pleased to be able to offer an (un)guided tour of the plot for comparison with the very first photo on here. It's pretty astounding, and motivating, to see how frightening this plot looked.
This is only the second post in a year, two days apart. I'm so chuffed at what we've achieved I can't wait to show off about it. But I'm aware that I need to check myself before I start peacocking about. What I see as amazing, other plot holders will see a laughable lack of reading and experience. That may be so, but considering this is our very first year of proper production, we've been lucky.




The first bed is an extended root bed, which we (thought we'd) put parsnips in. We had oriental poppies instead. After they'd finished, we took them out, saved the heads and found five sweet potatoes there! Don't ask. So we staked them and are now waiting to see what happens. The upper half of that had chioggias and golden beets, some of which were a nice size, and fascinating. Why don't they sell these in the shops? The others, including the golden variety, have been a bit small. Further up the swedes have come on nicely despite only one thinning in a small area.

Then there are the Lady Balfours and Pink Fir Apples. They are looking tired now and are ready for picking. The first two I dug up were great.

The onions, garlic and shallots have gone and I've put mustard on as a green manure/mulch.

Some sunflowers, flanked by boxed carrots. We've been told that Sheffield soil does not support carrots - and we believed them. In between are redcurrants and goose berries.

Then the brassicas. I'm holding my breath for them.

Followed by peas, beans (of different varieties - my neighbour and I chose them during a heavy wine session and I forget which), with sweetcorn mixed in. On the edges is courgette. What is this white stuff on it?

Under the make-shift poly tunnel are the chillies, which look OK. Then there are the tomatoes. Oh dear, what happened? They were looking very good last week and now they have some kind of blight or rot. Can any of the fruit be saved?

Beyond that is where the shed of doom once stood.

Our last bounty has just been increased by one courgette, a floating potato and another fist sized swede, illustrated here. The huge marrow isn't ours. We don't like marrow. It was given to us by a friend, who doesn't like marrow.

The garlic is our first attempt at plaiting.

Plotting not publishing!

I know, it's been a long time since writing. But since my neighbour boldly agreed to take this on with me and M, we have come a long way with the allotment - and just because we haven't been writing, doesn't mean we haven't been working!

It's hard to know where to begin again. We were literally wading through weeds that were taller (and thicker) than we were. I still have a lot to read, and learn about gardening.

We (according to the allotment office) are still only cultivating about 30% of the plot. Since the last post, we have, believe it or not, still been in the process of clearing and digging and removing vast swathes of carpet. I wrote to them, after their second letter saying it was 'generally unkempt, etc etc) politely detailing our hard work and albeit minor successes. I sometimes don't know what they want. I know at the moment there is a high demand for plots, but surely, addressing this doesn't mean lavishing negative attention on people who have had a plot for a mere few years. Our plot had been left for years and years, according to our allotment neighbours before we got it.

Every week since our last post, through wind, hail, rain and bleakly sunny days until this summer, me and my neighbour have toiled, sometimes with our babies strapped to our backs, to get this plot into shape.

I never would have thought, that this plot would change my life so much. For a start, having a baby made me more, not less determined to make this work. Maybe if E hadn't have come along, it might just have been another failed project. M of course, couldn't do a week day as he works full time, and we just seemed too tired for anything at the weekend.

My neighbour H has made all the difference to that scenario, and her son has been company for E. At first, when they were only about four months old, they wouldn't get out of their buggies at all. If we were lucky, we could park them side by side and they would sleep a good two or three hours. That's how we did all the hard work. We did six hour shifts up there, from 10am till 4pm, stopping for picnic lunches, and taking it in turns to babysit while the other pottered and plotted the schedule for next time.

Now, we can't keep them in the buggies at all. But now, there is a path! Now, there are beets and brassicas, potatoes and peas, courgettes and carrots, tomatoes and er, swedes.

We have had failures - oriental poppies grew where we planted parsnips. How did that happen?

The peas have had a bit of pea moth. Not enough though, to stop my little E from picking and eating a pea straight from the pod. How happy am I, knowing that my child actually knows where peas come from?

And the other day, I gave her a blackberry. She popped it in her mouth and said 'lovely', for the first time.

Raspberry

I can't tell you how honoured I am to have been invited to contribute to this blog - thank you sooo sooo much M. You are so very kind.

Seriously, I'm happy to be starting on the allotment again after all this time. Even though it was all your fault, M, for us not being able to go up and carry on what we started all that time ago, I can forgive you (just the once) and I'm looking forward to arguing about something different with you.

First though, we have to go up, harvest the bumper crop of rasp and goose berries, and reclaim the tools from somewhere beneath all that horrific bramble. We've got a babysitter for Saturday (my dad and step mum). Hopefully when H and C can get started, it won't look too daunting - and that will be their reward for being brave enough to say yes to this folly.

Or we could leave a bit of bramble for them...

OK, so let's start again ...

Alright, admittedly we've let things slide with the allotment. This is in fact the first post for more than a year, but we have had a very good reason. We are now the proud parents of little E, a beautiful girl who has been filling up more than enough of our time until now.

We have, however, more good news. We're in negotiations with a couple of neighbours, H and C, who are also new parents of little boy G, to start working the plot together. They have been wanting to get down to some serious growing and, like us, have nowt but a yard behind their house. We all went and took a look at the plot last Saturday and they've agreed in theory to take it on with us which is great as we stand a much better chance of doing something with the plot with regular help, rather than the now and then help we've had and very much appreciated from my parents and brother and D's mum.

We also have something we can harvest! Yes, even though we've done sweet nothing for sixteen months! Two of the unidentified bushes have turned out to be raspberry and gooseberry which is brilliant. The raspberry has started to get a little unruly so when we start to take control of the plot again, we'll get it under more strict supervision.

Anyway, the shed of doom's days are numbered. I've already started looking for a new fortress of solitude*!

* More commonly listed on websites as a "8' x 10' Apex Double Door shed".