A dream allotment day

When we got an allotment in my minds eye I saw how it would be - all happy grafting. We would become a beautiful cheerful gardening family heading to the allotment at weekends producing bountiful veg and of course the sun always shining. Each one of us would become attuned with nature and the great outdoors.

It could never be a drag.

I would never be seen shouting loudly when at the patch. There would be no need to constantly tell Owen "stop it". He would never be bored but entertained by all the possible jobs he could do. My baby would be gurgling happily not wailing when he found himself at the patch. Oh yes and John would not try to forget we need to visit the patch, but skip there happily, knowing exactly what needed to be done.

Then today happened.

The weather looked pants so my hopes of going to the allotment were small. Owen had a birthday party to attend in the middle of the day so when we got back I nearly fell over when John suggested we go. It was trying to rain but we thought to persevere and the wind was whipping across the town so not too promising. Huw did not murmur as we arrived at the site and sat in the pushchair happily and yes he was awake (although I'm thinking to blame the drugs he is taking - antibiotics - as he has been unwell on and off since I returned to work. I must look up the sedation effects of Augmentin as that's all that's different about his routine at the moment!) At the plot Owen immediately got stuff out of the storage box to do. Have I walked into a parallel universe?

At the plot next door our neighbours were at work with their young son, I've not seen them for many months. They were struggling to entertain him. Dangerously I suggested to Owen to get his Tonka truck out and go and play with him. To be a kind bigger boy. Knock me down with a feather. My son put his angel hat on and did exactly this and they played happily together until we left for home. Huw continued to be chilled and watched on contentedly from his pushchair.

We have strimmed some more of the paths and we have dug some more of the beds, finally the plot is starting to regain a sense of shape. I have hope that we will be well ahead for the spring because of all the autumn digging we intend to do. The plans for next year seem so possible now if this ambience lasts into further visits.

I also had a good chat with our neighbours and know which potato variety they found the best this year and what they plan to grow in 2009.Such a satisfying day, pinch me for I may be dreaming.

Trug buggy

I mentally braced myself and we all went down to the patch yesterday evening after tea. With the heat of the day I thought it best to disregard the kids normal bedtimes, a family walk would do us all good.

Well things were not so bad.

Positives

• sweetcorn and leeks are doing well
  
• courgettes are flowering
• recently sown chard and beetroot are now little seedlings
• I have a little green tomato on some flowers on my plant (although it does not appear to be living up to its big boy name)

Negatives:

• kale and khol rabi seeds don't seem to be doing much germination
• my foot tall sunflower seedling (the last one standing from the intrafamily competition) has been taken out. So do we have lumberjack slugs? It appeared to have been felled then eaten. If its rabbits there is little other evidence of their activity
  
• Cabbage are still their but do look a little ropey. So are down for some TLC this week.
• a notice has appeared on the site about security and recent thefts of produce

We also managed to harvest some chard, some beetroot and few more broad bean pods. As I was expecting little from the visit I hadn't thought to bring anything to collect things in. So I balenced them on the buggy roof until I remembered Owen had a sand bucket in the storage box which I could use to walk them home.

What needs doing this week ( I don't know if I should post a list again but hear goes)

• plant out purple spouting brocoli and brussel sprout plants. I had to buy these yesterday to replace the ones I had grown from seed that I then killed through neglect, this last hot weekend amounted to the final nail in their coffin
• dig up the potatoes
• clear the onions
• sow another row of pak choi
• strim the weeds

With Owen for some holiday fun, another job that needs doing is to repair Scott the scarecrow and make a friend for him. We can then enter the site scarecrow competition, as we did not manage to do the marrow growing for the marrowthon.

Cabbage and Bran

Yum, I hear you say. Was that tonight's dinner? Do you as a family not worry about methane pollution?

I managed a rapid visit with Huw today to the patch, his chilled mood was not likely to last long so I knew I had to be quick and purposeful on my visit. With so much to do and so little going well, what was I to focus on? I made a choice and left the house with a pot of young cabbage plants riding on the roof of the buggy they can go in next to my improving red cabbages. The green cabbage had a speedy ride to the site. Then they were quickly planted out with Huw watching all the activity with an air of increasing boredom. Mum was trying hard to keep up an interesting commentary. "And now we need to water them before we can go home as they need a drink" "One final thing Huw, we need to sprinkle them with bran". His eyes seemed to widen with concern "bran?" and he leaned forward in the buggy. Wow! brown snow was descending as mum flounced around the cabbages.

Death to the slugs she cackled.

This had better work as all my hopes are placed in my cabbage basket. Frankly I have no idea how you should administer the bran.

Owen and his bucket full of snails

My idealistic and relaxing visit to the plot today was to have both boys engaging with mother nature and the great outdoors. Reality is that it just turned into the usual chaotic event accompanied by plenty of screaming. It's not as if I go along without any planning. Today I thought we could walk to the patch giving Huw the chance to nod off in the push chair so that I can get on with things when at the patch. Owen was to take his scooter to make the walk more fun. We could spend about an hour there and come back for a slightly later lunch. Nevertheless I went armed with baby food, crisps and drinks for both.

As soon as we hit the allotment site Huw awoke from his slumber. Perhaps he has allotment aversion syndrome. I knew that the game was up at this point but pressed on across the site with both boys.

I gave Owen one of his sand buckets and asked him to collect snails and to see what he could find, he is quite keen on this job. At this point he announces that he needs a wee ( I let him use the back of the patch he likes to mark his territory regularly!). The next bombshell is that he needs to poo. I know this is just a tactic to get us to leave, so distract him with the crisps. Meanwhile baby Huw is reaching a crescendo in crying and the biscuit he is chewing is not pacifying him (teething eh, an irritable phase !?!).

At this point in time all I have in my hands is a hoe I start thinking that perhaps I should impale myself upon it. So today I have managed to loosen and chop some of the new weed growth near my recent plantings it doesn't really add up to anything that puts a dent into the long list of things that need doing.

Yes I call it quits (random thoughts of returning later alone are emerging) and we leave.

What of the snails? I here you say. Owen did collect quite a few. Then he released them at the back of the patch, so they'll be back!

Cement Mixer

No, don't panic we haven't turned the plot into a hideous patio. Owen has just moved his (formally his fathers) Tonka cement mixer down to the plot. He excitedly pushed it all the way across the site. He filled it's mixer with dandelion heads that he picked for me, the challenge I set him was that he wouldn't be able to pick enough to fill it. Today was just so cold grey and miserable that even with the cement mixer for company Owen got fed up very quickly. John & I managed to dig some more and made enough progress to move another piece of the landscaping fabric to another part of the plot.

I've come up with the plan of not digging the section that we plant the butternut squash in, I thought that I would just dig a hole about a foot across for each of the plants (about 9 of them currently) leaving the space in between undug. I would then cover the area with a thin layer of organic mulch, then plant the squash through the landscaping fabric. It should prevent them from drying out and supress the weeds in theory. Will this work? I have to be pragmatic now as we are not going to be able to dig as much area as we need in the time we have got.

Slight disaster this evening I managed to knock the celeriac seeds off the window sill, I will have to sow some more in the next day or so. Also plan to start off my dwarf beans in the next few days.

Oh, and the answer to my last post and the weed question is Cow Parsley, I think.

Scarecow

The most long awaited day came today for the patch - installation of a scarecrow. Owen has been anticipating the final assembly for weeks. We had the head done but we needed to create a body and yesterday we stuffed some old clothes with straw. This morning we just had to attach the bits to the stake. (Owen felt that the cross linked our scarecrow to the easter story and he wandered around the house with it pretenting to be Jesus for a while - I blame the school!)

The first picture shows the scarecrow waiting in the kitchen to go this morning and the second picture shows the scarecrow in pride of place this afternoon. It looked crazy as it travelled in the front of the clio to the allotments. Yes, it does have a name but it is a random combination of 'bugs' and 'scott' so we will wait and see what emerges over the next few days.

As well as putting the scarecrow in place I managed to sow a row of beetroot. Also put the shallots in which I now have read are rather late (ho hum) no choice today was when I could do it!

Good news my 'freecyled' artichokes are starting to germinate on the windowsill, two strong looking seedlings are showing through.

Dandelions

I have just discovered a simple way to challenge a five year old on an allotment patch. Ask him to pick as many yellow dandelion heads as he possibly can. What a fantastic job he made of it and at least they won't go on to seed across the patch. Saturday there were only a few dandelion heads but today they seemed to be everywhere its amazing what a couple of warm days after the rainy spell can do to weeds. You should see the troublesome area (round some old tree stumps) is now becoming a mass of nettles and the 'carroty' weeds (whatever they are - see earlier post). We are going to have to come up with a plan for this area soon so any suggestions grateful recieved, I will have to post some pictures for comments in the future.
The baby was less cooperative today as we visited the patch at a different time to usual, so he had his first alfresco meal at the allotments (mmm apple puree). Thankfully we had taken some old plastic patio chairs to the patch these make breastfeeding much more comfortable and luckily none of the old fellas were around to be shocked.
Managed to plant a short double row of broad beans today with my little helper which was great as he really concentrated on what he was doing.
John and I took some time to discuss some changes to how we are going to manage the plot, which includes digging the areas we covered and mulched over winter and then mulching the areas we are trying to dig currently as this would be easier work. Perhaps? More of this to come in later posts.