What About Your Carbon Footprint?

Slight soul-destroying moment yesterday on the allotment, when it was demonstrated that technology is better than graft....

What with starting the new job next week I took the opportunity to get onto the allotment on a Thursday afternoon. There's still a ton of digging to be done and it won't do itself. I first of all popped into The Woolpack, and anyone watching would have thought that I was reading the paper and having a pint. No way, Jose! I was consuming what would shortly become compost accelerant and reading what would very soon become compost - it's a tough job but someone's got to do it.

After adding an insulating layer of bubble wrap to the compost bin, I got stuck into the digging. The ground I'm on now is undulating and with widely varying soil for such a relatively small area.

I guess the raised areas are where last year's potatoes were grown, and the compacted strip is where last year's gardener walked up and down to tend them. It was bloomin' hard work again. And then Neighbour Paul arrived and started attacking his patch with a rotovator....

He went through it like a hot knife through butter, while I heaved and panted and puffed etc. Fantastic time and labour saving idea, but not for me (not yet anyway). I accused him of ruining his carbon footprint and he had the good grace not to ridicule my sluggish attempts at soil preparation....after an hour he'd done most of his garden. He switched the infernal machine off (it had also ruined my peace and quiet, dammit!) and yelled "Giving the ozone layer a break now!" You can see Paul and his infernal engine in the background in the top picture.

So I spent 2 1/2 hours grafting yesterday, and enjoyed it. Next visit will be at the weekend I expect, the now-regular pre-pint Sunday morning session.

Worms And Bindweed

Right, the first stretch of ground is now dug over. And it yielded lots of a certain nasty weed and quite a few gardener-friendly critters....

There was a lot of bindweed in the patch I've just finished digging. It's - apparently - a right bugger to get rid of. Callum told me a while ago to chuck it out while you dig. Old Ted echoed his theory in the pub today, adding helpfully that he has seen it as far as 18 inches down. So, the "admin patch" is now covered with strands of bindweed which I will have to gather, isolate, dry, and burn.

It's not all bad though. For every clump of bindweed found, I unearthed a lovely juicy worm. These were all picked up and put in the bucket, and later on added into the compost bin. I know that worms will be attracted from the bottom of the bin, but adding a few in the top won't do any harm. I also dug up a worm that I christened King Of Worms (KOW). As you can see from the picture taken with KOW on the blade of my spade, it's a whopper! It might be nearly as long as the blade if stretched out (I didn't do that though!).

The lovely people at the Woolpack pub have let me have their veg peelings, and these were added for the first time today. They made a good layer on top of the shredded paper just underneath - brown/green equals success so they say! With added worms my bin should soon be off to a good start.

On the subject of compost/veg/heat.....today I met my allotment neighbour, a lovely bloke called Paul. After he'd gone home, a small heap of material in the middle of his garden burst into flames! I was amazed. I know that this stuff generates heat but I didn't know that it would be enough to start a bonfire on an overcast, damp Sunday.

The final picture this time is The Shed. I believe it is the most delapidated shed on our allotments. Maybe even on any allotment, anywhere? See the redundant hinges, no longer attached to the door. Which is held in place with a metal tube. I like it! Have you seen a better example of an allotment shed?

Seeds!

I was given a tip-off by Old Bob that Woolworth’s are currently doing a BOGOF on seeds (if you aren’t sure what that means think Safestyle Windows adverts and an annoying prat in a bad costume - “You buy one, you get one free, I said you buy one, you get one free”). So off I plodded through the sub-zero afternoon gloom, shopping list in hand.

Actually it really was freezing through The Walks, as the frost was melting off the trees by that time and it seems like it was sleeting large, painful blobs of icy gloop on everyone below. So I suffered for the sake of our garden, I truly am a modern, horticultural Captain Oates (“Lads, I’m just popping out to pick up some John Innes Number 6”).

Old Bob was right, and I ended up with 10 ticks on my list…..total cost was just over £8, and when I added up the individual packets later it would have been just over £17 without the offer. I think I’ll be pushing a Stella in Bob’s direction next time I’m in The Woolpack.

The one vegetable that I have been looking for a particular variety of is Runner Beans. It’s all because I somehow got talking about gardening in the waiting room at the dentist last week while waiting for my annual dental MOT….the lovely old boy I was chatting with could not praise the Runner Beans known as “White Lady” highly enough, so that’s what I decided to grow. Woolies didn’t have any of these but Wilkinson’s did (mind you, they cost £2.99 for 50 seeds), so if you’re after this variety you know where to go!

This morning I also asked the Wednesday Gardeners on the radio a few questions, and got some good advice:

Q - What can we do on the allotment in the next couple of weeks?

A - Onion sets and shallots can go in any time from now. Get your seed potatoes chitting somewhere dry, as soon as possible. Prepare as much of the soil as you can.

Q - Should we start our vegetable seeds in pots or trays indoors now, or sow them straight into the ground later on?

A - Things like beans, peas, the “legumes” can be started in pots now if you like, and transferred into the ground later on. Things like parsnips, carrots etc (the root veg) should go straight into the ground as moving them will lead to the shape and strength being affected.

Q - When should we start sunflowers, as we want to hold a sunflower sweepstake in the local pub?

A - Start them in pots at the end of February, and plant them out at the end of April. For the biggest plants use a variety called “Russian Giant”.

Good advice Gardeners, thanks!

3 Centimetres Of Ice On My Butt

My first hands-on Sunday on our allotment. There was 3 centimetres of ice on the right hand water butt, chilly!


First job was transporting ten bags of horse pooh to our allotment, which was actually hard work. Equine doo-dah is heavy! The new “barra” did the job though, and soon I had the start of a Norfolk poppoflake mountain. We filled ten bags at Tilney (well, “we” is not quite right!), but one of them split inside our trusty Ford Fiesta……never mind, that bag has made the basis of our compost levels in the big black bin. In the photos, the twigs you see in the foreground are raspberry bushes. Honest. Yes they are. Above is before digging and pooh mountain, below is after.



After unloading our horse cack I set about digging. Hard work. I was briefly worried when someone let off Chinese New Year fireworks, at noon. The digging was good though, any worms I unearthed were lobbed into the compost bin, and a few big pieces of crockery were removed too. The first section is now partly dug.

In time, Shouty the Cockerel yelled “Go To Get A Beeeeeeer”. I initially heard it as “Cock A Doodle Dooo”, but on closer listening Shouty was telling me to go for a pint.

Horse Pooh!

Long Live Freecycle!

I made an appeal for horse manure which we can set aside to rot for a year then use to improve our soil for 2009, and had several offers. Cheers! Today we went to collect our first ten bags from Tilney, halfway between Lynn and Wisbech. Thanks a million to Anderson and family (and horses of course), you've got our pooh-pile off to a flying start, with a promise of more!

Halfway through filling the first bag, the reality of getting up close and personal to a mountain of horse cack lost it's appeal for Sam, and he bravely retreated to the car to listen to the radio/CD while shouting the occasional word of advice out of the tailgate, and singing, alternately, the Banana Splits theme tune and Ride Of The Valkyries. Education (even the way I does it) is a marvellous thing!

The pic is the plop mountain that we've been given access to.

Installing The Compost Bin

On Friday 15 February we took our newly acquired compost bin to the allotment, and dug it into the ground a little so that it doesn't blow away before it contains enough material to anchor it to the ground. As you can see from the first pic, our transport arrangements caused a certain degree of merriment amongst fellow pedestrians and passing drivers, but we got to our plot intact, having laughed all the way there.

We picked a spot then marked the edge of the composter before digging out a few inches of soil, placing the bin in the resulting hole, then replacing the soil and stamping it down firmly around the outside edge. A very successful operation! Will the rest of our allotment adventure be so easy? We made the acquaintance of a group of three gardeners who share a nearby plot, the unusual thing being that they were 13 years old and have been working their plot for ten years! Fantastic.

So, job done, we started for home, but then noticed a cockerel crowing like the clappers somewhere on the allotments. We went off to find him and located his shed, which he shares with at least one other Bloke Chicken, several hens, and some pigeons. Typically, the noisy bugger (named "Shouty The Cockerel" by Sam) wouldn't pose for a photo, but a couple of his lady-friends did, no doubt hoping that it would be their first step on the ladder to the London Fashion (For Chickens) Week.

p.s. the big fat ugly lump leaning on the compost bin is me, Sam's Daddy.

Measuring The Plot

On Tuesday 12 February we took our trusty tape measure (star of the Lego Men Zooming Game) to measure how much land we had to cultivate. At one end there's a kind of "admin" area, with a delapidated shed and a small area that we will use for other things (such as sitting in deck chairs for a tea break). So our cultivatable (is that a word?) area is 24.5 metres by 8 metres, a fair size it seems to me. The far end 3 metres will be Sam's to do with what he will.

And on that note we headed off the allotment and towards town to look around The Mart.

Welcome To Our Allotment!

We took on an allotment in beautiful, downtown King's Lynn recently - this is our Allotment Blog. Welcome!