Christmas Comes Early (Hoe, Hoe, Hoe)

Bad day for the 2-Sox allotment....

Things started off great with the trip to the garden centre with Old Bob. He'd won a competition on the radio and bagged himself a £100 voucher for Bamber's Garden Centre near Wisbech. As he’s our Horticultural Advisor General (self-appointed) he offered the voucher to me for £50, and I bit his hand off. Last Thursday I visited Bamber’s, pen and notepad in hand, and made a list of things to buy, and duly returned with Old Bob yesterday morning. I acquired:

2 X packets of radish seeds
20 X 5ft canes
30 X 4ft green canes
6 X 6ft stakes
5 X arty-farty bird scarers
1 X hand fork
1 X Sam-size watering can
50 X 450mm plant sticks
1 X 3-tier mini-greenhouse
1 X stone cat ornament
40m fleece
20m fruit cage protection

This all came to £111, in effect costing me £61, and when I totted up the pre-discount price (most of the items were marked as half-price or less) it should have been about £195. A nice 69% discount!

So back to King’s Lynn, and we took some of the bigger items straight to Plot 1265. I was looking forward to Old Bob seeing the progress so far. But when we eventually got there it was an utter mess. The weeds had proliferated and the whole place looked rather as if it was covered with green carpet. I was completely deflated. Bob was polite about it though.

Dropped Bob off and made my way back to the plot, where it was weeding, hoeing, weeding, hoeing, all bloody afternoon. End result is that I’m back to where I was a few days ago. But at least I made it to that point. The lettuces look healthy though (top), and the potatoes are ready to be earthed up on the next visit (below).

Words of encouragement and wisdom from the Grumpy Old Men in The Woolpack later got me back in a more positive frame of mind. “It takes a few years to get sorted”, “Don’t try to do it all in one go” etc. And five pints helped as well.