I was solo this weekend and distracted (story of my life) but I got some things done.

First the annoying. Let’s talk about the foxes. The allotment has a couple of foxes that live on or around the site. Urban foxes are common in Ealing and they had a knock back over COVID and last year because of the heat but they have rebounded and there are some adolescent cubs wandering around the site, they are fairly cautious but as some plot holders are feeding them, they are also for foxes, pretty unbothered by people.

With the hotter weather, I’ve been leaving the polytunnel open all the time, and they’ve decided that the polytunnel beds are great places for digging and going to the toilet. So the first thing I did over the weekend was to remove all the offending deposits and all of this week, I’ve been going morning and evening to open and close the polytunnel every morning to stop them getting in. I’ve also had to start barricading front to stop them getting under the flap, bloody foxes…

Going to the allotment every day, also means that the polytunnel and the strawberries get watered every day which is a good thing and the poly is looking good. I’m also taking advantage of these visits to bring the last of the compost (about 14 bags) from the front of my house to the plot. So I should have that done by the end of the week too. It’s all very efficient and I have plans for a lot of that compost this weekend.

Now time for a story. Like most other families, our family language will take phrases and malapropisms from each other and turn them into a thing, for instance, cul de sacs are ‘cutty sarks’ because my dad for some reason couldn’t say cul de sac, hot cross buns are ‘cross h buns’ because I couldn’t get the order right. When my youngest nephew was born, the eldest was discombolulated by not having all the attention, all of the time and told my brother, when his mum was feeding the baby, that “mummy’s loving the baby again”

I mention this because there is a point in every allotment year that Ma refers to as “Nic is loving her tomatoes” and we have reached that point so I spent a couple of hours this weekend, ‘loving my tomatoes’. Which means they were stripped of bottom leaves and shoulders, weeded and tied to stakes. I also finally dealt with four ‘spare’ tomato plants that weren’t in beds. Three of them went into a grow bag and one of them into some space vacated by some potatoes. They are behind, but starting to flower and we have the beginning of some tomatoes.

I did a tiny bit of weeding but most of my time was spent picking berries. I got a kilo of blueberries, 1.6 kilos of blackcurrants and 600g of gooseberries. I also harvested some beetroot, there’s a bunch of it growing in the path, I think we probably spilled some there because there are choggia and boltardy and they are growing slightly better than the ones in the bed. I’ll take what I can get and it does at least prove that the woodchip is improving all the soil.

The to do list remains largely the same as last week, but my focus for the weekend is all about planting and sowing.

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it but I’m going to make some changes at the front of the plot, we are going to put the strawberry towers there and move the two square beds, my cunning plan is that I’m going to plant thymes as ground cover there. I have 8 plants (Creeping Red Thyme, Caborn Wine and Roses, Snowdrift and Archers Gold), they will start at the edge of the bulb bed and hopefully creep out.

I also have some camomile lawn (which is my favourite) and some corsican mint for around and in the cracks of the patio, I can’t do grass but I’m playing with ground cover..

I other news, I’ve bought another bbq rosemary to go in the corner at the front, and I got a bonus lavender (munsted) as a gift that needs a home, five comfrey plants that I bought a while ago as tiny crowns which are ready to go into the ground (they are the Bocking 14 so won’t seed all over the place), I also have one more roman camomile to plants somewhere too. Yes, it’s a lot of plants, I’ve discovered that my gardening tastes are maximalist, I like a lot of plants, all being slightly on the verge of taking over!

It’s not just pretty plants either, there are food plants I need to deal with too. The cabbage and sprout plugs are arriving this week and I want to get the chard sown for autumn, the leeks need to be in the ground as do the spare summer squash, beetroot seedlings and french beans…

• Pull up the pea plants
• Plant cabbage and sprout plugs
• Plant the comfrey
• Plant out the herbs
• Plant out leeks, beetroot and french bean plugs
• Find a home for the ‘spare’ summer squash
• Re sow fennel, kale and cauliflower plugs
• Sow Chard bed
• Inter plant the tomatoes with supermarket basil
• Feed everything

If there is any time left, I need to decide what to do about the carrot bed, it’s not doing great and I seem to have quite a bit of carrot fly damage, so I’m thinking it can be pulled up and I’ll resow carrots elsewhere and I’d like to do some weeding but that might be a step too far!

It’s going to be busy!