I wasn’t that happy with all the wanging on about the coronation, how it’s moved to wanging on about Eurovision. I’m not sure which is worse, I guess at least my taxes aren’t paying for Eurovision? Anyway here are this week’s links…
Gardeners urged to ‘keep it local’ when creating a wildflower meadow. I don’t have a meadow, but what pops up on the allotment is rye grass, couch grass and plantain and bindweed, dandelions and cinquefoil. This year there has been some red clover (which I try to leave alone.) Nowadays, I get californian poppy, red orache, some aramanth, cornflowers, marigolds, borage, verbena bonariesis, thyme and oregano. From Tana’s plot next door, lambs ears and forget-me-not. I’m big on leaving most of it where it grows, provided it’s not in the way although I do have to cull the cornflowers a bit though!
I signed up for a half plot in May 2016. Seven years later, I think the habit is going to stick. I have learnt so much and the plot looks completely different. The strip of soil in the picture above is where we planted the blackcurrant last week and the tank at the end is one of the hot boxes we grow squash in now, and in front of that is the rosemary bush! I don’t have a photo that shows the view but the photo below was taken in April and shows the line of blackcurrant bushes…
I’m grateful for the plot. I have found it helps my mental health, it gives me food, weirdly, it’s given me healthier nails and an appreciation for farmers. It’s changed how I shop, how I eat and what I believe about nature and the countryside.
How what did we do this week?
Guys, I have to tell you I did amazingly well with the grass. Do you remember in April, I was saying that the grass was really high and you could barely see the grape hyacinths and that I’d got some of it but needed to sort the bulb bed and the rose garden?
I hadn’t gone back and the grass has just got higher and it’s mostly rye grass and it had to be attended too. So I did it. Three 50 litre buckets of grass later (I’m so grateful for Ma, stopping what she was doing and coming and emptying the buckets as I went!) the front and the bulb bed was (more or less) clear.
By that point I was on a tear and did the same to the pond and rose garden.
Surprisingly, I wasn’t done, I decided it was time to get the plants in pots at the back in the ground or in bigger pots. I transferred some hyacinths I got in the winter into the ground by the others at the corner of the pond area. I put a bronze fennel the rose garden, and the other in the ‘wild area’, which went in with the only that sweet pea that survived the winter!
I planted some camomile lawn at the edge of the patio (something I’ve wanted to do for a while). I’d already put a roman camomile in the wild area and the other one, went in the corner of the alpine strawberry bed.
If you’ve followed my gardening progress, you’ll know I like to encourage some plants to self seed at the edges of beds and also to encourage things to grow over the edges of the beds and I’m starting to do that deliberately. All that to explain why I planted a pinata lavender and a lemon bergamot in the longer blackcurrant beds and, a creeping thyme in the corner of one of the winter squash beds. The lemon verbena went in a pot because I’m pretty sure that the big one on the plot died in the winter and the other lavender went into a pot for the moment.
Two of the four that will hopefully spread out and be a little green camomile scented ‘lawn’
Then Ma and I gathered some produce. Rhubarb, the last of the polytunnel leeks, coriander, parsley, mint and the chard before it went to seed.
I don’t want you to think that Ma did nothing because as ever she got to all the stuff I wouldn’t have got to and would have been kicking myself if I hadn’t done it. So the arches over the winter squash beds are all strung for beans, she watered everything that needed it, removed some pesky (and very prolific) dandelions, trimmed some plants that needed trimming, sorted out some beds and generally kept me on the straight and narrow.
One of the tulips Lu and Ben bought me back from Amsterdam (I really thought we’d killed them!)
We also got to admire some of our earlier work. Carrots, peas, beetroot and potatoes are beginning to show their heads. There are baby gooseberries, the blueberries are flowering like mad and things are beginning to look like they are coming back for summer. As does the bind weed…
New Lavender, I love the leaves
There do seem to have been some casualties though. One of the citruses is definitely dead, although one has a leaf, so lets see! The aforementioned lemon verbena, is not showing any signs of life and the cherry tree seems to be in the same state. I can wait another month before I go into full mourning for them!
Blueberries
So to the list:
Get all the compost to the plot – partially, I have about 20 bags to go
Weed and top up all empty beds – partially, all the beds in the new half of the plot have been done
Sow spinach and other salad next to shallots and in ex parsnip bed
Sow parsnips
Apply ant nematodes to polytunnel, blueberries and bulb beds
Strim the grass path – partially done, I did a bit more this week and will finish next week
Weed the paths and top up with woodchip if there is any available
Finish weeding the pond area, rose garden and iris bed
Mulch the pond area, rose garden and iris bed
Join the rose garden to the iris bed and plant out the area
Plant out the herbs from Urban Herbs
Finish the patio
Set up the arches for bean planting
Turn the compost bin
The priorities for next week are nematodes, grass path strimming, sowing the beds, module sowing for the poly and, netting and sorting the poles for the gooseberries, blackcurrants and blueberries. May is a busy time.
Happy first working day of the week (for me at least!)
All the coronation nonsense is over and the radio at least is starting with Eurovision nonsense. If you love either of them, please go and enjoy yourself, but I would like to hear about something else!
Last week was all about work, at home I did very little, sorted out my growing set up, celebrated seven years of having an allotment, put a shelf up, read a couple of books (when I die, I want an obit to mention that I could always be distracted by a book!)
This week, is all about making sure work is sorted so I can go on holiday next week with a clear conscience.
At home, it’ll be packing and compost delivery to the plot.
Hopefully, it won’t rain too much and it’ll get a bit warmer, it’s chilly right now.
So the local election results don’t look good for the Tories. My word of caution on this is that losing Tories doesn’t equal winning Labour and honestly, while I’m sure that a Labour government will be better than this Tory one (not hard Count Binface could do better), I’m not sure how much better as they are not convincing and a cocky overconfident Labour party loses elections. Anyone younger than me should look up the 1992 election…
The other news from Jonathan Dimbleby is that the King didn’t know about the ‘Homage of the People’ bit of the Coronation and it’s probably the brainchild of the Archbishop of Canterbury. I call bullshit. I can see exactly how the thinking went. The Homage of the Peerage is a traditional part of the Coronation, but in the world we now live in having the peerage swear homage looked old fashioned and elitist, so why not let everyone do it, be democratic? It didn’t occur to any of them that swearing homage is the problem not having the peerage do it. Look this shindig, to celebrate a very rich man getting a shiny new hat and a job, is costing the taxpayer somewhere between £100-£250 million, in a cost of living crisis. It’s tone deaf, like the Prince and Princess of Wales using the Tube yesterday.I wish someone would greet me every day as a walked into a train station and escorted me to an uncrowded train where I could get a seat!
They don’t live in the real world and this seemed like a good idea because they don’t live in the real world. If they did, they’d at least pay for some of this. The homage idea and they give up your Bank Holiday to volunteer are the ideas of people who really don’t understand what is happening to the country right now. The trying to defend and deny, instead of admitting you got it wrong is the final insult.
I did manage to get some compost to the plot but only six bags, I also took the bale of hay I ordered for mulching to the plot too. While I was doing that Ma did the watering. It did rain this week but the fruit in pots needed feeding and the polytunnel needed watering (it was 36C in there on Saturday!)
We started off by getting the pots of maincrop potatoes planted and we strimmed and cleared the path by the squash beds. I then got on with weeding and topping up the beds.
Squash beds and self seeded oregano in the path!
I also assessed the strawberries, some of them hadn’t made it through the winter and despite the rain, the ones at the bottom of the stacks were really dry. So I sorted them out so that all the pots were filled three each. We have four empty pots which hold three strawberries each, so I’m twelve short. As it happens, I have 12 strawberry plants arriving in May! I moved them to the bottom of the plot to make watering easier, and I gave them a through watering.
Strawberry towers
It’s very exciting, some of the are flowering. In fact all of the fruit is coming on. The blueberries are in flower, the blackcurrants and gooseberries are forming, even the boysenberry has stopped its pursuit of world domination and is flowering. The cherry bush isn’t doing much at all, but I’m not expecting much if anything from it this year.
While I was doing that, Ma was riddling some compost so we could use it for sowing seeds. I couldn’t remember that it was called riddling and asked her to strain the compost, fortunately, she knew what I meant!
I’ve been seeing lots of complaints about the quality of compost this year. I’ve gone with peat free this year, it’s not great quality. I used manure on most of the winter squash beds this year and you can see the difference in colour on the picture above, with the peat free compost looking lumpier and just ashier. I think that next year, I’ll use more manure and maybe some topsoil to cut the compost and make it easier to use. Hopefully that, with making a bit more of our own, will help.
Putting Ma to work
This week the third blackcurrant arrived, so I planted it in, and added some creeping thyme to the path at the side of the bed.
We also did a bit of harvesting, salad from the poly and rhubarb for me, parsley, mint and chard for Ma. We were busy and it felt like we got a lot done but the list is still really long.
On Sunday we did get the indoor seeds sown. So 75 tomatoes, 15 melons, 15 cucumbers, 38 winter squash and 15 courgettes and summer squash. We’re a bit late but it’s going to have to be ok because there isn’t really a choice.
So this is the state of the list, we’ll work on getting more of it done next week.
Get all the compost to the plot – partially, this weekend I’ve moved 10 bags
Weed and top up all empty beds – partially, all the beds in the new half of the plot have been done
Plant the maincrop potatoes
Sow spinach and other salad next to shallots and in ex parsnip bed
Sow parsnips
Apply ant nematodes to polytunnel, blueberries and bulb beds
I’ve had a difficult start to 2023, due to various flat related things, at the end of March, I was basically burnt out. I know it seems ridiculous that I could be burnt out over three months and yes I’m aware that for other people it wouldn’t be a problem (my brother and sister in law) had more building work and lived on site and have two children and a dog!
I want to emphasise again that I know how lucky I am. To have a landlord that will fix issues to such an extent, because I had a place to go for five weeks (thanks Ma!), because, for the first time in my life it feels like, enough money that the expense of it didn’t ruin me (it was expensive).
However, I’m not good at transition, I’m not good at feeling unsettled and when the place I use to feel settled (my home) is the cause of the transition and unsettledness, I don’t do well at all. Look, I know who I am and I knew it would be hard, renovation of a space is always mentally exhausting, and over the course of the last 12 weeks, I have moved every piece of furniture I own, plus 400 to 500 books, twice, physically exhausting too. My hips don’t lie, but they are really, really sore and creaky.
The cherry on the cake was catching COVID at the beginning of March which was miserable and left me more tired than I expected. All that to say, that at the end of March, I was burnt out and in no place to set or complete goals, it was all I can do to keep the balls that need to be juggled (work, allotment, clean clothes etc) in the air and I did manage that.
I continued with my Lent resolutions until Easter Sunday. 47 days of no chocolate, sweets, cake, desserts or crisps. Which was fine, actually easier than I expected but that last week, really dragged!
However, May is a new month with no mistakes in it. It’s also a light work month for me, of the four and half weeks, I’m going to be away for one of them and there are three bank holidays. So it’s time to think about trying again.
The goals that I’ve been building so far this year are:
10,000 steps per day. So in May that means 310,000 for the month (I wasn’t really tracking it last month but my fitbit says that I was XX short of 300,000 last month)
10pm bedtime and 6am wake up (on work nights) – also a casualty last month, I managed about half the month and I felt it on the days I had a late night, I know it helps so I just need to work on consistency
Stretching every day – This fell by the wayside and have I mentioned how much my hips hurt recently (yes, yes I have)
Food prep – Another thing I’ve been lax with and need to get back into. Obviously, this won’t count on my holiday but for the rest of the month time to re-introduce
I have two things to add to this list for May (and the rest of the year).
Yoga every day. I’m going to go back to the January 30 Days of Yoga with Adrienne, a friend of mine had the genius idea of doing the same 30 days, every month so she can see her progress. I want to do that, so I have to do it for a month!
Sugar free work week. Lent was really interesting from a diet point of view. Removing chocolate, sweets, cake, desserts or crisps wasn’t’ life changing, I didn’t lose weight, I didn’t sleep better or have more energy. However, my hands and feet didn’t hurt so much and I wasn’t so puffy. So while I’m not prepared to forgo them all again (until next Lent) I think it’s time to treat those foods, like I do alcohol, something I don’t do during the week. It’s not entirely sugar free, I’ll still have my Nesquik collagen milkshake and fruit and maybe a Nakd bar but I’ll be having less.
Just for this month
Pictures on the walls – I took a lot of things off the walls for the building work, I need to get them back up, in old or new positions and some of them need new frames.
Cupboard of Doom Tidy – I know. It’s an issue but it needs tidying again, it’s been a difficult few months!
AirFryer to Mums – I now have a microwave with a browning function, so I’m gifting Ma the air fryer, and I need to get it out of my house but I need to carry it to hers because she can’t!
If you are in the UK and have a job that doesn’t require working on Bank Holidays, happy three day weekend. If you don’t fall into this category, I’m sorry, I hope it’s a quiet, easy work day or you’re being paid double time.
I start this week with the joyous prospect of no more builders. The floor was done last week and I’ve unpacked. There were some kinks, the bookshelves no longer fit perfectly in the alcove so I had to be an emergency book edit and I do need to take several bags of books to the charity shop! I did quite a bit of decluttering when we were packing the room up and I worked to put things I couldn’t declutter in away, so it all looks tidy and lovely.
Everything left to do is for me, it’s mostly about putting pictures back on walls and shelves up. I did some of that, and I finally got around to repotting my spider plants and did all the indoor sowing for the allotment too.
It was also (for me) quite a social week. I was out on Tuesday night for Ping Pong and Pizza with some of the team at work. It was fun and the Elizabeth Line was a marvel, I was in Shoreditch at 9pm but home at 9.50pm. When it works it’s quick! I took a day off on Friday, to spend some time with Christelle and it was lovely to have time, when we’re not completely exhausted from a working week (middle aged problems!).
Aside from a migraine on Thursday, it was a good week.
This week is another four day work week (followed by another – May is a great month!). Work is getting busier, so I’m going to spend today catching up with housework and prep for the weekend, I may sort out some more photos and take some more compost to the plot. There are no major plans for next week, I’m mostly going to be working and avoided the cunting bunting and coronation nonsense, I will not be volunteering or pledging allegiance. I will probably go to Ma’s because she has a DIY list, so I need to start working my way through that!
Over the last few years, I’ve come to realise that nothing is ever finished, especially on the plot and particularly when we are getting big things done.
This weekend is a great example of that. We had a really good day on the plot but the list of things we still need to do is massive.
We started with planting the second early potatoes, which we planted in a bed this year. I did this back in 2020 because I couldn’t get the pots we needed. Last autumn, we up-potted the blueberries into the pots we used for the potatoes so we needed to get some more if we wanted to do them all in pots. Because we lost all the broad beans over the winter, we had a spare bed and we decided to save money and compost by using that bed. We have less maincrop potatoes and they’ll go into the pots we already have and after we moved the blueberries into their summer positions, we got those out reading for planting the main crops next week.
We sowed carrots, peas, beetroot and, in the polytunnel, radishes and lettuce. We also sowed the leftover beetroot seed in modules, for popping into gaps in planting later on, I want to try and do that a bit more with beetroot, beans, chard and herbs this year. We potted up the samphire and gave it a salt water bath. It’s looking a bit sad but there appears to be lots of new growth coming through. Ma watered and fed the blueberries.
New carrot bed
We dug up the last of the parsnips and leeks, and I got some salad and rocket from the polytunnel.
Then I got cocky and decided that it was time to lay the patio. I know there is a way to do this, I didn’t follow any of those directions! I need some more sand to finish the front three slabs but it’s down.
As you can see it’s better at the back than the front!
The last thing we did was feed the birds!
Assuming that it doesn’t take too long to unpack the living room, we’ll have two days next weekend and I have a worklist!
Get all the compost to the plot
Weed and top up all empty beds
Sow spinach and other salad next to shallots and in ex parsnip bed
Sow parsnips
Apply ant nematodes to polytunnel, blueberries and bulb beds
For the amount of grumpiness I have, I actually consider myself to be a pretty happy person. I have reached a age where I don’t really care what others think about my choices and honestly, I view being this age as a privilege rather than a problem (I have one grandparent and one parent that made it past 53, and I’m already older than my Grandma Iris was when she died!). However, there is one thing I’m not enjoying about this age, and that’s peri menopause, because it sucks and because one of the things I seem to be experiencing with it, is cystitis, which is what happened last week and was horrible and more debilitating than I remember…
So most of last week was not good, I worked from home for 4 days and took my antibiotics and didn’t drink coffee, alcohol or fizzy drinks and generally felt like pants!
By Friday, things were looking up, which was good because there was so much to do over the weekend. There was allotmenting and emptying the living room of most of its contents so the floor can be laid on Wednesday.
Empty-ish living roomFull bedroom
It was a productive weekend but I think it involved too much lifting heavy things for a woman of my age and fitness level, I’m shattered!
This week I have four days of work and Friday off to see Christelle, which also, thanks to the Bank Holiday gives me a four day weekend. In fact, the rest of the month is mostly going to four day weeks, next week and the week after due to the Bank Holidays, then I have a week off and one full five day week and another Bank Holiday! Looking at what’s happening with work, I was planning for this to be a quiet month before things really started to kick off but I’ll be covering for a colleague for this week and maybe some more of the month, so my busy period starts now…
Nic Dempsey 