I need to start this week’s update on the plot with a tiny rant. On the 23 Jan, I ordered lots of raised beds from Primrose, three for me and seven for Dionne, they had a 2 to 4 days delivery window. On the 11 Feb, after 3 phone calls, on email and two promises of delivery in the next week, I cancelled the order because Primrose could not tell me when they would be delivered, just that they were having problems with the warehouse, caused by a move. They are still accepting orders for goods they know they can’t deliver. The refund will take up to 5 working days. So it may be in my bank account by the time you read this.
Ma and I have decided that we will take that money and build the beds ourselves. But it’s really frustrating because I could have done that four weeks ago and then I’d be done with the beds and all I’d have to do was the pond and the compost.
However, with this news and a visit on Wednesday, when Ma almost finished the last bit of weeding and I cut some kale, filled up the bird feeders and pulled up some grass (I was only there for an hour before I had to go back to work, Ma spent the afternoon) and the impending arrival of Storm Dennis, Ma and decided that a weekend off was the way forward.
We are no further on with the list but it does need some adjustment. I’m still hopeful that I’ll be done with most of this list (we are not going to get around to the compost buying this month) but the end of the month. We have two more working weekends until March!
- Build two new fruit beds and four new beds.
- Transplant the roses
- Move the boysenberry
- Split the autumn raspberry bed into two.
- Sow some more broad beans and cover the bed with netting
- Pull up the chard and cover that bed
- Set up the cloche
- Sow sweet peas
- Sow leeks
- Buy seed potatoes (we couldn’t get nicola’s so went for charlottes)
- Paint the shed
- Split and trim the verbena bonariensis and move the stuff next to the rhubarb
- Trim the rosemary and sage
- Sow the first batch of peas
- Weed everything!
- Buy compost and start filling some beds
- Turn the compost bins
- Have another bonfire
There is no choice if I want food except to try, to prepare the soil, to sow the seeds, to hope that it works. So during Lent, I can use the plot as mediation for my spiritual life. To see Jesus’ journey to the Cross in the same light. He’s sowing seeds, preparing the way, doing all this work and sacrifice, with no guarantee it’ll work and He’ll change us, that we’ll see more, do better, be God’s hands and help others.
On Wednesday, I trimmed the verbena and Ma and I finally sowed the broad beans and netted them, we also had to remove and encroaching raspberry runner. I love raspberries but they are little buggers, look at the size of that root!
Anyway the broad bean netting is a thing of allotment beauty!
On Saturday, while Ma was taming the weeds, I got on with other stuff. First I weeded the little bed that we’d put down next to one of the squash beds. Then I took up two of the flower circles at the top of the plot. They contained verbena and carnations and dianthus. The compost from the beds, went into the little bed and the plants when into the edge of the rose bed (verbena) and the flower bed (carnations and dianthus).
Then I moved a self seeded oregano and two lavenders into the rose bed and moved one of the verbenas in the middle of the old plot. We have narcissi flowering right now, when they are done, we’ll move that last circle bed and but the narcissi in the big bed at the top. The chard did really badly in there and we decided it will be a flower bed in future. (I did buy a lot of seeds in Wilko last week)
That done Ma and I had a discussion about the long beds, so the three we ordered haven’t arrived but I really wanted to split the autumn raspberries, so we decided to move what had been the boysenberry bed until last week to where one of the new beds was going to go and split the autumn raspberries into that. We also decided that the space left would be where our blueberries could go and that we’d only have three square beds instead of four.
Ma was nearly finished so I started to tidy up. I was worried about the impending storm and the rubbish pile (it’s all weeds and cuttings, not actual rubbish) when I hit on the genius idea of using the currently empty compost bin we found in the hedgerow. We put it at the back and loaded the pile into it, it can sit there forever and rot down and be tidy! 
I also spent a couple of minutes at the back of the plot, picking up rubbish, this is the area where the shed and other assorted rubbish was and people throw stuff over the fence, so I just want to pick stuff up every time we go to start to clean it up a bit. This rubbish got taken home! Finally we filled up the bird feeders…
I also picked up a bronze fennel and another verbena 
The cauliflowers did not survive to be eaten. If anyone can tell me what happened, I’d be grateful.
What we haven’t done is sort out the new raised beds because they haven’t arrived yet! Hopefully next week.
Nic Dempsey 