We’re at the point in the allotment year, when I’m either worrying about seedlings, either they’re leggy and indoors or maybe dying and outside. Either way I always feel that I’ve got it wrong and it always works out. I’m told that means I should just stop worrying and get on with it but that is never going to happen, I’m not wired that way!
We have lots of tomatoes and squash and cucumbers, and they are all labelled so I know which type they are! Which is a first!
So the actual plot, is pretty much as it was last week. The foxes have dug into the beetroot bed, and the pigeons are already attacking the peas, the blueberries leaves have brown spots on them and the kale seedlings died but other than that everything is fine.
We have raspberries already on the autumn raspberries (nope, I have no idea either!) and the poppies are flowering
We had a first pick of broad beans this week too!
So that’s where it is. I’m probably worrying about nothing and it’ll all be fine but here is a short list of what needs to get done next weekend, it’s a good thing it’s a bank holiday!
- fill new beds with compost
- earth up potatoes
- plant out courgettes, summer squash and some winter squash
- sow french beans
- sow sweetcorn
- sort out some pea protection
- trim grass paths
- paint shed
- sort out old compost bin
- weed (the raspberries are appearing everywhere they shouldn’t!)
- sow dill and coriander
- sow marigolds and calendula
- repot the small lavender
And I want to sit down and enjoy the space, preferably with a glass of cold white wine!
I know it’s a first world problem, and I still have a roof over my head and running water and friends who let me shower at their house (and fed me!) and that it’s May and therefore I wouldn’t have the heating on anyway, however it’s the completely rubbish project management and although I knew they were doing the works, they didn’t tell me when they would be doing the works and it was sheer co-incidence that I was working from home on Friday! I’m beginning to understand why the work planned for November 2018 is just being done in May 2019!
This week in allotment adventures the broad beans have blackfly. I can cope with having to cover all the beds because otherwise the foxes dig them up, I can more or less handle the foxes trying to treat my raised beds as toilets and the birds trying to use my chard, kale and soft fruit as an all you can eat salad and desert bar but aphids do nothing and the ants that farm the buggers really get on my wick, the little bitey buggers. Actually that’s not fair, the red ants are bitey and the black ants are the aphid farmers.
In other news, we topped up some of the potato bags (the sharpes express are really living up to their names!) all in we used 99 litres of compost and we have more topping up to do. Ma weeded because the weeds offend her. We had tea. I took up some of the chard. We were going to sow the french beans in that bed when the chard was done but given that it’s right next door to the broad beans, we aren’t going to do that now. We’ll sow them in another bed and put something else there.
So back to work. We’re about to have a ‘Cultivating Ealing’ judge come and look at the site over all, so I decided it was time to tackle the grass overgrowing on the path, in the summer it’s a fairly constant battle and with the strimmed grass and the shredded paper, we filled the black compost bin! We’ve watered it and with any luck it’ll rot down quickly. That and some weeding, watering, rescuing the blown away cloche and harvesting nearly 2 kilos of chard took about three hours and then we quit because being hailed on is not fun. I’m English I can do a certain amount of drizzle but not hail! This is the chard after the harvest, I think it knows it’s time is nearly done. The chard will come out this month and we’ll direct sow french beans, we’re going to have climbing beans this year, green and purple.
On Monday, we filled up three of the beds with compost, dug up more raspberries, they are popping up all over the place and finally planted out the last of the sweetpeas. 
They’ve been in the cloche for ages and although the longer ones are looking a bit weather beaten, they’ve all got good new growth coming through and just need some sun to start growing.
We also got to chat to our lovely allotment neighbour Joe who I inherited my plot from. Joe is having a tricky time health wise and some people are coming to dig his plot over later on this month but he’s asked us if we’d like to take on this space for the summer if he thinks he can’t cope with it.
We’ve said yes and if it happens, we’ll plant courgettes, tomatoes, cucumbers and extra beetroots and leeks, which we’re bound to have. We’ll look after them but Joe can just help himself to. It’s exciting to think about more space but sad that Joe can’t look after it as his care was the reason that my first year was such a comparative success, we’ll see what happens…
After and look you can see Dennis’ onions…
I know it looks a bit ragged now but it’ll recover and you can see that the rosemary is getting woody at the bottom and that will only get worse if it doesn’t get an annual chop.
The potatoes are all doing well, as are the gooseberries, rhubarb, raspberries, blueberries and plum tree. 
The garlic is strong but like all the other garlic on the site has rust. There isn’t really anything I can do, I’m feeding and watering it regularly and we just have to hope for the best! The broad beans have beans!
What is it about the first week back at work after a holiday that makes it so very tiring? This week I have been mostly exhausted, for no apparent reason! Last Monday was not a good day, because I started it by smashing my phone, £145 and three and a half hours at the Apple Store fixed it (I was ok with hanging around Westfield but only because I had a book!), but it wasn’t the best way to start a week, especially combined with 255 emails and someone in the office calling on my first aid skills because someone else was having a seizure. Smooth re-entry into the world of work, it was not..
Nic Dempsey 