18 January 2009 - Much Ado

We had a very distinguished visitor on 16 January - my old friend Matthew who is an organic farmer in Hungary! Readers will appreciate that I was more than a little nervous on conducting such a notable visitor to the plot. Frankly, most of our visitors know Bog All about growing veg so one can get away with wittering nonsense about blight and green manure. Not with this one. He pronounced himself impressed with our garlic harvest, offered helpful apple tree pruning advice and cautioned against the over-use of our Magic Veg Juice on actual crops, though we should slosh it all over comfrey. He thought the mystery brassica was indeed broccoli and that the yellow leaves were just a natural part of what happens. Anyway, we passed inspection and that is the main thing though it was of course lovely to see him too.

Lots done at the plot this weekend. That is because for once it was neither freezing nor raining. That doesn't mean to say that it was not cold - it was - but that it was not freezing. And the sun was shining and we had a picnic lunch. You could almost imagine that spring... What am I doing?! It is winter and we are now officially in recession. We must not imagine the green shoots just yet. It is the longest we have spent on the plot for what seems like months.

The comfrey which looks dead and thus able to be moved was dug up and put to one side. It will be planted on the bank. We then dug the green manure into that area including where the extra potatoes had grown last year. We originally wanted to create a very raised bed for the carrots in that space, so that they can grow straight and true, However, the soil did not seem over stony so we thought we would have an extra normal bed at the end and look elsewhere for the carrot bed. We now have to think about what to put there before doing anything else in the way of soil improvement. It is now Bed 6.

The carrot bed eventually was agreed to be situated between the side of the pallet compost shelter and what will be the side of Bed 5 (corn, courgettes, peas etc). It is not huge but will be sufficient, provided that there is enough height to it in which to put the non-stony soil. N has made a good start in constructing the sides from an old chest. It is now officially known as Bed 7.

On the advice of our Hungarian visitor, we decided to dig in the green manure on bed 5, leaving the cabbages and kale intact. The plants are not entirely broken up so there is scope for spreading it about further once the crops have been eaten. I also discover a whole bag of manure so we should be OK, as this bed will definitely need feeding up for the greedy crops that will be on it.

Although we have committed to a special carrot bed, I still sow a few seeds of Amsterdam Forcing early carrots in Bed 1 out of curiosity. There is no reason why we cannot grow carrots in both and see how they do. A word about potatoes - we have now got our seed potatoes - 20 each of Arran Pilot (which we loved last year, Lady Balfour (a second early) and Sarpo Mira (maincrop and related to Sarpo Axona that we had last year). They are chitting away, although - would you believe it - our kittens have hidden the labels so we cannot have full confidence in which set of potatoes are which, apart from Arran Pilot which is pretty distinctive. The curse of the broccoli continues.

Because it was so nice and sunny, we had a good old shed sort out and put up the new calendar. Tools and equipment were taken home to be given the annual Jeyes Fluid baptism and sharpening (OMG Jeyes is probably not organic - aaarrggghh!). We see that Jan and Pat are doing the same in their new shed as they prepare for life on their new plot.

The next day our long unused digging muscles are aching. But we forget the pain as we take part in the Allotment Association winter drinks event based at the communal shed. Sunshine, a hearty fire and mulled wine - who could ask for anything more (other than smoke not getting in the eyes)?