Brief allotment update

No, really, this is progress. Week one. As I wave farewell to London for three weeks I thought it best to give you a quick update on the new allotment garden. I have managed a few sessions at the jungle.

My priority was to clear all the brambles, trees, potato vine, jasmine, nettles, broken glass, endless wire and a dead metal arch (growing through a rambling rose) away from the fence.

One of the committee members came over to inspect and raised an eyebrow at the fact I have cut down the jasmine. But I pointed out that the roots have a socking great bramble growing right through it, so until I can lever out that bramble the jasmine is going to resprout and suffer.

I have given up on the metal arch which is now an essential feature in the rambling rose. I need to remove it with a hack saw; so that is next month.

And I cut and hacked my way all the way to the edge of the plot. Which meant discovering a metal post card rack on casters. Rotted, rusted and I think it is holding up all the roses. So after giving it a hearty shake I have decided it needs to stay until I can also work out how to remove it. Or be crushed to death under an avalanche of branch.

Some of the main area is clear and down to a permeable weedproof fabric. I dug up the dead rosemary which was drowning under weeds.

And the teetering compost stack just grows and grows.

As does the mess pile. Why do I take on gardens with so much broken glass? I was having flashbacks about the guest house garden as I snagged my gloves on yet more broken bits. They have all been lobbed into a bag and sit awaiting removal. (By me. Next month when I find out the opening hours of the council tip.)

Now before I end and get back to a fabulous garden, let me show you a lovely little garden not far from my own on the site.

A very simple and narrow brick path between the beds. It gives me ideas – the garden is titchy, so I don’t want to lose too much surface to necessary foot traffic areas.

I took a lap around after I had put down the last of my weedproof fabric and my, so many gardens are just littered with a confetti of slug pellets.  I suspect that the snail and slug predators will be a common theme here. But it makes a change from deer and hares and boars.