I have my first gardening injury from Marsanoux: a thorn that has embedded itself rather prettily in my thumb. We were out there last weekend meeting builders and generally oozing with excitement over our future home. On the Saturday we popped up to measure up random walls and photograph the vegetable gardens (yes, two) and noticed that two of the sheep had escaped the lower field. The grass on the entrance road was obviously too tempting for them, and they squeezed out of a bulge in the fence. It took a bit of cajoling to get them back with the others, and I landed on a bramble bush as I marshalled them back through the gate. 

Well, I’m sure it’s not going to be the last minor injury, but it’s definitely the last of the sheep. One of the builders who was inspecting the house on Friday to give an estimate happily bought Madame’s entire flock.  They are not destined for happy fields alas, but will go beautifully with a mint sauce and perhaps a few sprigs of rosemary and garlic. All home grown of course.

After a week away from this much less glam garden, it was time to see if the beer traps were doing their job, water the crops and get the fleeces off the potatoes. I think the risk of frost has passed.

First though it was time to catch up with one of my favourite allotmenteers I haven’t seen for months; the rather rotund and jolly Italian Oswaldo.  He was at the back of his van when I drove up and we had a happy reunion. (Stowed an azalea and a rose bush that he plucked out of the back of his mini florist shop of a van first – you can’t decline any gift, that much I have learned.) Amazingly he confessed to me that he was getting on, and didn’t envy us taking on a farm. He is over 80 after all. Gad, I thought he was only 60. All that healthy veg is preserving him delightfully.

The potato plants are up and straining at their fleecy constrictions. Off came the fleece blankets and were stuffed into a bag, prior to being properly stowed for another year.  I took the bag back to the shed and decided that I really ought to store all the fleeces in the bag and hang them up on the wall. I reached into a box to collect the spare fleece blankets and found that someone had beaten me to them. Out leaped a rather small but very surprised and energetic mouse. I should have been expecting something of the sort, but it gave me such a shock. It  thumped into me and then scrabbled into a corner of the shed.

Catching breath and trying to control the adrenaline surge, I tried to shoo it out, but it found a hole somewhere at the back and made its escape. Yep, these fleeces really need to be put out of reach.

Plenty of watering ensured (a lovely calming activity if you exclude the tedious trips back and forth from the tap) and then it was time to plant up the 25 pea seedlings into the gaps.,

It’s funny but if you imagine 25 plants of any other variety, it would seem quite a crop. But the peas are planted so closely together that your work seems rather paltry after half an hour of steady work. A good watering, oatmeal around each one, and more placing of the beer traps at the edges of the plot. I seem to recall from last year that the slugs left the peas alone: preferring to devote their attentions to underground potato tubers instead.

But I have noticed that they have made inroads into my cabbage crop: five seedlings have disappeared this week. Good thing I have a bigger supply growing on at home.

Last thing to do before heading home was to try carrots again. Last year was a complete bust: but this year I’m going to try and grow them in a wooden wine crate of soft compost, rather than in the ground. In with the compost, lots of watering and along the little rows go the seeds. I’ve placed the container up on the edge of one of the plastic wheelie bins to deter the carrot fly. But quite frankly the voracious egg laying flies didn’t get much of a feed from my crop last year. My entire yield was one. And it was the size of walnut.  The box may dry out before germination, but we shall see.

I saw a lady with an umbrella at a pedestrian crossing on the way to the allotment this morning – curious. We haven’t had rain in London for more than three weeks now so it was quite a rare sight. And two hours later there I was watering the newly planted cabbage seedlings in a gentle rain shower.

Sadly I don’t think it is of the soaking variety and will do little more than settle the dust. But it’s rather a relief to think I won’t have to think about shrivelling seedlings for a day.

My main reason for heading up there was to finish the task of raking the grass cuttings I left last night. I seem to recall that they are Bad News for lawns in that they smother the grass and may kill off the lush growth. Well, at about 730pm last night I was dreaming of some sort of device that would keep down this wretched stuff.  It took ages to cut.  But hopefully won’t take that much time again if I am diligent and do it once a month.

Actually it looked rather good today – shorn and short and neat. Bet the allotment people are relieved that I have finally attended to it. The next plot down has a very unkempt path which will also need work. In fact in my naïve and keen moments yesterday afternoon I thought I would be a good egg and do their path as well, along with Rino’s. But as it took over two hours just to wrestle my 130 feet of paths, I’m afraid I have not been very neighbourly.

This wasn’t to be a long visit; Monday chores and all that. But I did manage to pot up some cabbage, cover the whole area with newly purchased bark chips, lay down a new long mulch sheet for the root vegetables (and the corn that is sprouting nicely here at home) and generally gloat at the lovely looking and busy garden. The onions and garlic are fine, so too the broad beans, and even most of the peas are up (gaps that will be filled with the extra seeds I am germinating in the cold frame).

Oh, yes, and I topped up the beer traps. Now that was a surprise. I didn’t realise what a success they would be. Mind you I have no idea of the actual number of slugs in the garden, so scooping out a dozen of slugs and hoiking them onto the compost heap is a happy chore: but possibly only a distraction from the advancing army of critters that are to come.

An afternoon of grass cutting was ahead of me today. David assembled the strimmer and helped to explain the complicated starting procedures. Wish I was born with the gene that can grasp the simplicity of the internal combustion engine. I can ‘do’ flat pack assembly, most DIY chores, and even minor construction; but when it comes to pull cords on engines I tremble.

But there was no way around it. Shiny strimmer has been sulking in its box in the coat cupboard for long enough. And about as long as the grass was growing around my veg.  It is a rule that if you have large paths next to your plot, you get the honour of keeping them tidy. My path is 130 feet long and apart from a small track of traffic worn through the middle, is getting about a foot high. I had promised to take better care of the garden this year; and this was the first chance to make good.

I read the instructions, crouched over the machine, pressed bulb six times, choke to full (or was it half?) and off I went. And amazingly it started first go. Naturally I forgot to read page two which basically instructed me on what do once it started (move switch from choke to run and ease back on the throttle) and it conked out. But I worked it out and the entire afternoon’s gentle growing and nesting was already fair ruined by the almighty din I managed to create. But boy did it work. I hacked and slashed my way around the place in no time.

Well, that’s a lie – it took hours. A few times I had to stop to do essential repairs like remove massive build up of grass cuttings, retie shoelace that threatened to get sucked into the blades. And finally to untangle the cabbage net that managed to make friends with the strimmer in a very twisty and permanent looking way.

I knew I was strimming close to the net, but didn’t appreciate the wingspan of the whippers. In no time it had eaten a bamboo cane which it spat out, and then wrapped about a foot of netting around the neck. Pausing only to look round and see if anyone had noticed what an idiot I was, I set to and released the united pair.

No major damage done apart from my ego, and on I went. I was determined to get the whole thing done as the vibration in my hands was of the sort that makes you think you aren’t going to do this as the day job. So it was almost 7pm by the time I finished.  Bet everyone was relieved when the machine finally stopped. I have about three robins nearby who take a great interest in any digging I do, and they were rather impressed at the variety of insect life I had so violently disturbed in the long grass. Sorry for the insects, but at least one member of the animal kingdom profited from the work.

I still had the climbing beans to plant and realised that I may have mixed up the climbing beans and the dwarf French beans labels.  We shall see whether some of the climbing beans refuse to climb and the French bean rows are overrun by lurching leaves.  It was actually quite peaceful to be working in the warm muggy evening. I made contact with my Vietnamese neighbours’ children. They had come up to water the crops for their parents.  Amazing to think that they have grown up children and are retired; I would have put them at around 35 each. The restorative powers of being vegetable gardeners? Probably not, but it cheered me nonetheless; especially as he said that my plot looked lovely and productive. (Such a sucker for praise.)

Everything got a good soaking of water. Next week is going to have to be a major task of filling up the watering cans, buckets and bottles again and wheeling them from the tap to the crops. I had rather hoped we wouldn’t have to do that this year.

It’s curious the things you contrive to bring back from the garden. I was reaching into my pocket to get out the house keys and managed to drag up three good bindweed roots. I must have put them in there while I was working on the potato bed. It has become such second nature to swoop on spaghetti-like strands of white bindweed and try and dispose of them. The pocket of whatever trousers you are wearing is really on the safest place.

There was no frost in the past few days, but I knew I really had to sort the potatoes out. When you enter the gates of the allotment you get the lovely view of about 15 people’s gardens, and today I noticed they all looked very business-like indeed. Gone are the mountains of manure that look as though they have been forgotten over the winter; the weeds are gone, the cabbage is in and the rows of soil are raked to a regimental neatness ready for the potatoes.  I do get obsessive about how high and plump other peoples’ potato crops look. One day that will be me – but not until I manage my soil better. This is the time you notice that you didn’t manure properly over the winter. I thought I was giving up this garden in November, so foolishly didn’t order in my very own manure mountain. Too late now. And besides, by the time I have parked and put on my gardening shoes all I can think of is my own nascent crop.

Would there be anything left? I am still smarting from last year’s cucumber debacle. I only had one plant about this time and it was gorged by a slug which was so full o’ food it lay bloated and huge at the base where the plant ought to have been. It had eaten the lot.

My fears were not realised. Everything is extant. What a relief. And to my surprise I even scooped out about ten slugs from the beer traps. So that’s a success.

On with the earthing up of the potatoes: quite a satisfying task. I do think some of my rows are a bit close as I had trouble digging my spade between the rows and getting enough soil onto each plant; but after about an hour’s digging it looked better. And just to be doubly sure I put the fleeces back over the top. Most satisfactory labour.

In the winter I had moved the perpetual spinach from the middle of the plot where it had tolerated my rather strict linear design, and is now thriving nicely at the side of the path where the potatoes start. In a week or so I may even get a good crop out of them for dinner.

I had kept some of the weed proof membrane down at the end under the apple trees, and think they will be the perfect place for my cucumbers. I was putting up the hooped cane supports when Rino came past. He was completely baffled as to what I was doing (it does look odd without any cucumber plants growing up and over them) but was mollified that I had earthed up and protected the potatoes from his dreaded frosts.

All the earthing up had made me peckish, and I must confess that I devoured the very last of the purple sprouting broccoli shoots from last year’s plant. They go wonderfully with the flowers from the land cress which has gone to seed. A peppery and quite filling combination.

Last year all my cabbage, ahem, suffered (tried to wash them off as best I could before cooking) from an infestation of white cabbage moth. And this was despite using a very natty and expensive netting protection. Naturally I realised too late that the creatures may have come from the soil. Or is that another pest? I really must pay more attention to the literature. But I knew that this year I needed to give the brassicas a better chance at thriving. 

In the best make do and mend tradition, I have been hoarding cardboard and cutting out round shapes all winter. So today it was down to hands and knees under the new net and place the little cardboard collars around their base. They look a bit wonky but I shall seek out the professional collars on my next trip to a garden department. Right now they are protected from all invading marauders. Let’s hope it lasts.

It’s amazing how you can just spent hours on your seeds and seedlings and avoid work. I have spent most of this morning sorting out my first seedling work. Now that some are out and enduring their slug test, the rest needed tending.

I potted up the cabbage, tomato and capsicum seedlings and climbing beans into larger pots (reminder to self: bring back more pots from the allotment shed, they are doing no good up there when all my potting takes place in the kitchen) and generally had a good old sort out. Some seedlings came up, others just shivered and huddled and didn’t put on any more growth.

I had to replant whole lots of little seeds: the purple sprouting broccoli, the black tuscany kale, the greyhound cabbage (usually a germination doddle), the cleome spider flowers, the chocolate alpiglossis, the scabiosa black cat, the antirrhinum (is that how you spell it?), the nicotiana and three soya bean seeds.

And I had a good rummage in the seed box. So many more things to plant up this month. Can’t wait.

Well Rino’s dire warnings have had me reach for the five day weather forecast. If there’s a frost, my potatoes are going to take it hard.

Nearly all the rows are up and surging away. I didn’t have time to admire them for long before Rino came along and worried over them. He has a lovely phrase ‘next week’. This usually covers all the seeds he is going to sow, plant or put in his greenhouse. ‘Too early’ is another one. But I persist in being early with my crops and have to keep my hopefully green fingers crossed.

I did grocery shopping before coming up to the allotment this morning, and most of the groceries were for the garden. I am now a proud owner of a case of the cheapest own-brand lager for the slug traps, a jumbo pack of oatmeal (ditto slugs) plus more supplies of food to store out in the shed for when I get the munchies and forget to bring my lunch.

To get to the plot you have to drive along a fairly busy highway and exit rather deftly to the annoyance of drivers behind who don’t expect anyone to do anything but surge along at speed. Today I was thinking of my seedlings and looking behind me to see who was going to get annoyed by my slowing down and imminent exit when the car in front braked suddenly without much warning. I had plenty of time to brake as well, but naturally the force of the breaking meant that all my seedlings in boxes lurched over managed to get crushed by the weight of an 80 litre bag of mini bark chips in the boot.

I could see the stems all bent and crushed and had that usual range of vocabulary reserved for people who have grown plants from seeds, nurtured them to maturity only to see them crushed by an accident in transit. Blue about covers it, and I swore the whole way along the last stretch of road to the allotment cursing my bad luck.

Damage assessment: two dwarf French beans lost half their height and the rest looked bruised. So it’s a salutary lesson (apart from spending more time looking ahead!) and I will plant out the seedlings when they are a bit more juvenile and not so fragile and top heavy. And let the slugs be the only menace in their short lives.

I planted out the peas from cold frame into the gaps, but not chance of the ones germinating in the black guttering. I thought that by placing them on the very top shelf of the shed they would be safe. But no; the mice are tremendous climbers and adventurous. They have eaten the lot. And besides it was rather hot in the shed so not an ideal environment at all. So much for that experiment. Have to wait until I get a greenhouse or a polytunnel for that one.

I saw my neighbours watering with a hose (a rare sight after last year’s drought and hose pipe restrictions) so I am afraid I rather shamelessly asked if I could borrow their hose and fill my bin as well. They brought it over and I had a happy time filling the bin to the top and watering as much of the closest crops that the hose would reach. If I was going to get my own hose to water, it would have to be immensely long as my closest tap is quite a walk. So I shall have to make do with the wheelbarrow and buckets. But who knows? Maybe it will rain a lot this year.

Once I had done with the watering and splashing about, it was time to plant up the dwarf French beans.
This is to be the new regime so I have to set out the laborious task here in full. Just once. The weed proof membrane has been put down and secured in place (a bit lumpy underneath, but I’m hoping it won’t ruin the chance of happy crops). Next you need to line up the row where the plants will go; cut the fabric with scissors into a cross at the appropriate intervals, scoop out the soil (quite damp, which is lovely) and reach for your plant. Fill with some compost, plant the seedling, cover with more soil and compost, firm down and sit back.

Next comes the first grocery item – the oatmeal. Sprinkle it around the little plant as a ‘slug distractor’ food. Realise that you need to water in the whole thing first, scrape off the oatmeal, water madly, and then add the oatmeal again. At a suitable distance dig another hole in the fabric, place a deep glass jar flush with the surface of the soil, pour in the beer.

There is no way anyone could be tempted by the stuff: it’s warm and cheap and not for the connoisseur. Fill it to the brim. Step back and admire and get on with the rest.

I planted up 12 red cabbage seedlings, the brocoletto 7 plants (some damaged from the car) and set up the net for the cabbage patch. On the package it says it measures five metres wide and I doubted it would stretch over the bamboo can supports. It does. But you have to secure it rather snugly and hope it doesn’t ping back off its supports.

I took the fleece off the potato beds and tried to work out how to earth them up. I stood contemplating for ages and just felt that there was so much to do everywhere and didn’t know where to start. When this usually happens I just launch into the first thing I see. But today that was the shed. I was late and had to change clothes and get home. The potatoes would have to wait another day – it was too hot and I had spent way too much time planting out the cabbages. Hope Rino’s dire predictions don’t come true.

Oh yes, it’s a jungle in here. My little seedlings are burgeoning. It’s going to be planting out time this week. The cabbage, brocoletto and dwarf broad beans are well on the way. I dread subjecting them to the mercies (or merciless actions) of the slugs. But they have to go sometime. And there Have Been Mutterings about the state of our living room. It’s rolling in pots of seedlings in various stages of growth. Too many. Time to set them off in the world.

I received in the post today a little fat bag of seeds from the Australasian Plant Society. Oh my, they do look exciting. Just 20 little white waxy packets of seeds with odd instructions. Most of them I follow, but here’s one that is in secret botanists’ code: Euc paciflora ssp niphophila. Vic Mt Hotham 1600m stratify 4 wks. I know it’s the packet of seeds from the eucalyptus pauciflora.  But must investigate what stratify 4 weeks means.  We only have French / English dictionaries in the house right now; my big horticultural ones are in storage and I know that if I go into the nether regions of the internet I will be in there for hours having a happy browse.

Pause. See no self discipline. I did search out and the seeds are now in the fridge. And will stay there the four weeks as specified on the pack.

Back from a trip to France: on the way back I was fretting mildly about whether anything survived a week away. It’s the usual scenario for gardeners during the seedling season: drop bags, race upstairs and look at what I hoped wasn’t a field of carnage. No. Things are a bit dry but extant. Hurrah.

I gave all the little pots glugs of water and had a good inspect.
What has sprouted? Plenty of capsicums, the nicotiana, the cabbage, the climbing beans.
What has thrived? The brocoletto and the extra broad beans.
What is still lurking in the dormant stage? The parsnips, some of the trickier flowers like the Cleome spider flower, but I was warned it might take ages to appear and the purple sprouting broccoli. If I wasn’t such an optimist I would say that not a single parsnip seed has germinated.
What is dead? One of the dwarf beans was crushed somewhat by the curtain and didn’t make it. Such a waste. But as I have to grow so many extra plants to take account of slug attack, it shouldn’t ruin my plans to lose one or two at this early stage.

Now that the little seedlings are pushing out of their jiffy pots it was time to get some of them into bigger pots. It’s always a fiddly time and you just hope that you don’t mess up. It makes you appreciate just how patient you have to be at this early stage. I set to work on the larger of the dwarf French beans which were positively seeking newer pastures by growing out of the base of the root trainers and found snug homes in large yoghurt pots.  The brocoletto were moved into larger pots and even some of the flower seedlings were ready to move up. So in all you could say that the first successful potting on operation completed: three cornflowers have made it from the jiffy stage to the small pot size. And all three seem to be growing nicely. Boy is that a relief.

This afternoon I shall go up to the allotment and inspect. It’s about 20C here so the trip there should be very revealing. Bet there are weeds everywhere.

So what’s up? The weeds are up, the onions are up (that’s a relief), 30% or so of the them anyway. The garlic is growing tall and the broad beans are about eight inches tall. (Unlike Rino’s verdant bushes – but then he did plant them in November.)

Only about 15% of the peas seem to have survived the mouse feast. But perhaps they are just slow. The rhubarb is green and growing, and about a foot tall. There are plenty of daffodils and grape hyacinths under the apple trees; the largest tree has plenty of green shoots, and the little one has just a few on the very tips.

It’s odd re-reading my entries from a year ago – I was all gung ho for chopping the trees down. What was I thinking? I guess I was in a frenzy of control and slash and burn. And the poor tree did lean at a very mordant angle. But I’m learning; things survive. Let’s see if it blooms this year.

There are no potato plants poking any heads up: but that’s fine. I still have fleeces all over the crop and you couldn’t see under them anyway.  The sweet peas are still alive at the bean frame. But looking rather anaemic and sorry for themselves. But then, when you have the slug colony that I support, you are just thrilled they are still alive.

In the cold frame I seem to have some brocoletto and cabbage that survived the freeze. They are looking very desiccated, but a quick slosh of water and they seem to have revived. Wonky growth mind you. I seem to recall that happened last year with the cabbage as well. Must try to be a bit neater with their first stages of growth. Only a few of the broad beans are up which is odd. And two of the dwarf French beans are up, but not as chipper as the ones I grew at home.

I decided to plant out the few of the broad beans that were grown in root trainers in the cold frame. They don’t seem to get that much advantage under Perspex, so they may as well have a try in the coldish ground. I planted the little beans (about two inches tall) into the gaps left by the unsuccessful early growth.  I will need to plant about eight or so seeds in the further gaps, but the crop is looking quite considerable now. More than last year.

Parallel to the growing plants I had a rush of blood and decided to try and sow a row of broad bean seeds. I had a few left in a packet in the shed. And besides I just don’t have the root trainers (or loo rolls) to spare for more sowing. Besides that, the living room at home resembles a garden nursery; there are pots of seedlings everywhere.

I planted 15 Sutton broad bean variety; and left little sticks next to the seeds. Either to show me where they were planted; or to give the mice a perfect flight path guiding beacon to where they are buried.  One must be optimistic with these things.

After that it was time to stalk the entire plot and spot chores and disasters. To my surprise the lilies have come back from wherever they lurk over winter. The desiccated pots have surprisingly yielded stalks of new growth. Over to the water trough with my buckets and give the lilies a good solid soaking. They would be better in the ground, but safer in the pots. Vermin and slimy feeders don’t seem to have found their way to the back of the shed; too busy gorging on the greenery at the front.

I checked over the lemon verbena which is also in a pot – it looks like sticks, but not dead I think. We shall see. I made a note to myself that I need yet more black weed proof membrane for crops and have to mulch the broad beans like mad if I’m to keep down the weeds.

Just to finish I thought I would build up my pea supply. I had purchased these clever lengths of plastic guttering that are supposedly clever tools for growing peas. You put in the compost, sow the peas as you would in the ground, water, let germinate and when they are a few inches high, you dig a trench the same size and just slide the whole gutter of compost and seedlings in. Ingenious. Well it’s worth a try. I found that the peas were divine last year, and you can’t get enough of them. Especially when half the crop is scoffed when you ‘inspect’ the plants.
 
Back home the garden theme didn’t cease. I received my seedlist from the Australasian Plant Society. I get 20 packets of free seeds. I printed off the list and started to drool. I want to try lots of propagating this year.