Blue moves

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.