My plan for today is to build that raised bed out of the pile of scrap wood -- without nails -- and to clear as much of my side as I can. OH has a go at digging over the old potato bed.
This is the outcome:
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| Funky new raised bed, not a nail in sight. Note my continuing difficulties with straight lines. Thankfully none of the raspberry canes that'll end up in here will give two hoots. |
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| Très zen. |
OH pootles around and is inspired by the number of bonfires around the site. The new guy next door who's taken over from the old Portuguese guy has set fire to some plant material and we're getting kippered. OH feels he must respond.
Meanwhile, I'm wandering round trying to dodge the smoke and am taking pictures of our lovely plot. Here they are:
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| My side: strawberry raised bed, then the leeks and the kales, then the new bed, then the brassicas at the back: broccoli and cavolo nero plus a couple of red cabbages that are probably going nowhere. |
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| OH's side and pumpkin bed. Note that fat one by the front. |
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| Leeks doing very well! |
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| Mueller Thurgau in close-up |
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| ...and the whole row of it. Apparently they have to stand like this for a few more weeks to bring on the acidity. Hope the muntjac doesn't get there first. |
Then John, another neighbour, whose name may or may not be his real one, arrives and marches onto our plot to take a look and catch up. John likes to chat but there's nothing about allotmenteering, and this site, that he doesn't know so we always listen, even when it means writing off the next hour. Today is a big day because it turns out to be the day that John takes us onto his plot for the first time. We've been plot neighbours for nearly 4 years now so this is a great honour when an Old Boy finally Unlocks The Gate and Lets You In. I'm always impressed by the smooth, flawless operation that they all run on their plots, the rows of strawberries, sweetcorn, the tidy, crumbly tilth, no bumps or grass in sight. John opens the greenhouse he built himself some years ago: it's full of potatoes, jacket potatoes as big as melons.
"Our potatoes got some scabby disease this year," OH shared, "and then even the scabs got slugs."
"Right, that's it," I hiss at OH, "no more novelty potatoes. Next year, we'll have at least one bed that's a guaranteed safe bet, and I want THOSE potatoes."
"He's using chemicals against his slugs, that's why his yield is so high!" OH hissed back.
We stop bickering when John takes us to his sweetcorn and gives us an armful. "I don't need so many," he said, "They'll just be composted." Our eyes are bulging out of their sockets. Fresh corn on the cob, with butter. Dinner tonight is sorted.
What do you offer someone who's already got everything in vegetable terms? Well, what he really needs: a listening ear. Back onto our plot where he gives a brief nod to our recent efforts, we discover why he couldn't make it to the AGM: there's a serious health problem he was getting checked out for. And that's why it took him an hour chatting with us and showing us around -- he was warming up for the big reveal. "Maybe it's a slow-growing one," he said wistfully, "and it won't get me before the other stuff does." We wander down the path together and lean against the fence of a plot that's currently in transition and John reminisces and explains the intricate patterns of former site ownerships and uses, rails against the ever-encroaching brambles and curses the abomination that is the corrugated sheet metal fence that someone with a plot by the river has just put up down there.
Eventually it's time to crack on and we each do our separate things again.
We get chatting to the other plot neighbour, someone our age, and do swaps: our chard plants against a bag full of his excess courgettes and runner beans. Nice one!
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| The aubergines are also from the plot! First time in many years I've managed to grow them! |
Then it's finally time to go home and cook.
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