The Plot Thickens

With all the interest in allotment gardening I thought it would be nice to have a bit of a review of some of the essentials for the novice gardener.

This is a Bokashi compost bucket. The idea is that you put your kitchen scraps in the bucket with a sprinkle of Bokashi fairy dust. There’s a lovely range of Bokashi stuff available with a particularly attractive starter pack of two buckets and a bag of the Bokashi formula for just ninety quid, or a big bag of the jollop for just sixty five quid. Just google “Bokashi bucket". Alternatively you can use a bucket from the pound shop, and if you want to help the compost heap along just piss on it.

Next time I’ll be looking at raised beds.

I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

Oh come off it! Forcast says frost Wednesday, and possibly even tomorrow. That would completely knobble my tatties.

And is there anything more English than an allotment, and what’s more, an allotment with a shed on it!

As an actual war-cry I’d guess Whitman’s Yawp! was closer to reality, but there’s no denying the courage and resolve evoked by Shakespeare’s Henry V before the half-breached walls of Harfleur.

I think about the one hundred thousand people on allotment waiting lists in England, waiting with modest stillness and humility, and I wonder that now’s not the time for them to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, and do something about winning more allotments, because if there’s one tenant waiting for every three that’ve got one, then the game’s afoot.

It’s game-on after that nice bit of rain and the weeds are off to a good start. This is the over-wintering onions, and they’re not doing very well. I put them in rather late - middle of November I think, and that’s six weeks of root growth they didn’t make to get them through the winter. I lost most of them, but what’s left is worth saving because they should make good onions.

Troublesome weeds in this bed are the purple dead nettle which sets seed again very quickly, and a mat of tiny things that I think are tansy [Edit: actually it’s probably feverfew] {Edit: no, mugwort]. One year’s seed is seven years weed is so true.