006: The Allotment Diaries

DO NOT PARK IN FRONT OF THE WOOD CHIP BAYS

Remember when I said I’d be sharing weekly updates about our allotment plot? That seems stunningly and stupidly optimistic in hindsight, but today I’m glad to be back with an update on our small slice of horticulture pie!

But first, an excuse: now that it’s getting hot and humid I’m finding it much harder to go down the the plot with our children (aged 3 years and 10 months respectively), so recent work has been done by Owen after the kid’s bedtime. That said, we were up pretty early this morning so we decided we would all head down early to avoid the worst of the weather. It seems we were not the only ones who had that idea, as the car park was already pretty full and several other ‘plotters’ were hard at work when we arrived at 9am.

The ‘plotters’ whatsapp group has been a source of entertainment for me this summer, with regular reminders to:

‘NOT PARK IN FRONT OF THE WOOD CHIP BAYS. We’ve just had to ask drivers to move their cars to enable a delivery to be made.’

Urgent stuff. Other whatsapp group highlights include: regular offers of plants/produce ‘on the wooden bench near the black water butt’ and the arrival of a new antibacterial hand gel dispenser in the composting toilet which was greeted with wide critical acclaim.

To the plot itself: although the early drought risked stifling our growing plans for the year, we’ve managed to overcome poor germination rates by buying some plugs to fill in the gaps. Our sweetcorn patch, for example, was looking a little sparse, but now seems much happier with some healthier plants mingled in. Our mange tout, beetroots and currants are also looking good!

My task for today was a modest one: our tomato plants are doing well but needed their new growth controlled a little. This is done with a little bit of string, which helps train their stalks back to the original bamboo cane. It took a while, as I had a ‘helper’ who was very interested in the string, but not very interested in getting the plants back onto the cane. I was also instructed to pull off ‘excess growths’ – which I duly did, before being told that I had actually been pulling off the flowers which would become the tomatoes … one step forward, two steps back and all that. (I’d love to tell you that my husband’s reaction to this mistake was reasonable and proportionate, but that would be a gross exaggeration).

A quick snack time was needed after all that work. The baby wanted to eat EVERYTHING and so we made sure that he had a hula hoop, bread stick and bit of banana to hand. Our toddler is more discerning (read: picky) and had a few bread sticks before eating an unripened currant.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with a video update from Owen, which he shared with our former London allotment pals earlier this week.

That’s all for now!

Grace