Allotment life, and surprising bulbs

Do you ever plant things in your garden and forget that you have done so? I have clearly planted these tulips in a pot (last year? The year before?) and they have surprised me by coming up a treat.

That is probably part of the interest in planting bulbs. It is deferred gratification if ever there was an example. The anticipation of beauty to come. To some extent it is similar to sowing seeds, although here there is less of an excitement of immediate colour. Gardening is a thing of hope!

March and April are hugely busy in terms of seed sowing. At home I have a small patch given over to vegetables. It used to be bordered by trimmed box, but with the depredations of the box moth, all this has had to be removed. This year, I have decided to sow the annual Salvia Viridis to create the borders. It used to be grown so much, but seems to have become less popular and I haven’t seen it for years. I am hoping this will create an attractive foil for the tomatoes, salad greens, shallots and climbing beans that I plan to have here.

For my allotment I have my usual courgettes ( three varieties) tomatoes ( four varieties) runner and French beans, potatoes (earlies and maincrop)  cucumber, beetroot,  celeriac, cavalo nero and purple sprouting broccoli. I am going to add carrots, turnips and swedes. If the seed stocks in the garden centres on the weekend of 22 March are anything to go by, a large proportion of the population is anticipating a problem with food supply! I hope I have enough to feed the extended family.

My allotment soil is incredibly heavy and successive years of cultivation have done little to break it down. For those new to gardening, this could be very off-putting. Watching Monty Don or Joe Swift or Adam Frost plant vegetables in soil that is honed to a fine tilth you could blow on it and create a hole and then be confronted by the average plot, is something that might make you quail. In the week before lockdown ( are we all thinking in terms of ‘before lockdown’ and ‘after lockdown’ now?) I had two guys dig over the plot, but this still leaves large clods of soil which need to be broken up. I am now in the backbreaking process of doing this. Only then can I direct- sow into the soil, or plant things like French beans.

Vija