Tag: allotment

Prior St Allotments Open Garden 2023

Like most of our members, I always enjoy visiting the Open Gardens Festival in support of Greenwich & Bexley Community Hospice, and I think the range gets better each year. So many special gardens on display, but I always make a point of visiting the Prior Street Allotments because they have a very different vibe, being working gardens. I’m sure in reality the plot holders do lots of scurrying around before the Open Day, but it looks just effortless and wonderfully “been there forever”.

Pat's allotment
Plots

The site is tucked away behind Prior Street in Greenwich and is made up of just 18 plots (with a huge waiting list, before you ask!). This land was part of the Nunhead to Greenwich Park railway, which closed in 1917. The allotments were started on an informal basis in the 80’s and are now protected by the Allotment Act. They open once a year to support the Hospice, and they serve the best cakes and Pimms in Greenwich!

Continue reading Prior St Allotments Open Garden 2023

End of 2020 blog!

‘Gardening is boring and messy. Plus, it often results in despair’.

This headline rather caught my eye. What follows is a ‘debate’ between two people, one who espouses the values embodied in the headline, while the other puts an opposing argument. The two views are summarised in the table below.

Boring and messy Rewarding
You need stuff like compost, tools and special gloves Fresh fruit and vegetables are a joy to eat.  
You have to go to the nursery and buy plants then bring them home and plant them You can grow better and more varieties than you can buy
You have to prune – things don’t survive on their own You are part of your environment
A puppy will destroy a weekend’s work in minutes Plants want to grow – if you pay attention, they will do that for you.
A storm will wreak destruction You can garden for nature, for the bees
Fluctuations in weather will kill plants  

Having read the article, I did think there are a lot more rewards!

I wonder to what extent disappointment in gardening is sometimes promoted by gardening programmes, particularly of the quick fix kind. I actually find Monty Don running his fingers through his garden soil rather disheartening. Mine is never like that! In September I took over a second plot adjoining my own on my allotment site. A young family had taken this on in the spring, clearly full of very good intentions. The plot already has ‘good bones’ – a fruit cage, solid shed, greenhouse (some panes missing) and is divided into neat beds separated by paths. But the soil is pretty heavy clay and digging it is a lot of effort, basically manual labour. After several visits and some hard work the young family did not return. I wonder whether the ‘good bones’ of the plot had misled the couple into thinking this was going to be an easy job.

This has, however, been to my benefit. At the end of a horrid 2020, I am looking forward to working on this new plot in the new year. There are currant and blueberry bushes already planted which just need nurturing and I am already thinking that I will plant wigwams of runner beans with an understorey of French beans and perhaps squashes in one of the beds.

A Christmas card I received has written inside it: ‘Think positive; test negative’. Onwards and upwards.

Vija

Glut reactions

Whenever I am asked about my plans for dealing with a glut of produce from my allotment, my initial response is usually, “Chance would be a fine thing!”

I’m still on the lower slopes of allotmenteering, constantly marvelling at the (seemingly) effortless heights achieved by my neighbours.

Storm Ellen did her best to scupper my chances of a substantial tomato haul, but thanks to a tendency I have to cram things close together in the ground – I can’t get over how much space I have! –  the plants and their stakes more or less held each other up. In spite of many hours agonising over the seed catalogues and subsequent cossetting of seedlings, I have to report that the finest and most prolific tomato crop on my patch this year comes from the gift of a neighbour.  In the early days of lockdown she realised that she wouldn’t be able to get any seedlings from garden centres in time so she simply dried the seeds from some piccolino tomatoes she had bought at the supermarket and planted them.

Amazing results!  She shared out dozens of seedings with nearby allotments, and now I am in the happy position of trying to decide what I should do to preserve this abundant harvest.

Last year, caught out with no plan for the cherry tomatoes on the eve of a holiday, I turned to Google for help.  A combination of the words, “tomato”, “glut”, “preserve” and “easy” produced a range of solutions (literally) involving vodka.

All I had to do was pierce the tomatoes, pop them into a sterilised glass jar, add the celery salt and chillies that I didn’t have (but that doesn’t seem to have been a problem), cover with vodka and store the jar in the fridge.  I was assured that the residual vodka would be the perfect base for a Bloody Mary, and that the tomatoes would form an impressive element of any tray of canapés.  Do they ever get that far?  Do they heck!  With admirable restraint, I have enjoyed the odd tomato or two straight from the jar over many months.

As holidays are more or less out of the question in 2020, I will have some more time to think about what to do with my expected glut of tomatoes and be on hand at the right time to deal with them.  I wondered what suggestions CABAHS members might have:  what is your favourite way to preserve tomatoes?

Perhaps we can start a separate section, sharing ideas for making the most of our produce.

Melanie

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.

Vijas suprising tulips

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 SalVijas Claryvia 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