the allotment at twilight

I've made it up to the allotment for a midweek twilight digging frenzy every week so far this year, and I've managed to clear a space about the size of king-sized bed. Well, when I say clear, it's not topped by couch and sour grass any more, but there's a still a lot of weed material in it. The weed material is mostly my persistent weed, Couch Grass.

Sadly, there's not a lot you can do with couch grass. I tried taking a bag of it to the tip, and nearly broke the Hi-Vis who came over to help me with the bag. Dear god, the biomass of the stuff. I also felt like I was losing top-soil, and I don't like that feeling, so I feel I must somehow break it down and get it back into the soil. But it's too fibrous and vigorous to compost in standard bins (famously it will resprout from any root fragment) so I'm trying a few other things.

Water drowning - a permaculture approach where you drown your perennial weeds in water for a fortnight before adding them to your compost - produces amazing smells. Seriously, I may need to apologise to my allotment neighbours. And the weight thing is still a problem - getting a trug-full of sodden drowned couch grass roots into the compost thing was taxing, and got some of the rough brew "compost tea" on me, ugh. I'm also not going to believe it's actually killed the couch grass roots until they start breaking down, which will take a really long time because they're really fibrous.

Turf stacking has may have happened on the allotment already. But the a rough bank along the back left hand side may just have been abandoned black plastic bags full of weeds as when I stuck an experimental spade in I hit a lot of black plastic. And also got told to F off by a bee. Some suspicious holes in the bank suggest there may also be larger furry occupants. Either way, I've started to cover the top of the bank with upended turf, in the approved way. Excluding light is approved, but having spent almost half an hour yesterday attempting to extricate a very grassed-in  rotted tarpaulin from the ground, I'm feeling quite negative about putting more plastic garbage into a plot already heavily #blessed with the stuff (I also dug out some rotted surgical gloves, a mass of plastic netting nailed roughly to some chunks of wood and yes, more horseradish). That said, I do have some weed proof membrane, and if I use it carefully....

So yes, digging the plot is the main job for winter, while the weeds are less vigorous. I even found a very nice basic instruction sheet. There's a suggestion that I might need some manure later but that'll be after clearing the ground. There are a couple of other things I need to do too though: 

1. Find a useful answer for "How many poles?" This is something all the allotment cognoscenti ask the moment you say you have an allotment. This set of allotments were set up in an interstitial space that was going to be re-developed for housing until the local residents realised they could declare it allotments and see off the developers. It would probably make a heartwarming film, but the weird plot shape means all the allotments are funny shapes, so I have no idea. 
2. Find an accommodation on inconveniencing wildlife. One of the things that kept holding me back last year (and to an extent this winter) is that wildlife was already using my little patch of wasteland. The bees, the birds the foxes and yes, the small furry ones. The wildflowers on my plot last year were amazing. Everything is already being used. But you don't get an allotment not to use it, and the wildlife will chill and adapt. Even the small furry ones might tempt in allotment cat, who has progressed from bolting every time he sees me to staring angrily at me before stalking off which obviously means he loves me which as any fool knows is the beginning of being tame with you. Allotment fox showed his nose last night too (along with allotment kite and allotment crows).
3. Decide what to do with the garbage. There's garbage in the soil. Old attempts to suppress weeds, random crap, rotted somethings. Is it OK to have an allotment rubbish tip?

All this, and more, coming soon as the nights get lighter and the soil gets clearer.

at dawn in the garden

January, bleak and snow, has been flexing its claws this past week. Frost on the ground, snow in the air. But there's also been this:



The sun has just started to crack round the corner of the house, meaning that if I sit outside at the right time I get the sweep of sun coming into the garden. It's pretty good, even when it's on sad things like the dead remains of your frozen-to-death Tree Fern.




It's a little early to start on seedlings, so I've just loaded up the propagater with a bunch of no-hoper seeds, out of date chillies, smoked chillies, chillies from the Kashmiris I grew in the greenhouse last year, that kind of thing. It's dim, though. I was going to put the battery-powered fairy lights over them again, and then I discovered that a set of them had actually overheated and partially melted, so I'm back to wondering about proper grow lights again. This one looks good.

Although, this is supposed to be my year of spending as little as possible on the garden.... after all, it already looks like this, isn't that enough?

a walk in January

In January and February weather can descend suddenly and linger hard, leaving you locked into the grim stumble across icy streets from home to bus to work under dark skies for days and weeks. So when a morning dawns bright and fair, and you happen to have a meeting forty minutes easy walk away, it seems a shame not to take advantage.

On the main road, above the warmth and moisture of the passing, the leaf buds are already swelling on the lime trees. They're mostly a wonderful, mature set, though here and there a dangerous tree has given way to a replacement sapling behind fences and warnings. They're busy with birds; one of our rufty-tufty urban blackbirds is singing at an intimidating volume, Jackdaws are bickering and bullying and something smaller is skittering around, unidentifiable sillouettes against the sky, feathers fluffed against winter.

A sharp turn by the bus-stop takes me down the path by the culvert. We're low by the river, and the open culverts that scratch across the estate stop us from flooding every time it rains; they're also green  corridoors for foxes, birds, frogs and more. I'm looking out for bud-burst but none is showing so far. The buds are big on the ash trees, though, and tinged with green. The culvert runs by our new city farm, then becomes a stream as it passes the park. A quick nip across the road, and on the other side of the stream, dramatic allotments with willow sculptures. An early gardener is trimming a willow dinosaur. An artist has been along the stream and left a painted sign, social commentary on the cost of housing in the area, hammered into the grey-brown winter grassy bank on the far side, where it will be harder to remove. The birdsong peaks in the wet area where wet-loving trees (willow, alder) have been planted to drain up the routine floods.

Towards the next main road, rubbish and dog-shit starts to gather. An eviscerated charity box is a reminder why this isn't a path for after dark. A classy lady with two small expensive dogs looks at me askance. I step out into the bright opposite a pub that was once a lovely venue but which long since went into terminal decline and eventually re-opened as a tattered Islamic Centre, complete with motivational signs and perpetual disorganised building work. I skirt up past the Council works, and head up hill, past a graduated tint of prosperity. Battered frontages sprouting cheerful winter weeds give way to tidy double-glazing, smart paving and recently bought shrubs in tidy pots, give way again to gardens choked with portaloos and builders rubble, give way again to walls, drives, gravel, and beautiful mature ornamental trees that have been well chosen for their location.

The next road I cross marks the edge of the suburbs, and from here the houses expand, and the gardens become individual and expressive. The main genres are all represented, but amplified by long-term residence. The front garden that is mostly weeds has been gifted intentionality by a wry sculpture and a wildlife-friendly demeanour. The one that is mostly parking has been optimised for that, with tracks for wheels and low hard-nut plants to soak up the run-off. A recently done-up house is still sporting its designer wreath, and such a floristic mass of seasonal shrubs in flower in pots that I suspect an actual florist may be involved. Tidy climbers arch over doors; smart conifers sentry the front windows; walls are lined by hedges of privet, lilac, winter jasmine and more. The air of care is palpable. But I can already hear the rush and murmur of the approaching ring road, which slices across the top of this road, the rush and sound and light of it is like approaching a sea front, and the effect on the gardens is similar; shrubs become lower and more hard-wearing, there is more paving and hardstanding, houses are more fortress-like and inturning.

The ring-road, edged with grass and trees, is never quiet. It rushes on through the night like a prayer-wheel for the city, in an endless spin of van, lorry, car, taxi, car, motorbike, bus, car, car, car car. Kites and crows squabble and mob along it; animals live in the wild verges and die under its wheels. Here the factory kept an underpass open for shift workers and it still links the houses to the commercial zone beyond, neutral paint schemes spattered with hopeful graffiti, bicycle and pedestrian routes gritted and cared-for; the underpass to prosperity.

On the other side of the bypass, we emerge instantly into the environs of the car plant, a shiny, high prestige environment. The Factory is fancy. Broad verges planted with mid-sized, high quality trees, cherries and maples and more. Immaculate car-parks divided by screens of espaliered hornbeam and beech. Electric charge bays, smart gravelled edges, directive signs and everything designed for reliability, efficiency and high throughput.

I have arrived.

on the roof, the ferns

It hasn't been a wet winter, but nevertheless, things are growing, on the main road, where the damp air kicked up by the traffic heads up the hill and over this building:


 

These Polypody ferns are in a bit of a bare, exposed place. Maybe they've mistaken the roof of this building for a cliff face. As you can tell from the CCTV this is cared-for building; municipal. It's NHS, in fact. But up there is another flat roof crying out for the greenery.

summer in winter

We could do with a little light at this time of year. A little bit of summer in winter. So I'm flicking back through 2018, seeing what summer I have stashed for the winter months.



After the works on the tow-path this year, they put down wildflower mix in the disturbed earth. This patch was blooming in an area that had been torn to muck by heavy works vehicles.



One sunny morning, I found unusual bees on the ivy flowers on the tow path. With their pointy abdomens, sharp stripes and fluffy puffer jackets, they looked like a couture take on honey bees, taking in the best elements of hover fly and wasp. They turned out to be Ivy Bees, a recent arrival in the country from mainland Europe enjoying our warmer autumns.



On a day of September rain, we found light and warmth in the London Design Bienniale 2018. The rough/smooth tiles are made of polished coal; the pink thing is a tiny greenhouse.




One sunny day, I was in an unfamiliar railway station for a few minutes. Inbetween trains, I spotted the far wall growing a fern garden:

january in the garden

Just take it as read that I've now done all the jobs I said still needed doing last week. I'm sure I have.

Anyway, never mind about that, look at this!

Spring is coming:



Winter is totally florabundant:



Oh, and apparently, summer never stopped:



Yes, that's a Scabious - Red Wine - and a  Sweet William. What about my Camellia, though? I got that from a pound shop a few years ago and it's flowered for the first time this year. It's a beauty! The Eden Project Camellia (also a lovely one) has yet to flower. Lots of buds coming though!

a fox at twilight

I'd hatched a plan to get up to the allotment before dark yesterday, with the help of a bit of flex and a conveniently nearby agile desk. It worked - just. I managed to escape my desk as 16.12pm - just minutes before sunset, and with almost 40 minutes of civil twilight stretching out ahead of me.

My allotment was clearly in use. Small animal trails criss-crossed my crooked patch, worn through the tall grass. On the chipboard bits I'd put down to suppress weeds, there was a tangle of paw prints, which I squinted at in the gloaming, attempting to resurrect my memories of spotter's guides from my youth. Something had dug a small, tidy hole in the bean bed, probably chasing a tasty leatherjacket. Badger, Fox? A bit of both, probably. Plus a side-helping of allotment cat(s).

I shed my rucksack, laptop, jacket, coat etc into a rough heap on a cleaner bit of chipboard (the animals clearly had favourites) and suffered the usual problem when breaking ground; where on earth to start? In the end, I went for the parsnip bed, heading uphill, breaking a bit more ground. Aiming for 2m² in the scrap of twilight before it became to dark to see the fork beneath my feet. N.B. My parsnips had failed so that bed is pretty much empty.

Almost immediately, through the couch grass, I hit a thing, a solid, rooty thing. After a bit of struggling it resolved into huge, pale knobbly roots, more forked and weird than parsnips. A sniff revealed them to be horseradish - another gift from the allotment's previous occupants.

It was getting too dark to do anything meaningful, so I wiggled my spade and fork back into the soil. Across the allotment, on the broad central grass path next to the water trough, a handsome Dog Fox was sat, looking at me. A thin moon lit the white on his ruff and chest as we exchanged stares. Then I started talking to him, because what else should you do when you're surprised by a fox at twilight?

A bare half hour's work, but the soil felt good. Ripping out the couch grass is dropping my soil level, though. I need to start building it up again, and for that I need a composter. I'd like to go big and wooden for the sake of the allotment aesthetic but the classic dalek undeniably makes compost faster. Neither will go very fast without wet kitchen waste. The previous occupants just ended up piling black plastic bags of green waste in a corner of the allotment, which are now decaying and grassed over. But that's a problem for another day.

I took a few of the less threatening horseradish roots home in a jacket although I left it for this evening as preparing horseradish sounds a little challenging. Although, Bloody Marys with fresh horseradish on Friday does sound like a bloody good idea.

the weekend's work

With three hours of light to go on Saturday, I stepped out into the garden. Things to do included:

• Plant all of the remaining bulbs
• Sweep up the willow leaves
• Water the shed plants
• Clear the greenhouse
• Clear out the recycling boxes to go up to the allotment
• Prune the apple tree
• Prune the vine
• Water the Rhody and Camellias
• Prune the buddleia
• Cut back the Passion vine

Just before dusk on Sunday* I cam back in, feeling a bit cold and sore. Things I had done included:

• Plant some of the remaining bulbs
• Plant up the winter troughs (snowdrops and Cornus winter fire) 
• Watered the shed plants, with extra for the Tree Fern
• Watered some of the plants in the greenhouse
• Moved the recycling boxes to the side of the garden out of the way and planted a bunch of prunings in them to make new plants
• Pruned the apple tree and brought in the prunings to see if they'll leaf up in the warm of the kitchen
• Pruned the vine, mostly (quite the struggle where it had got intimate with a neighbour's shed)
• Watered the Rhody and Camellias (Camellia 2 is going to flower this year, it is smothered in buds!)
• Pruned the Buddleia
• Given the Passion vine a hard look and then left it
• Trimmed back some of the side-fence plants, including the winter Jasmine and the purple-berried Lonerica 
• Shifted all the pots off the big bed or to non-tulip containing spaces
• Sectioned out some of the bindweed

There may have been other things. Once you hit the groove, it can be hard to find a stop point. Then we went back out again to say a small goodbye to a little cat.

The compost had come on well (although the bindweed had invaded that too) so I was able to make up a good rich mix of seeds and compost to stir her ashes into.



Old cat joined us. It's been a few years now since he walked the garden but it was his territory, as it was hers. It feels good to have them out there, as the mornings get incrementally brighter.

*I wasn't working flat-out all weekend, I was only out a couple of hours in the afternoon each day.

first of the year

So, during the processes of Christmas I have ended up with a delightful and somewhat significant garden-related loot pile. Here's what they are, and what the plans are:

• RHS Practicals Fuchsias - bought from the Oxfam bookshop while I was looking out obscure children's fiction for my neiblings. For me. As I think fuchsias will be "my plant" - they have the flamboyance of begonias combined with the mutability of chrysanthemums (two other favorites) plus a massive side-helping of weird. They're also woody plants, and what can I say, I like wood.
• Galvanised Orange watering can - thanks Sis! It's going up to the allotment, once I've painted "DAY" on it roughly in red paint. As the allotment's call must needs be answered.
• Mini plant snips - in my stocking this year! The pot plant situation is already improving, but needs to be taken better in hand in 2019 as we entering the mature phase of the household planting. 
• Air plant baubles - mine were a T&M Xmas special, now de-linked and invisible, so the first thing I had to do was pull the air plants off their spikes..... but hanging plants about the house must now needs be activated. I'm all out of surface. 
• Some interesting seeds - I'm growing Amaranth and Vegetable Mallow on the allotment this year, from the looks of it. Woo-hoo!
• Fritillaria Persica - the gothest of bulbs. I need to go bulb crazy this weekend and get them all down, as there are more bulbs.
• Exochorda Macrantha - a sparkly white shrub, which will complete the changeover of the back of the deep bed into interesting shrub space/hedgehog and cat run.
• The Unofficial Countryside - in Owen Hatherley's introduction, he describes this as JG Ballard's Crash, re-envisioned as a nature book. I'm really enjoying it, though Hatherley is full of shit, as always. Though I do kind of know what he means. But yes, let's re-read Mabey. He after all provided one of my key garden quotes, which I will say to this day when I try something of marginal edibility (hmmm, Vegetable Marrow, I am looking at you). "Tolerable, when steamed as spinach" - his standard, one-line entry next to any plants that wouldn't actively poison you in his very, very, very famous book "Food for Free." Weeds, ethnobotany, urban wildlife and crows are also in the reading pile, suggesting that the allotment also needs a reading nook.
• Succulents Calendar - this contains vintage illustrations of succulents, not the modern kind. This old style of plant illustration is interesting me at the moment - its turgid, diagrammatic disregard of perspective and setting is appealing and muddling in my mind with the kind of 80s flat-style ceramic and kitchen look. I might be experimenting with that, and seeing where the collision takes me. 

So, there's my job-list for 2019. Fuchsias, wastelands, pot plants, ink experiments and pointless vegetables. I'm galvanized, and so is my water can. Let's get this year in the ground!