Shhh! Secret potatoes

Last year was a disaster. All that effort; all that mollycoddling; the blanket; the liquid feed. All of that was in vain.

My potato in a pot came in with a miserable half-a-pound of cruddy little spuds.

The competition winner’s pot was bursting with tubers. It was a tuba full of tubers, even.

This year. This year will be better.

I’ve got my plans, but they’re secret. I’m not telling you (even though no one reads this blog).

We had advice last week from Nick Oliver of St John’s Garden Centre who spoke at the gardeners’ club. I’ll keep that advice to myself too.

Yep. This year, my spuds are going bulge out of the bucket.

Only the most elliptical of updates will you find here.

Yesterday was a secret planting, without ceremony and without photography.

Spuds. There will be lots of big’uns.

Pete free

This week’s Gardeners’ World (iPlayer should work for the next week) focussed on moving to peat free compost. I missed all but the last 15 minutes. Why was I watching cycling from Poland?

Peat, in case you didn’t know, is an unsustainable source of compost. Peat bogs have been laid down over the centuries by decomposing matter. The rate at which gardeners get through peat based compost means that the supply is dwindling. Peat cannot be replenished, except over many centuries.

It’s got to stop. In fact, it will stop.

I use peat free alternatives. However, as the programme mentioned, it is a trial for gardeners as the alternatives vary greatly in quality and nutrients.

This year’s tomato seedlings have done well in B & Q multi-purpose peat free compost. All 18 germinated within a week. On the other hand, we’ve seen no germination from our herbs and chillis. Now, I might put that down to watering or sunlight or my lack of green fingers. But, it turns out it might be that I’m not using the right growing medium.

As always, everything is an experiment.

And, please, phase out the peat.

Caption competition

Patrick and Jim take a break at the end of a hard day.

What do you think they are saying to one another?

Jim update

Last Wednesday night, the parish council granted Jim retrospective permission for his plastic greenhouse.

Jim is obviously delighted and is celebrating in a perhaps triumphal manner. A Union Jack now flies over his allotment.

I make no comment apart from to say well done to the council and I hope everyone concerned can draw a line under this. There are more important issues in life.

Gewächshaus? Nein danke! :-)

Slight bit of drama from Monday.

As it’s coming to the end of the financial (and holiday) year, I’ve had a few days off and I’m doing the same next week.

Not that the weather was up to much.

It’s been windy. Well, it’s always windy in north Devon.

Thursday was a whiteout. Friday was better although the ground was still icy and not easy to dig. I had to dodge showers on Saturday and Sunday. But, Monday was best despite a brisk breeze.

After half-an-hour of pottering about, I suddenly noticed that the shed on allotment 6 had blown over! It must have happened over night in the gale. Yes, I’m unobservant.

Allotment rules prohibit permanent fixings, so Jim had just placed the wooden shed on a temporary foundation of breeze blocks. Obviously, the weight of garden implements was not enough to hold it down.

The shed was at 45 degrees, resting on a couple of steel drums that Patrick uses to collect water. It was still in one piece though some of the planking had cracked.

Due to my feebleness, I had to wait until Arthur showed up an hour later to put the shed upright. Feeble or not, if I had tried it myself, it might have tipped over the other way.

And, that’s one of the reasons I don’t want a shed or a greenhouse on my allotment.

A year on

A year’s worth of digging. Still more to do.

Compare with this time last year:

Onions and garlic looking good after the worst winter could throw at them.

Broad beans (under cover) three plants have poked their heads up.