Home & Shop Companion #0070
letter from a small corner of far away
Dear Lynn, dear Everyone,
Now that the garden is well underway and hay making is still a few weeks off, we have been away from home for a week. We booked our air b&b in hope rather than expectation back in January; our holiday happily coincided with an opening of restrictions, so we were able to visit our daughter in her house, and they came to spend a lazy day with us. A few lazy days is what we needed, there has been so much happening recently, with aged parents and changes to work brought on by the effects of the pandemic, as well as the usual stuff.
Before we left, I managed to cultivate down between the vegetable rows with the Pioneer single row cultivator, and to ridge up the potatoes again, just as some shoots were starting to push through. The ground, however, was only just dry enough. Despite a few dry days, the seemingly endless rain during the first half of May left the furrows between the potatoes still quite damp. If we hadn’t been going away, I would have left it a day or two more to dry out, but the weeds were the ideal size to knock out, and a week later it would have been more difficult. If I had a tractor instead of horses, there would have been no choice, I would have had to wait. The saturated conditions have allowed me to tackle another problem – the couch grass growing in one of the fallow patches. That patch is otherwise quite free of weeds following weekly cultivations since it was ploughed in March, but the continuous wet has rewetted the couch roots, even those dragged to the surface, and they are starting to sprout again. So, I spent a couple of hours following the roots along from any spear of green, using a digging fork in the soft soil. In these conditions the roots come up easily, and with any luck, another hour or so will see the job done, but it does need to be soon because things are starting to warm up at last. Nonetheless, looking at the grass growth and the vegetables, you would be forgiven for thinking it was still early May.
While we were away, our son looked after the horses and the greenhouse. The greenhouse staging is still full of plants waiting to go outside, and even in the greenhouse it hasn’t been very warm, and the courgettes and squashes are still very small. Before we left, I planted out some peas which I had started in the greenhouse and on the same day sowed some more directly in the soil, as well as some French beans, both outside and in pots in the greenhouse. The inside ones are just coming through, though the beans outside are still cowering in the ground; I just hope they haven’t rotted. The last day or so has seen warmer temperatures and it is forecast to get hotter, so I quickly scraped round the garden with the hoe and hoed in the onion rows in the field before the top dries out too much.
Where we were on holiday, in the south west of England, the season is probably two weeks ahead of here; when we went to see my daughter’s new allotment garden, despite having cleared the ground from scratch since March, they were still a little ahead of us, and some of the established allotmenteers were ahead of them. While we visited the allotment, we all pitched in with a hoe or a trowel to remove some of the weeds, but we also took a little tour around the two-acre allotment site, sandwiched between a railway line and a sports field. I have always liked allotments; some people might see them as messy and untidy, with old pallets, wonky and fading sheds, plastic cups and food containers, wooden boxes, old CDs and other junk pressed into service to hold up netting, to shelter plants, collect water or scare the birds. But I like the variety and the fruitfulness, the ingenuity and attention, the money saving and the commitment, and I love the atmosphere of quiet and companionship as every allotment holder shapes their plot in the way they think fit.
There was one allotment which only grew potatoes; every year he grows nothing but potatoes, while a neighbour, now in his 56th year of gardening, had just taken on another half plot. He was a little critical of another neighbour, not understanding why he would grow so many small seeded plants, requiring greater care and more expensive seed, though he admitted that his own long row of runner beans would be too much and that he would have to give some away! It reminded me of an acquaintance who ‘dropped out’ in the 80s and gardened a big plot, alongside their goat and hens, and every week rode a bicycle with a trailer to the market to sell his excess produce. He was quite adamant that the only way to garden was to have 50% of any plot given over to winter vegetables, to brassica, leeks and parsnips. For him, being self-sufficient in fresh vegetables all year round was the only valid approach. You couldn’t argue with him, not that I wanted to, because his approach suited him just fine, but neither am I going to argue with someone who wants to grow too many beans, or just likes to be in the garden in the summer, or grows only the most expensive vegetables to maximise the value from their plot. I might, however, take some convincing that growing potatoes in the same place every year is a good idea! But, as the saying goes, ‘it takes all sorts;’ it depends on why you want to do it and what you want to achieve, and in the allotments, you can see that in all its glorious variety.
Take care,
William
William Castle is a violin maker, farmer & SFJ contributor who lives in Shropshire, England.
