Everything On A Grand Scale

Well, OK, so far the flowers aren’t on a grand scale, but let’s not dwell on that. Everything else, though, is certainly bigger than I’m used to and so poxy little plastic labels are out and bloody great wooden stakes for labelling are in!

I’ve painted the names of the flowers on these 4ft stakes and am gonna bang them in at the end of each row. And here’s the clever bit – I will need a stake to tie up the Onopordium plant I am going to put at the end of each row as a windbreak, so they will be dual purpose! Which means any accusations of wasting time painting wood in nice girly colours to make it look pretty will be TOTALLY UNJUSTIFIED! Right?

The First Flowers!

The plants at the allotment are beginning to flower! This is cerinthe, a hardy annual with gorgeous grey-blue leaves, which are irresistibly thick and squidgy. I put the young plants out in the autumn but quite a few of them didn’t really grow. Mind you, I have more plants coming on, sown in the propagator a few weeks ago, so hopefully they will take over as the autumn-sown plants exhaust themselves.

 

The Lunaria (honesty) is also starting to bloom. This is ‘Munstead Purple’,  one of the biennials I sowed last summer, and I also have ‘Alba’ (white – natch). It’s supposed to be much taller and I think if it had been in the ground all winter instead of becoming pot-bound and slug-munched at the bottom of the garden, it might well have been 3 feet tall by now.  Still, it should get there. I hadn’t dug enough of the allotment to put them out until recently, but next year I’ll get them in the ground early, maybe keeping some back in pots to flower later. Successful successional planting is said to be one of the hardest things about gardening, but with me it sort of happens just by being a bit rubbish!

The biennials have really got me thinking about a polytunnel, as the few pots I kept in the shed all winter are in a beautiful condition, whereas the ones outside look really ratty. It’s amazing the difference just a little bit of protection makes. Also, it would really banjax those bleedin’ crows!

In the garden, the tulips are on the cusp of blooming, as is the Euphorbia oblongata, which is in its third year so getting a bit tired. With that polytunnel, and a few extra spring bulbs, this time next year I could be making up bouquets! 

 

By Jove, She’s Got It! (She thinks…)

When I got to the field today, a crow flew up from one of the rows of soil with something in its mouth. It was probably only a bit of cardboard but it set me thinking and, blow me, the merest bit of research reveals that they eat crops! Of course - scarecrows! Duh!

Crows I can deal with. Crows are easy! I feel some Country Living bunting coming on. Ooh, and maybe a tastefully dressed scarecrow…

 

Monkey Mind

Progress at the field has been somewhat slow this week – and frankly a bit depressing. 

Not happy unless something is churning round my mind at night (toss-turn-sigh-toss-turn-sigh-thump pillow-toss-turn-sigh-toss-turn-sigh…), I have had more than a few nights with those bloody monkeys going non-stop.

Worry 1: I don’t think the plants are rooting any further down than the imported compost. The ground under the cardboard - undug, of course (just what have those worms been up to all winter?) - is compacted and stony. How could the roots penetrate? I have dozens of plants still to plant out , some of which need a planting hole much deeper than the compost, which has sunk down to just a couple of inches in places. What do I do about those?

Worry 2: Some BASTARD is eating my crops! All the aforementioned cornflowers are gone. Rabbits? I can’t see that the fencing has been breached. Could they be jumping over it? It’s as high as was recommended but maybe that’s not enough these days.  Maybe rabbits have evolved. Maybe some super-rabbit is leaping over it.*  Maybe it’s deer – although the Kindly Smallholders say they don’t get deer, and anyway there aren’t enough footprints – just the occasional hole in the compost. Pigeons maybe? Do they eat cornflowers? Don’t think it’s slugs. Not with that huge pile of grit round the plants and no slime trails.

I have dozens of plants desperate to be planted out, some of them just about to flower, and I have somewhere to plant them. But what’s the point if the crops are just going to be eaten?

Worry 3: The wind. God, the wind!! It’s driving me absolutely bleeding bonkers! Surely it can’t be doing the plants any good. And what about the flowers (if there ever are any)? One stormy night and they’ll be devastated. See below for temporary solution. You can’t really see from the photo but it’s very Cath Kidston - that made me smile if nothing else did this week. Don’t think it will protect the crops, but it gives me somewhere sheltered to sit and contemplate what the hell I’m gonna do with all these plants and all this land.

And, blimey, charity shops are expensive these days!

 

 

* That’ll be those SuperBugs they’re always talking about on the News.