Ulubiony robote...

We've had a good long spell of dry weather, give or take the odd shower or two. So I took advantage of it to turn over the bit of the plot I am going to use and then plant the potatoes.

It really is my favourite job on the plot, a real reminder that spring is coming and that new potatoes won't be long (about 14 weeks usually, less if I can't wait). So it's out with the soil, down to a spit deep. This is possible on one part but not on the other so it just goes as deep as I can. Line the trench with good rotten cow shit and then gently place the chitted seed potatoes. Draw the soil back over the top, making a little bit of a hillock to show other people I've been busy, then stand back and admire my work.

Moving house, part one...

I thought I might have had the plot to myself last week when I popped up to turn the ground ready for the potatoes, but the place was packed. There'd also been a good deal of activity since my last visit, as I found out when I went through the gate. What was once good thick turf has been reduced to a slippery slope.

It got worse further in, with the path to the plot more of the same, up to the spring where we get our water. There, some bright spark had had the idea of moving the basin where the water collects, with the result we now have a pool where the old pool was, and a swamp because the new plastic sump doesn't drain the water away properly.

When I got to the bee plot, I was horrified to find this mess:

Walking across from the path was hard work and I can only begin to imagine how much harder it would be with a full super. You can't even wheel a barrow it's that uneven. When I queried who and why, and pointed out that was my half plot for the bees I was given some vague bullshit that just proved once again that the people who have plots on that site have no clue how gardening works, and if brains were manure, there'd be enough to fertilise only a very small gro-bag.

So my hand was forced, so to speak. I don't want the bees on this site any longer and decided to move them straight away. So with a friend, Andrew's, help the remaining hive (the one on the left in the photo) was lifted from its home of over three years, carried stumblingly across the ground, placed gently in the car and driven to a new location.

The distance from site to site was well over the regulation three miles and they should do well there, secluded and in the midst of masses of balsam. I returned to the plot site on the Monday and removed the rest of the windbreak netting and the remaining hive and will re-queen as soon as possible to get back to two colonies.

All this was done in the rain so thankfully there were no flying bees, and I have yet to inspect them after their move, but it all went smoothly, albeit a couple of skids on the path of the skimmed allotments and a near-miss blunder at the top of the potentially lethal steps, below.

The photo is blurred because I was still shaking after slipping on the second step, with Andrew skidding at the top. Thankfully those orange straps keep everything nicely tight and together. So one colony successfully moved, no stings, no mishaps. Thank goodness!

Snowdrops and rain...

It's been some time since I posted anything. Kalina keeps us both busy and, at the moment, there's very little to do on the plot except visit every couple of weeks and replace the covers that the wind blew off. The bees were treated with oxalic acid, for varroa, and Fumidil B, for nosema, in December and are snug in their hives. At some stage I will need to move them on to our plot as the powers that be want the area they are on for another allotment. The original idea, that the area was used as a 'bee garden', has obviously been superseded by financial need although the way the plot site is run means spaces are given to people who turn up once, pay, and then disappear. Cronyism is suspected, rather than getting people who are interested and willing to break their backs. Our plan for this year is to leave half the plot covered, put potatoes on the other half and pray whatever gods we can think of that we're offered something by the council close to home.

The bees present another problem, however, and I am still trying to find somewhere for them. Hopefully I will get somewhere before the end of February when the weather should start to warm up, although we have been promised another cold snap.

On a brighter note, the snowdrops we have on the windowsill have started to flower. Pretty little white heads, tinged with green, nodding gently in the breeze and looking in at us through the window. A sure sign winter is ending.

All change...

It's been a while since my last post. Quite a few things have happened since then, the most amazing of which was the arrival of Kalina, in mid-July. Since then the plot has taken a bit of a back seat while we learn how to feed, clean, clothe and entertain a newborn who doesn't sleep! It's a steep learning curve, but we're getting there.

On the spud front, I managed, over a period of a week, so dig what potatoes there were. We ended up with a couple of bags of Annabelle and one of Sante. Disappointing to say the least. The soil doesn't help, as I am sure with deeper soil we would have had more than one or two tubers off each plant. There are parts of the plot I need to leave covered permanently I think, things just don't grow. On a more positive note, the raspberries have been doing really well, the variety 'Polka' that we have yields huge long mulberry-like fruits which are sweet and delicious. The French beans have been dreadful, again, and the celeriac is eaten to pieces. I've put a few cabbages on now, to try and keep the soil busy over the winter, but the weather has been so crap I still have half the plot to get ready before winter.

The bees have been doing odd things too, and getting to see them has proved awkward. So much rain, then a tiny window of opportunity (missed by me) and then rain again. Both hives appear to have superseded their queens, which has scuppered my chances of breeding from the good queen next spring, but both also seem to be laying ok, despite the weather and the lateness of the season. So far I have had around 150lb of honey, with several supers to go. So comparable with last year and a good harvest.

It will be Michaelmas in a few weeks. The end of the year in farming terms, a time to reflect on what grew well, what we did well, what didn't come off and what we might do next year. It's already time to plant the winter onions and think about what varieties of garlic we need. I'd like to cook something special for Michaelmas; not a goose, but something traditional, to celebrate. Anyone any ideas?

Blight...

Despite spraying with Bordeaux mixture in June, I noticed several stems wilting and turning black over the past week or two. The warm damp weather are perfect conditions for blight spores to increase and even on Sante, a foliage and tuber resistant potato, they found a good breeding ground. So I have pulled the tops of all our spuds, the second earlies that we'd just started digging, and the mains that I was hoping would see us through the winter. Probably not this year. I am dismayed at this turn of events, particularly as potatoes are my staple food, and I was just getting to the stage of being able to grow enough to last a year. So what to do when disaster strikes? Dig what we can and hope they survive.

First of the year...

A strange year so far, with the long hot May and then the damp and chilly June. Then today, again, we're at boiling point after planting out leeks in the rain yesterday. Haven't been to my parents' plot for a couple of weeks, due to Todmorden Show, so the spinach was a bit of a mess when I got there this week. Stripped a lot of it to tidy it up and picked a few other bits and bobs. That gave us our first home grown meal of the year:

New Charlotte potatoes, mange tout, calabrese and a slice of home-made cheese on top. You can't get better than that!

How not to hive a swarm...

For the second time since I started keeping bees, I had a swarm. I got the phone call at 5.30 one night and later we went over to see what they were up to. Not a lot as it happens; they were sat on a post, as quiet as could be.

So I scraped them into a carboard box, propped open one corner with a stick and left them to it.

The next afternoon I went to house them in a proper hive, collected the box:

But they had other ideas, as you can see. After buzzing around the plots in a cloud for what seemed like ages, they finally settled on the same post they were on originally.

So I waited until the evening, then went back. This time they were clustered more on the fence than the post. I got what I could off the post / fence, scraping and brushing them into the box before transferring them into the new hive.  

Another day later, back again. This time there was no sign of them on the post, and unfortunately no bees in the box. I obviously didn't get the queen. Thankfully, the hive they came from has a queen cell, so all is not yet lost. Another lesson learned, some more experience to add to that already gained.

Early beans look unlikely...

With all the snow and ice it hasn’t been possible to go to the plot for several weeks. The bees are usually alright over winter, so not too much to worry about but I do like to go and check everything is ok. So on Sunday, on the way to Hebden Bridge, we popped in to see if all was fine.

The bees were very quiet, a few dead ones by the entrance, but that wasn’t surprising as it has turned chilly again and they keep inside when it’s like that. The big disaster, though, is the broad beans that were sown in October, ready for an early spring harvest. They were the right variety, but it seems the snow has burnt them beyond saving as the stems were black up to where the snow had been, the top leaves looking sad and green against the brown of the soil.

Everything else seems to be doing ok, the onions and garlic spritting and starting to grow, which is encouraging. The Savoy cabbages are fine, but the kohl rabi have flopped in the cold and will probably be dug in to boost the soil. The rye and clover is patchy but still alive and should put a spurt on when it warms up, more roughage for the soil.

Until it warms up there’s very little to do, so it’s back inside to peruse the seed catalogues and make some choices for the year ahead.

Quitte, quince and pigwa...

Some years ago, in Germany, I was given a very strange dessert. They called it ‘Quitte’ and said they were very hard fruits that you had to boil for a week before they were soft enough to eat. I suspected at the time, and later confirmed, that they were quince and in recent months there has been a plethora of articles, both written and on television, about these sadly neglected fruits.

On the way down to Dorset, we stopped at an orchard and bought a few pounds. They sat in the cottage for the week and every time we went past we sniffed them as the aroma is gorgeous. On the way back home, we bought some more and then a week or so ago, we were given a huge bucket of them for nothing. So far they’ve been made into jelly and cheese (like a thin Turkish delight, but sweeter), a quince and apple cake, an experimental liqueur, and a quince and apple crumble. They are absolutely wonderful. We still have some left and plans are now to add some rosemary from the yard to make them into a savoury jam.

If anyone has any other ideas of what to do with them, let me know, but they are disappearing fast!

An apple a day...

... makes Granny Smith a very rich old lady.

I always knew the Piccolo Book of Jokes and Riddles would come in handy one day and I can't believe I only got one chance to tell it when we went to Erddig Hall at the weekend for their 20th apple festival.

We are both sick of the supermarkets and their crappy apples from South Africa, Portugal and Holland so when we found out about this festival on a previous visit to the National Trust property near Wrexham we were determined to visit. We weren't the only ones either, as the place was full at 10.30 on a Saturday morning and we all had to wait until precisely 11.00 before they opened the doors.

Erddig Hall is a lovely property, with an interesting house as well as nice gardens. The apples were set up in a tent away from the main house, and there were, according to the brochure, over 120 varieites available. There weren't that many on show or sale but the choice of what they had was amazing. Far too many to make an informed choice and there was no way we could take one of each. For a start we'd have forgotten the names before we were out of the marquee. So we um-ed and ah-ed and eventually bought a selection:

• Foxes delight - crisp and juicy
• Red devil - hard and crunchy 

Both from a farm shop set up in the slightly off-putting 'midden yard', along with some Buerre Hardy pears which were crisp and crunchy, not soft and gooey like so many of the crappy ones you get at Asda. Add to that a couple of bottles of pure apple juice (which is perfect with Żubrówka) and we were loaded down before we even got to the main attraction.

From the Erddig stocks we went a bit mad:

• Tower of Glamis - to cook with
• Lord Lambourne - a crisp, slightly tart, eating apple
• Rushmead's Kernel - a very tart apple that stores well. These have been wrapped and stored and will come out at Christmas as a special treat. Assuming, of course, they last that long.

We were disappointed that no quince were available, nor were there any damsons or plums. There was plenty of other entertainment, though, and I discovered the £3.50 I charge for a 1lb jar of honey fell far short of the £5 they were charging for pretty much the same thing. With mouths open, we wandered past a potter, basket maker and tree surgeon to end up watching the Border Morris Dancers, who were very good and very entertaining. The girls were very sedate, flicking their hankies and skipping around, but the boys, all blacked up in 'disguise' were a bit more raucous and obviously enjoyed themselves.

Completely home grown...

Despite the long winter and the generally crappy weather, we are now starting to get enough food from the plot to give us a completely home grown tea. With a few variations, they generally look like this:

It might not look much, but it tastes wonderful.

Planting out at last...

Another weekend of warm weather saw us planting out at the plot. It was warm, sunny, quiet and the soil was dry and crumbly, the fine tilth you hear so much about. I love planting out, checking the distance between the plants, digging the hole and settling them in before a good water to settle them in. I learnt the hard way last year after squeezing in too many savoy cabbages in a small space. I’ve gone a bit mad with the calabrese this year and we have about 30 plants in now and another dozen for our own plot.

One of the reasons we bought a chest freezer was so we could fill it full of produce for over the winter and apart from a few loaves and some rhubarb it’s still pretty much empty, so at least this way we can top it up and have veg for the winter.

We’re trying a new tactic against cabbage white butterflies this year, a concoction of rhubarb leaves, steeped in water for several weeks (longer actually as my dad forgot where he’d put the bucket) and then diluted to spray on the leaves of any brassicas. Apparently the smell masks the scent of cabbage and keeps the butterflies away.

The spinach has already provided us with a superb meal of nalesniki, and so easy to make. There was so much spinach last week we had to freeze three bags of it and I was grateful a carrier bag full of spinach wilts down to a fist-sized freezer bag. Next job is to take some beetroot leaves and make botwinka, a lovely light summer soup. That’ll keep us going until the beets are big enough to make barszcz with, can’t wait.

The lovage has also picked up and shows signs of vigorous growth which is heartening as it looked quite ill for the first couple of weeks. If you've never eaten it, it has a lovely delicate celery taste and is perfect as an addition to salads or soups. Not too much, though, as it can be a little overpowering.

Finally, the most glorious sight on any piece of land, potatoes as far as the eye can see. Well, not really, but not bad. Agnieszka was surprised at how much they’ve grown over the past few weeks. The weather has been good for them, plenty of rain followed by a few dry and sunny days, then plenty more rain.

Finally, the foxgloves given to us by my mum last year are in full bloom, bursting with bumble bees and swaying majestically in the breeze, a lovely sight.

Yours are bigger than ours...

The weather at the moment is strange. For one or two days the sun is cracking the flags, then it clouds over, goes chilly and rains for three or four days before going back to being sunny again. Last weekend, with my parents away, we spent the day weeding, tidying and watering on their plot. The previous day I went to our plot and had only been there a few minutes before the heavens opened and I got soaked to the skin picking some spinach for tea. Saturday, however, was completely the opposite: hot, sunny, dry. We spent ages watering all the plants and baskets, pots and beds and then later that evening, and all the following day, it rained almost constantly.

One thing I have noticed is the difference in size and quality from things grown on our plot, where the soil is crappy, shallow and devoid of nutrients, and my parents' plot onto which tons of muck has been shovelled over the years. Our plot will catch up, but it takes time. These onions are on the good soil and are twice the size of the ones on our allotment, despite them both being planted around the same time last year and despite both sets sitting through the extended snow-filled winter.

The lettuces are doing really well, started off at home in a tray, potted on and then planted out a couple of weeks ago. We can probably start tucking into them in the next week or two.

Finally, a strange occurence in the garlic bed. It appears that the single bulb has added a few siblings which have now decided to make a break for it. I have never seen this before and wonder if anyone else has. Is it caused by the extreme cold followed by warm days? Too much / too little rain / watering? A genetic malfunction? Any thoughts are most welcome.

This week it is time to pot on the ogorek and some Romanesco Calabrese, a new type we're trying this year. I also need to find out why my dwarf French beans won't germinate. I have tried several batches of a dozen but so far only have five plants. What am I doing wrong? Answers on a postcard please...

Learning the hard way...

I've been keeping bees for over two years now and am part-way through my second full season. I do enjoy working my way through the hive, trying to guess what they're going to do next, trying (and usually failing) to see the queen, checking for stores brood and varroa.

I get more confident with every hive inspection and I find I am now thinking ahead more to try and ensure I am not caught out when I get to the hive as it is a half hour drive away from the house and forgetting a vital piece of equipment is a real pain and means a second journey.

Although i am far from being an expert, I do know a little and a colleague from work, who got his first colony last year asked me to go along and check his bees over as he was worried after the long winter. So one Sunday we went up and had a look. I should've been alerted by the pitch of the buzzing that came from the hive but I assumed they were calm bees like my own. They aren't.

We only got part-way through the brood before I decided they were too agitated to carry on, although by then we had seen the queen and made sure she was laying. We put the hive back together and I had moved away and taken off my veil when I wandered back over to help put the woodpecker guard on. That's when I got stung twice on the side of my head. Not content with that, they also stung Agnieszka on the leg and, as we left, I saw several come straight out of the hive to try again.

So for three or four days I've been walking lop-sided and staring out of one eye like some kind of cyclops. We laughed about it at the end but I'm not sure we'll be rushing back to have a second look; if we do, I won't be taking the veil off!

Kwiecień plecień...

Kwiecień plecień,
Bo przeplata,
Trochę zimy,
Trochę lata.

Easter was early this year and both of us have noted how we’re still in winter coats, with the heating on at night, despite it being light now until nearly half past seven. From a planting point of view, everything seems to be late. The garlic and onions that went in before Christmas have survived, for the most part, but the spring cabbage have wilted and will have to be removed to make way for more onions. The leeks were doing ok although some rotted in the soil, and they’ve now all been lifted, blanched and frozen so there’ll be a bit of soup to be had yet.

Onions and garlic (above, on the right) and potatoes (below, first earlies

on the right with the maincrop due to go where the black plastic is)

In a sunny window I managed to plant up some more autumn fruiting raspberries as well as three blackcurrant bushes. These bushes need a lot of room and we thought a lot about taking up the space but I think we can work round it by using small patches in different parts of the plot.

Sunday saw me having to feed the bees. The winter has been so long that they've had no chance to forage and have used up almost all their stores so I gave them a bit of sugar syrup to keep them going. There were a lot more under the lid than I thought there'd be, which made going in without a veil a bit of a silly idea, especially with my new 'summer haircut'.

We also decided to break up some of the pallets and make fences to keep in the lilies and some other bulbs whose name I have forgotten, sparaxis maybe? The trellis was salvaged from the long grass and the honeysuckle that did so badly last summer seems to be going from strength to strength, as do the foxgloves at the opposite end. The plan is to add some cosmos, sweet peas and maybe some ribes to give lots of colour, feed for the bees and also make a windbreak. We both enjoy going there to dig and potter so it makes for a nice relaxing morning, if only the roar from the motorway could be replaced with birdsong!

O stony grey soil...

This winter has been an interesting one. Plenty of snow led to plenty of problems as people realised they didn’t know what to do in it, councils ran out of grit and airports were closed. For us, the poor road conditions meant we haven’t been out and about as much as usual and working on the allotments hasn’t been possible for some time.

However, last weekend was the first time in what seems like ages where we had some watery winter sun and bright weather. I was so looking forward to being out on the soil but, as it turned out, the soil was too frozen to do anything. The onions and garlic will just have to wait until it warms a bit. Knowing this country that could be next week.

So to keep warm we cleared the raspberry canes left over from last year, and hacked down the growth of sunflowers that grow permanently by the fence. The fence is in need of repair so the sunflowers must be moved before we can do that. It was so nice to be out, wrapped up, and working. I am finding my day job a real strain at the moment and to go out and cut and clip, hack and snap, was great therapy.

We also did a bit of forward planning, and realised that once the potatoes are in we are going to have very little room for anything until the winter onions come out. So this year will be a delicate balancing act, trying to get plants ready to go in as soon as something else comes out. I find I am excited at the thought of it in a way I never get excited at work. More proof, not that I need it, that I am not only in the wrong job, but wasting my time in an office.

Pre-Christmas allotment...

As I write this the snow is piled high outside and all over the north west people are grumbling: about blocked and slippy paths; about roads with no grit and councils with no idea; about having to take flexi instead of being paid to stay at home. So it is with a touch of embarrassment that I post these photos from the allotment during what was described as 'possibly the worst snow fall of the winter' back in December. How little they knew.

Here are our winter onions, just poking through the dusting:

The leeks that continue to provide tasty leek and potato soup:

And one of the hives, where inside the bees should be snug and warm. It's too cold to check so I have to hope they're ok.

Not what, but who, you know...

I’ve recently had discussions with some other allotment-holders about the availability of plots and it seems that, to get one in Farnworth, I have to wait until current holders pop their clogs. So far two years has passed and we’re not in possession of our own ground. So you can imagine how happy I was when the place where I keep the bees offered me a plot there. Strictly speaking it’s a bit naughty as I am not resident in Manchester, but the need for land is so great I took it anyway. My dad said that when we finally get ourselves sorted he will give up his, so it looks like the end of the long days to Rainford to dig and plant will get closer as the year draws on.
So on Saturday we took the 15 minute drive to Whitefield and started work on our own allotment, slap bang in the middle of the site. It is, unfortunately, almost completely covered in grass, so a lot of back-breaking, blister-forming, slicing, turning, digging, sweating and swearing will be done before it’s anywhere near ready. The soil itself is clay, but not too bad, although the rubbish being unearthed makes me wonder what the site was used for previously – a tip I think, judging by the mattress springs I dug up.
Four hours of toil cleared about a quarter of the site and we were more than happy with that. A line of beetroot and spinach, some poached-egg plants and a few rows of beans went in and that was it for the first session. I went back a couple of days later to water but in hot summers (ha!) that’ll have to be every day I think. Now all we have to worry about is turning over the rest.

Digging the dirt...

Last weekend’s visit to the allotment left us with plenty of foodstuffs and severely extended stomachs. We picked 2kg of blackcurrants, which are now sitting in eight jars in the kitchen,

some raspberries, which disappeared almost as soon as we got in, and some spinach, which I made into a pasta dish on the Monday. We also dug a few potatoes and got some beans off the straggly plants – both spuds and beans tasted fantastic.

Other jobs included lifting all the onions and garlic, which has started to get mildew and had to be taken out so we didn’t lose it all. Some of them haven’t fattened up but there should be enough for a couple of months and the garlic looks very tasty. That won't last long at all in our house.
The radishes, which were planted three or four weeks ago. These are grated and then mixed with plain cottage cheese for a tangy breakfast treat.

My planning has gone a bit awry, however, as we now have nothing to plant for autumn cropping which made me a bit mad, but we'll try and get some winter veg in before it's too late.