Our allotment team

 

There's a lot of teamwork on our allotment.  As a family we all do our bit, some of us have more time than others. The work we do is all according to what we are good at. We all are good at different things. That's what makes us a good team.

My daughter Helen and I are the gardeners, we sow, we plant, we nurture, we weed, we grow.  We get together over a coffee and plan.

My husband Richard is not a gardener. Plants are categorised as 'those tall things' 'those straggly things' . As for flowers, it's pink ones, blue ones, yellow ones. But he is an important member of the team because he builds things--raised beds, sheds, brassica frames, compost bins.  He mends fences, makes tool racks, attaches water butts to gutters, digs over the really heavy areas.

Helen's husband, David is another non gardener, he doesn't have a lot of time to help, but when he does he's really good at getting a bonfire going, topping up the manure bin, turning the compost and digging.

The grandchildren, well what can I say? They are good at disrupting a whole gardening session. They are not always happy to come to the allotment, sometimes wanting only to sit in the shed and read or play games on their ipads. Other times they will happily sow seeds, plant, weed or help me organise their woodland den. More often than not though, they really enjoy being at the allotment and I would so love to make gardeners out of them.

little hands planting leeks

little hands pulling weeds

All of us, whatever we do on the allotment need our hands to do our jobs.

This blog is my contribution to the Shows of Hands for the Chelsea Fringe organised by Michelle Chapman over at Veg Plotting.  We are asked to take photos of hands in a gardening context, because hands are the gardener's most valuable tool.  I found that out quite painfully last year when I fractured my right wrist and for a few months was quite restricted with what I could do. That's when you realise the benefits of being part of a team--when other people can take over and help.

Have a look at Michelle's blog, you may like to contribute to the Shows of Hands  yourself. It's open until 8th June.

Wildlife on the allotment

I thought our garden had a lot of wildlife, but our allotments are even better. Plot 8 has hedging all around the boundaries and a big sycamore tree at the top.  All of this provides shelter and food for the birds.  Outside and across the lane is the woods, which must be heaving with wildlife. We often sit with a cup of tea, quietly watching and bird spotting. We have seen, long tailed tits, blue tits, greenfinches, goldfinches, even grouse. The robin follows us around as we work, there are sparrows, blackbirds and chaffinches.  There are frogs and toads which we often come across when weeding, hiding under bricks or sheltering in a clump of big weeds. The pond has tadpoles early on, but our disappointment is always when we get a spell of dry weather and the pond dries up.

Plot 10b doesn't have much  in the way of hedging, although there is a buddleia and a holly, both of which are good shrubs to attract wildlife.  We are planting up a border there with perennial plants which will attract bees and butterflies and have put some climbing shrubs--ivy, honeysuckle, cotoneaster and clematis along the front to climb against the wire fence.  There are nettles and brambles on both plots, I get rid of those which encroach on our space, but like to leave a clump or two up near the fences where we don't grow anything.

The plots are buzzing with bees at the moment, there are ladybirds and we have started to spot butterflies.  At the moment we are seeing the orange tip butterfly which is mostly seen during May.  I often wonder what happens to it after May because we don't see it later on in the year.

Some of our wildlife though is not as welcome.  We have recently been troubled with moles and on arrival at the plots usually have a look around to see where they have dug up overnight. Their latest atrocity has been the seed beds where I have sown flowers for my cut flower patch.

Even more unwelcome visitors are the rats.  There have been lots of them recently. We see them in the communal manure heap on the lane, but also on our own plots around the compost bins. They have got very cheeky and don't seem the least bit frightened of us. It's good to see though that Ziggy our allotment cat is earning her keep--nearly every day last week we found a dead rat on the path.

Another unwelcome bit of  wildlife was spotted this week in the shed on plot 8.  It was a tiny grey ball like structure with a hole in the base, situated up near the ceiling of the shed.  We soon realised it was a wasp's nest after seeing a wasp going in through the hole.  It was carefully removed by my brave husband and placed in the woods across the lane well away from the plot.

After a week of seeing all these 'nasty' creatures, I was finally cheered up firstly by a pretty lacewing which flew gracefully past me into the sycamore tree, looking like a little fairy with its bright, lime green body and delicate, translucent wings. Secondly  I went to look at the pond and was overjoyed to see it was full of water again and there were the tadpoles swimming around happily, having grown much bigger since the last time I saw them.

Things I'm loving in the garden

In the last couple of weeks the garden has come on in leaps and bounds.  Every day there seems to be another flower opened and everything has  grown so big so quickly.  I love May in the garden, the green of the grass and flower foliage is fresh and bright and the colours of the flowers as they emerge are really welcome.  As I wander around the garden I am constantly shrieking with delight as I see another flower in bloom, sometimes one that I had forgotten I had planted last year or one which I thought I had lost because it didn't appear last year.

This week I am loving:

• a beautiful white aquilegia, I don't remember planting this, so I think it must have self seeded and it has done so in the right coloured border with the yellow, orange, white and blue colour scheme. Normally it's the pink ones which decide to muck up my colour scheme.

• a lovely pale blue veronica gentianoides which is dotted around the borders. I divide the clumps and plant around the garden, so it's all over but I love it.

• a white potentilla shrub which has put on a really good show so far this year

• two weigela shrubs one with variegated leaves, both have arching branches heavy with their beautiful pink blossom. I have some in a big vase on the sideboard.

• the smell of the lilacs. Their flowering period is quite short, but I enjoy them while they are here.

• my bench in the gravelled area.  This is where I sit to relax and enjoy the sunshine, sometimes only for a few minutes to take a break from gardening or household chores. It's a scented area, there are lavenders behind the bench and aromatic herbs around it. I try to collect scented plants which will grow in containers for this area.

• some of the bits of 'junk' which I am collecting to decorate the garden with or use as plant containers

What are you loving about your garden this week?

Disaster at the allotment

Today we had awful weather, sunny spells which deceive you into thinking you can get outside to do some gardening and then the next minute the sky clouding over and the rain bucketing down.  But we decided to risk it and go to the allotment because we had some jobs which could be done in the shed.  My jobs were quite important--I had seedlings ready to be potted on and as we are away next weekend I didn't want to leave them to get any bigger in their trays. However this was not to be.

We arrived at the allotment to find that disaster had struck on plot 8.  The strong winds of the last couple of days had caused the tubular staging in the growhouse to come apart. Well we knew the growhouse was a bit flimsy and there was a risk with it. All the trays of seeds waiting to germinate and others which had been pricked out had toppled off the shelf and were all over the floor and on top of the seedlings on the shelf below.  It was total chaos.

I didn't know how to start sorting them out and felt very tearful.  All my work of the last few weeks seemed to have gone to waste.  I started gathering up the compost and attempting to recover seedlings. I phoned my daughter Helen for assistance.  She was recovering from her son's birthday party earlier in the day, but came over to help.

Gradually we sorted through the plants and seedlings, some had to be thrown away, others could be replanted.  Most of them were flower seedlings which I had been growing for my new cut flower beds. With the growhouse emptied and swept up, Richard arrived with his drill and bag of screws to do a modification to the staging.  I have been reassured that the staging is now safe, so have put the tidied up trays back in the growhouse.

We were soaking wet when we'd finished, the rain had continued throughout but order has been restored. Let's hope it stays that way. What I really need is a proper greenhouse.

Other garden things

Much as I love the allotment, I do feel that I need a break from time to time. A break to do something different, not always completely different, because I love anything garden related. Helen told me about a plant fair and open gardens at a local historic home. That sounded good, a garden to look around, plants to buy and out in the local countryside.

The place was Browsholme Hall in the Ribble Valley. The hall itself is open to the public but on this occasion we were a bit short of time so opted to just have a look around the plant fair and the gardens.

There were stalls from specialist nurseries and being a person who is constantly filling the garden with more plants, it was good to see plants which were not always available in the local garden centre. The plants cost a bit more than I would normally pay in the garden centre, but I couldn't go to a plant fair and not buy a plant. I bought a centaurea montana 'amethyst dream'. I have the blue ones in my garden but this one is in a lovely shade of purple/red.

It was a lovely place to be, the plant stalls were in front of  the magnificent hall. Around us were sweeping lawns looking for miles across the Ribble Valley. The grandchildren were totally bored by the plants, but they found an exciting bit of the garden to look around, a stream, a bridge and hidden paths. That's all they need to keep them occupied, some interesting features and a place to run around.