Come hell or high water - I WILL grow my vegetables

It's been tough weeks since my last post about the allotments. I've worked too much, moved too much and cultivated vegetables a lot. Everything in my life has been standing back to everything, and there's always more to do than my time allows. So if you think I sound tired you're right. Today I spent two hours in pourihttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifng rain weeding pale persicaria (Persicaria lapathifolia) from Angelina. Since my son have been ill I've been absent from the allotment in an entire week. And I'll pay for it... The persicaria is ruling the place right now. But I splashed my way around the beds removing it from four of them (there's a total of twenty beds). Then I lost my strength and decided I needed to return next day. Didn't feel happy about working on Midsummer's Eve (a big holiday in Sweden), but what can I do? This is an excersise in wearing down the adversary, and I need to see to that right fighter goes down.

We'll meet again, evil persicaria!

Since I've been moving and working I've only had time for Angelina. I don't dare thinking of how Precious and Victoria looks. Anyhow, some time before the winter we'll plant remounting strawberries on Precious. Mmmmmmm strawberries! http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifI asked the kind workers at Funbo Plantskola (local nursery, link in swedish) if they tastes good, since I'm a bit suspicious of fruit cultivated to aquire qualities that have nothing to do with the taste. They were positive; one of the 'parents' of the berry is a domestic wild strawberry and wild strawberries usually are tasty. Hm, let's see if it's true once we can harvest our own. A big advantage is that we can plant the strawberry field any time we like during the season, which gives us some respite.

The plastic cover we put over Victoria last time was suspiciously 'mountaingy' last time I saw it. I think the weed regard it as a nifty cover and thrive under it since we haven't put enough weights on it. Thanks to us moving places we have a lot of cartons I plan to put on the allotment instead, and I've found a place were they need to get rid of a mountain of instant wooden pallets. I got a heap of the pallets a year ago, hoping to build something out of them. Heh. That was the most useless wood I've ever come across. Dry as tinder, splintered to bits as soon as I tried to do anything with it, yet it was surprisingly heavy. In the end I made firewood of it all and gave it to friends with a big house filled with tile stoves. Now it strikes me I can use the pallets as weights weighing down the cardboard I'll put on Victoria. I just need to ask my source if I can bring my tiger saw and cut the pallets at their place.

Part of the pallet wood will become stepping planks for Angelina. It's not fun to work on her in pouring rain. The clay turns into slime that covers the trovels and turns the wellies into gigantic leaden clown shoes. And it's inpossible to keep the paths between the beds in good shape. Instead the muddy boots tear up deep holes and squishis the clay around to form instant mud feet baths. I should've known we'd put out those planks weeks ago, but weeks ago we had a heat wave and I was gardening without woollen* sweater and wet my head and hat to keep my cool. For some reason I thought this weather would stay for the entire summer. Should've known better.

The good news is I've been able to sow on almost all the beds on Angelina. (I had my doubts for a while.) The onions are growing, the potatoes needs ridging, the tomatoes are fruiting and the chard is coming along fine. Even the beds I sowed last week is sprouting seedlings, some of them really muscular. The giant sunflowers I sowed looks something like the land kelp Seymore I and II I grew indoors a while ago. This allotment have a chance to turn out fine.

*Last time I tended an allotment I wound up with pneumonia that kept me on my knees for more than a year. I'm scared to death this will happen again, so I keep my wollen sweater on unless the heat is tropical.

Some like it hot...

We've a heatwave in Sweden, and of course I need to do a lot of heavy work now. I just spent three hours at one of our allotments (Angelina), a quick dash home to do some laundry and avoid the hottest hours of the day and will go out this evening to work some two to three hours more. In case I'd feel bored I can always unpack some boxes or plan the next round of transporting stuff between the old and the new home.

I should give you the next part of my planned book, but my notes have disappeared. Hopefully it was not in the move, and thus they will appear again soon. Bummer anyway. I was about to start at the interesting stuff, like how you choose soil and where to put your 'gardens'. If the notes haven't turned up next week I'll reconstruct them to let you read the part anyway.

For weeding reasons I spend most of my time at the allotment. You see the biggest culprit in the picture above. I have no idea what the name is, but it spreads sending long root wines, hidden deep in the soil, all over the patch. Every time I pay a visit I spend most of the time tearing the plants away, and if I'm lucky I'm able to sow some things too. This day I had enough and decided to work like crazy untill I've been able to put all the planned seeds in the soil (thus my decision to work this evening).

When will I put up my indoor gardens? I'm not sure. July I think. It's not really doable before we've unpacked. So I spend my days eyeing the three windows I can use doing some easy plotting. Perhaps I should plant the dwarf pomegrante tree and the eucalypt! I have the seeds and it'd be nice to have some truly exotic plants.

First letter from the allotment(s)

Well, we didn't get one allotment, we got three. We got in line for one close to our home, but there were thirty persons waiting to get one on that field. Since I don't take anything for granted I applied for one on a field somewhat less popular, but with allotments in the same size and where we have friends. In April we were called on for a viewing, and we got an allotment in fairly good shape. The previous owner was probably into fancy garden design since she or he had placed the raspberry bushes in the middle, and on one side had planted too many red currant bushes. (In my case anything above zero is too many red currant bushes - I don't like the berries and the bushes is insanely fruitfull. We got three of them to give away - anyone interested?...)

Well, half of the allotment was dug through, and as I said it was in fairly good shape. Its neighbour was in a sorry state however. The owner had fought an heroic fight against the weeds. Fought it and lost, which meant the piece of land was up for grabs. I gave the idea of grabbing it twentyfour hours, and then I decided we would take it too. The Indoor Gardener hubby didn't have much to say about it, I'm afraid, but he hasn't complained yet. When I took a walk around our new 'land' I found onions still in the ground, nettles (quikly harvested for a delicious soup) and sticks marking the places where precious plants had met their fate. I was quick to decide to cover up everything in black plastic for at least two years.

Two weeks later we got a message that there was an allotment available at the field where we originally wanted a place. We went out to have a look, and my hopes weren't high since we had been at the end of the line. Imagine my surprise when we got one which was perfectly clear of weeds, and had beeen propperly fluffed in the autumn. We can do whatever we like with it! Of course I accepted the offer.

What about the first two allotments? Could we wriggle out of the contract? Perhaps, but morally it was out of question. We'd said we'd take care of them, signed the contract and started to work on them, then you just can't throw them away after three weeks. However the two first allotments suddenly got other functions.

To make it more easy to write (and read) about the three allotments apart on this blog I've given them names. I could have given them numbers like x1b2, x2b4 and x3b16, but it felt boring. Instead I gave them three human names. Much more easy to memorise and adds a smidgeon of character to these small pieces of land.

Victoria
This is the allotment formerly covered in weed. Right now it's coverd in black plastic which probably will kill off ground elder, crab grass and other hellish stuff. My grand plan is to replace the plastic with cardboard and straw and plant potatoes in the straw. We have clay soil and this method will choke the weeds while it adds humus. In turn this will soften up a soil that in worst cases acts like concrete. The cardboard layer has to be replaced every year, but I'll be able to grow potatoes in the meantime, and that's a good thing. On the other hand we'll need a LOT of cardboard for this, so when neighbouring alltoment gardeners donated their plastic coverup we were really gratefull.

Precious
This is the allotment in fairly good shape - the one we got first. As I said half of it was dug over, and a rasberry shrubbery was oddly placed in the middle (actually portruding from the middle of the short end) and three red currant bushes (anyone interested?) plus one gooseberry bush. A smaller part is covered up, apparently because of an heavy attack of ground elder. This will be where we grow our berries. We already have raspberries, and I hope to plant a few black currant bushes (three red currant bushes are up for grabs), perhaps a blackberry bush, and a big strawberry field. I'd rather plant raspberries, but our son wanted strawberries and the plants was far cheaper, so I had to give in.

Angelina
The perfectly fluffed allotment last handed to us. (When you garden in clay soil fluffed soil is what you dream for.) Angelina will be cultivated according to a modified variety of jidutu xiangchuan (a tradition more than a thousand years old). Since an allotment is comparatively small (six times ten meters / eighteen times thirty feet) I had to scrap some of the details to save space. This is ok, since jidutu is very pragmatic. Here we'll cutlivate our vegetables, although so far I've just meassured were the beds will be, and promised our allotment neighbour she'll get her sticks back by Saturday. Since she was the prevous owner of Angelina and saw to fluff up the soil I also thanked her. Many times.

(Yes, I know most of you haven't heard of jidutu xiangchuan - I'l go into depts about it in the future.)

So, these are the three pieces of land the entire Indoor Gardener family will battle this summer. Tomorrow we'll spend the entire day watering and sowing on Angelina. If we're lucky we'll manage to plant some bushes on Precious too. (Anyone wants red currant bushes?)

[Sorry about the belated update - computer problems.]