Sweetcorn bathed in midsummer sun
Saturday morning, very, very early. Don't know whether it is the crawking crows, maybe the screaming gulls that woke me, or was it the thought that I can get in a couple hours at the allotment before our weekly Borough pilgrimage to see how Jane Scotter's produce is coming on.
Whenever I am feeling a bit full of myself, favourably comparing, say, the size of our sweetcorn with our neighbours, and thinking I am beginning to crack this biodynamic gardening lark, I drop into Jane's Fern Verrow stall to see how the professionals do it. Here are brimming baskets of broad beans, baby ruby red potatoes, artichokes, spring onions, strawberries, and every kind of leaf for salads or steaming.
Beans and calendula at the end of the plot
Later we will have the potatoes and beans with wild sea trout (English summer in a supper), but for now it is not long past dawn, and a 'root' day, and I want to get some transplanting done. First I need to top up the eroding edge of the bed with Roger Pauli's peerless cow muck and compost. Then I thin the sweet corn (we are planting Blue Jade and a white from the Seedy Sunday swap table and multi-coloured Painted Mountain from Mads McKeever. I add a few Peace Seeds sunflower shoots and lay in a run down the newly filled strip.
Howard has dropped off seeds from his friends at Simpson's (as pretty a packet as you will ever see), and I was keen to put in the salsify, never grown it before and hope it's not too late? Also planted their mixed carrots (red, purple, yellow and white, so should be a hit with the kids) and French Breakfast radish. After a couple of hours and a stop at Gails bakery, I am home before my wife wakes up.
The fox seems to sleep on our compost pit carpet
Against the odds it's a hot sunny summer's day, and later when we return to water we spot the fox (excuse the hurried snap, haven't yet mastered the new camera). He appears intrigued by the newly disturbed manure and where I have sprayed the 'nettle tea'.
Sunday is Fathers Day, so have blackmailed my daughters to pop up to the plot. They help with the fruit cage, drink tea and chat, making for a lovely lazy afternoon. In the evening I am joined by Howard for a Fathers Day stir. Discover two cute newts in the 'cow pat pit', plant the gardening club pumpkins (much to the delight of the robin who mops up the disturbed grubs and worms). Our allotment cup overflows...
