Sunday 07/02/10: Clearing up and more sowing.

Today I weeded (roughly as it was so wet), pruned back and cultivated the Asparagus bed and the Raspberry cane patch.

I also weeded the Jerusalem Artichoke bed, digging up another root for tea. Although, having just eaten them, I am now convinced I will dig up the whole lot and burn them, as they are not very nice to eat. I had never eaten them before, tried them a few months ago (and wasn't convinced) but am now sure the damned things are fit only for animal feed. Bleurgh!

I think the land they are in will be better off growing Loganberries.

All the old canes and stuff went into a proto-bonfire heap. I do like bonfires.

Seed wise I planted some Cauliflowers, Broccoli, Tomatoes, Leeks and Parsnips. Again, these are on Daniels windowsill.

The onions, Broad Beans and Chillis I planted previously have now started coming up. I shifted 10 Broad Bean plants out to the greenhouse, but they got a bit cold. I may have to fire up the heater.

We are apparently in for some more cold weather.

Seed Sowing Sunday 31/01/10

I planted some Lettuce Lolla Rossa and some Fenugreek (determined to grow this as it's a bugger to get hold of 'Methri' leaves for curries!!!). I am starting them in my new Electric Propogator.

Some of the Ailsa Craig Onions are up, but still waiting on the Broad Beans.

The plan is to get up the Allotment at the weekend to tidy up, weather permitting.

January 2010 Allotment Update (or" 'ere we goo agin bor!")

I thought I had better start with a fresh sheet this year! An attempt by myself to re-cap on 2 years of growing veg on my allotment was never going to get done, so I have decided to start again from scratch.

And where better to start than January.

With a very small exception, all my Cacti and Lithops in the Greenhouse are dead. The temperatures dropped down so low here in the last period of bad weather that I stood NO (0) chance of heating the greenhouse sufficiently to prevent the temperature dropping to well below freezing. My heater is simply not good enough, and considering the fuel consumption of 1 greenhouse heater, I was not prepared to spend the additional cash on another heater and its associated fuel costs. The Cacti were one victim of the 'Recession'

So I hoped for the best....and lost.

I will try again if I can wire the greenhouse up to the mains. Then I will buy a Fan Heater.

I cleaned it out and then fumigated it with a sulphur candle.

I had been trying (or meaning) to get into the Greenhouse to get some seeds in pots from New Years Day, but this didn't happen, for one reason or the other, till Sunday 24th January.

I have sown 20 seeds of Broad Bean 'Aquadulce Claudia' in small pots with poly bags over the top, and placed them on Daniel's windowsill (south facing). This will give me a reasonable amount of beans that will crop first, earlier than the maincrop.

I also sowed 5 seeds each of the following Chilli variety. 'Ring of Fire', 'Long Habanero','Birds Eye', 'Caribbean Red', 'Khorika' (a mild big one, like a sweet pepper taste), 'Orange Habanero', and 'Naga Morich' (which is apparently one of the hottest buggers around!), and good old 'Peter Pepper', which did throw some oddly penis shaped peppers, but not quite what I was expecting considering all the hype.

I have had such success with chilli's in the greenhouse I am going into production for James' shop to see if I can get the cost of the seeds and compo and pots back.

I also sowed a tray of 'Ailsa Craig' onions, to see if I could grow some show quality onions from seed. I will let you know how I get on.

The seed potatoes are ordered, but this year I have stuck to a few well known varieties, as last year there were too many varieties, leading to too many small spuds that did not keep. I chose from last years most successful types, and adjusted things a bit, and this year chose 'Desiree', 'Rooster' (both maincrop) , 'Home Guard' first earlies and a couple of other types that I can't remember. I will list those when they come in.

I also need to get some 'Mayan Twilight' seed spuds from T&Morgan. They make lurvely chips.

I have bought my onion sets. I got 100 'Sturon', 25 'Red Baron', 50 'Stuttgarter', 50 'Red Sun' shallots and 50 'Golden Gourmet' shallots. That should give me enough onions!

I also bought another rake of seeds....I have stacks of different things to try, and only so much time and space to grow it all!!! I won't list the seeds. It would get tedious.

The land itself is still too wet to work, but if I get a warm weekend, and my bad ankle sorts itself out I will start tidying up.

The Allotment is in 3 separate plots. Plot 1 is 1/2 of a full plot I share with James next door. This has my Asparagus (which needs cutting back and weeding, and tidying), my Strawberry beds (ditto), my Raspberry canes (ditto) and my Jerusalem Artichoke bed (ditto). Thats the first 4 things that need to be done URGENTLY before everything starts to grow again. A week of warm weather, and the sap will start to move!

Plot 1 also has space to grow annual crops, and last year had my Brassica Cage (which is still there with my Kale 'Nero De Toscana' (still growing and edible) my Cabbages 'Kiloton' (frozen through and sadly inedible, but I only lost 5), and my remaining stands of Brussel Sprouts 'Trafalgar' (which did not form very big sprouts due to the lack of water on the allotment site, which has thankfully now been sorted).

It also grew 1/2 of my onions (which we still have some of) my Garlic (which is still OK) and a courgette plant 'One Ball' (round yellow courgettes).

After sorting out the Perennial crops listed above, and when we have eaten the Kake and Brussells, the plan will be to strip that cage down and rotovate the plot over. It will then be where I will grow my Runner beans, French Beans, Butternuts and Marrows/Courgettes and Pumpkins. This plot has obviously not all been mucked (except where the onions were) as it had standing Brassicas in when I needed to muck, but Beans and Squashes can have beds of compost and muck dug in below them just before planting.

Plot 2 has got Sammy's herb patch (needs weeding), my Leeks (excellent) and my Autumn Garlic, which appears to have survived the snow. When the Leeks come up I will use this as my Bumble Bee patch. The rest of the plot will be used as my Brassica / Carrott / Parsnip / Onion plot.

Plot 3 (the newest plot) will be solely for spuds.

Simples!

2008 Spud photos

On Spuds

Or 'Onward, Spuds', as it should perhaps be called!

I was right, 7 rows. All ridged up and ready to go! As you can see if you look closely, the rows had some additional Gromore pellet fertiliser sprinkled on.

As I said before, I only got 2 bags of seed potatos, as our local Garden Centre had nearly sold out, so I was a bit stumped on varieties.

I visited another Garden Centre about a week after this picture was taken. They had loads of bags of seed spuds, all different types. I swore quietly under my breath, and vowed to make sure I got my seed early enough next time. (This year, I was buying seed in February.)

In due course the potatos sprouted. And they grew. As did the weeds. That was all the Gromore you see. And all the undisturbed seeds that were in the soil went beserk. I was hoeing and weeding all the time!

I mounded up the spuds twice, as I weeded, to stop the light getting to them and turning the tubers green.

I got a bit paranoid about the prospect of getting blight, so I did a bit of research, and found out that 'Bordeaux Mixture' was just the sort of thing to use as a preventative. The only other option was 'Dithane', and as I was informed 'Bordeaux' is organic, I assumed I could freely used 'Bordeaux' to my hearts content. Bordeaux Mixture is some sort of Copper Sulphate and lime mix I think.......how the hell can that be organic? Oh well. I didn't get blight though, but my potato plants were turned a lovely pale blue colour. They did look odd.

The potatoes grew really well, and by July we were starting to get our first new spuds. They were very small to start with. As I said before, we had put Pink Fir Apple (hereafter known as PFA, cos I'm really lazy!) in as new potatoes, as my Dad grew some once, and I think they have a wonderful taste. The only problem with PFA is that they are an irregular shaped potato, and have lots of small protuberances growing off them. They tend to grow in clumps, so scrubbing the dirt off them can be a bit of a pain, but certainly worth the bother. PFA are really meant as a Maincrop and should be left in the ground to mature. But they were good smothered in butter!

The PFA kept us in New Potatoes till August, up to the time I lifted my maincrop.

I started digging the Maincrop up once I started to notice small holes in them. I had been keeping an eye on them, pulling the dirt back to have a look every now and again and then covering them over again. I believe these were caused by Wireworm. Wireworm happens to inhabit land that has lain fallow for some time, but I never found a worm to prove my theory. My neighbouring Allotmenteer, Julie, had all her spuds eaten from the inside, leaving only skins, so of course I went into 'Panic Mode', and dug them all up. The Wire Worm had given them a little beating, but they were goo spuds. Some were huge. My sister said "They're not spuds, they're planets."

Digging them up was actually quite a daft thing to do. The spuds only develop skins once the main plant shrivels up, and certainly don't seem to grow good skins once they are dug up. So what I ended up with was 2 and a half sacks of very large new potatoes. Some had better skins than others. So I washed them, dried them, and stored them away in my larder. This only kept us in spuds till mid November. What I should have done was hack the top growth off and let the skins develop. Something I will try this year.

You can now get an idea of how many plants you need to get you through the year, if you want to be self sufficient in spuds. Put simply, lots. The earliest I have got spuds out of the ground is mid May. So your Maincrop have to last right through the winter till then. What you need is as many First and Second earlies as you can to keep you going through the summer till the Maincrop are ready, and then enough Maincrop to get you through to the following May.

In 2008 I grew 70 plants, 30 PFA and 40 Cara. These 70 plants kept us in spuds for about 4 and a half months.

I have grown twice as many plants this year, but this still probably won't be enough. We shall see at Harvest time.

But this all takes up a lot of land. This is why I took on the other complete allotment, as after I had planted my spuds, I had little room for anything else.

If you plan to store spuds in sacks yourself, as I did, please make sure they are dry. Any moisture or damp mud clinging to them will soon go mouldy and they will smell bad. Trust me. I had to hand wash every spud, as I left damp mud on some of them, assuming they would be OK. Not so.

I also found that the Cara were very watery to start with, but improved as they dried out a little. I think they were at their best about a month after planting.

Thats enough on last years spuds. Time to move on.

On Rotorvators

The Rotorvator. What an amazing machine. This particular model was purchased for the very reasonable sum of £100. This was a bargain. It is a Howard 352 (NOT a Gem, which is a much larger machine.....I think I am right in saying Tom Good's Rotorvator is a Gem). It also has a Briggs and Stratton engine onboard. This is important, as the parts for these power plants are still readily available. Which is good, as it has recently developed a splutter, and needs looking at before the autumn, when it will be required to do the bulk of its annual work.

My experience of Rotorvators is limited to 2 machines. My first was an old Qualcast model, which had no driving wheels, only the rotor to pull it along and into the soil. This appeared to work fine, but involved a lot of humping about, making it very hard work.

The Howard has driving wheels at the front, with the rotors at the rear, and also comes with a 2 forward / 1 reverse speed gearbox. This makes for much easier rotorvating. But they are more expensive. If you are going to spend all your money on a rotorvator, go the whole hog and buy one similar to the Howard. Don't buy one of these 2 stroke or electric toys. They aren't any good. Get a real machine.

Howard, (and Dowdeswell who kept making this particular brand of Rotorvator after Howard) made a real good job of these machines. They are tough. Parts may be a bit of a problem to locate, as these rotorvators have not been made for years, but cutter blades are available from various sources, and of course engine parts are still available.

It developed an oil leak from one of the axle hub oil seals a month or so ago, and as I am lucky enough to have bought digital scans of the original owners manual, repair manual and parts lists (good old ebay), I was able to track down the neccesary oil seals from a bearing factors, remove the hub, and replace the faulty seal. This was a good move, as the gearbox contains a good quantity of Hypoid 90 gear oil, which it had vomited over my lawn, and this is one type of oil you do not want in your soil!

New cutters and bolts come in at about £100 for the lot, which, considering how much work they do, is pretty good value for money.

It uses a reasonable amount of petrol, probably using a gallon to do all 3 plots once. But the cost of this is nothing compared to the cost to my back of digging all that land over by hand.

I have heard a couple of people say that using Rotorvators on a clay soil (likes wot I has) will wreck the soil structure. I have found that if I overdo it, after it rains all the 'fines' that have ridden to the surface during the rotorvating tend to bake hard and form a crust. I noticed this the first year more than the second, as by then I had managed to get some organic material in the land which helped. I have a Wolf Garden Hand Cultivator, which cures this as I keep the top of the soil moving during the growing season, and this seems to work for me.

There is also the problem of the cutters polishing a hard pan at the bottom, preventing drainage, although this has yet to have caused me a problem.

After I apply the muck in the Autumn, there will be a period over the winter when the soil is damn near unworkable. It becomes sticky, and it is evident that it needs stuff like leaves and sand to add to the quality of the soil, but all this will come in time, as there is a limit to how much I can do in a given time period.

One small piece of advise. I personally, don't lend my rotorvator out to anybody. Period. I do not wish to appear mean or tight fisted. There is a very good reason for this. Rotorvators are expensive. I was lucky to get this for the price I paid. If my Rotorvator breaks, I will have to fix it. Which means time , hassle and money. And if I can't I will have to dig. And then there is the hassle of trying to find the parts. This Rotorvator was made in 1967. Its as old as me. It won't last forever, and sooner or later will break beyond repair. I want to make sure it lasts as long as possible doing the job I purchased it for. The cutters are wearing toward their limit now, and I suspect they will need changing in a year or two. Also, there is the danger involved using one of these machines. I don't wish to sound patronising, but it took me a few goes to get the hang of using it. If the cutters dig in under a large rock or hard panned bit of ground, it will rear up onto the cutter and drag you off over the allotment out of control. It is too old to have a 'Dead Mans Handle', and is powerful enough to drag you into the cutters if it so wished. I do not want to be responsible for someone elses injury or dismemberment.

So no, I do not lend the rotorvator out, and nor do I till anybody elses soil but mine, and my immediate Allotment neighbours if they want me to.

Another fact that people do not take into consideration is that a Rotorvator will struggle on untilled compacted ground (like lawns and stuff). This type of ground really needs either digging or ploughing over first. The rotorvator comes into its own on freshly turned over soil.

Beginnings

Well, here we are. Before I say anything more, let me introduce myself and my Family. My name is Kev Girling, and I live in the village of Cotton, in Suffolk. I have a Wife, Sam, and 2 teenage sons, Ross and Daniel. As a family we have 2 Whippets, Willow (who is an Insulin Dependant Diabetic and blind,), and her son Charlie. We have some Tanganyikan Cichlids and a Tarantula. But no cat. I am allergic to the bloomin' things. Which is a shame, as we all love cats.

I have decided to keep a Blog of my attempts to grow my own vegetables. I have a very basic knowledge base of what is required by the plants I attempt to grow. I never paid a lot of attention in Biology at school (as Amanda will probably testify), and when I started I only had a basic grasp of how to grow the simple stuff.

I thought a Blog would be a good idea, because, as the years have gone by, and a lot of the 'Old Boys' have become fertiliser themselves, some of the old knowledge has been lost. I will attempt, through my ramblings, to share what I have learned. And hopefully learn some new stuff if people wish to add their thoughts to my blogs. And what a wonderful place to store all this knowledge the Web is.

You will have to be very patient, because, like Ronnie Corbett, I can, and will digress......I will however, try to keep that to a minimum. And I will repeat myself (I need an Editor). And my grammar sometimes sucks. My Mum will probably pick out all the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors. This is not an English Lesson Mum. I got an 'E' in English. I can't do it. This is 'off the frontal lobe' ramblings. And if some wise-arse tries to tell me that the words come from a different part of the brain, I will ignore them.

This Blog is not meant to be seen as a reason for me to 'Blow My Trumpet' because I can grow my own veg. I will say at this point that what I have grown seems to have grown more by luck than judgement. I started growing veg because I thought it would bring back some pleasant memories from a very distant childhood, that was getting farther and farther away. As it does. And if my Pumpkins are possibly the biggest in the village at the moment......hmm....... I can't help that. Sorry. Like I said, more accident than design. (Well, and possibly the 5 kilos of manure under each plant. LOL.

I also didn't do it because I wanted to save money. I have spent A LOT of money setting this up. I will go into this in depth later, but if you are considering taking on an Allotment because you think it will save you money, think again. We pay vastly artificially low prices for our veg in the supermarkets. The only reason that we as a country can produce veg at the prices we pay in the shops is purely because the price is kept low because of the fossil fuels used to grow it. It is grown on a production line, with the unit cost of each item kept low due to the sheer volume grown. Allotments cost a yearly rental, then there is fuel for the rotorvator, and spare parts, manure (which farmers charge for), fertilizers, seeds (and seed spuds are not cheap), netting, fencing, and so the list goes on. I am attempting to save money where I can and replace it with cunning and creativity, trying to convert over to cheap or free methods, but to start with there will always be an expenditure. How much obviously depends on how much you wish to take on. If you haven't got money to throw at it, start small. But to make a good go of it and to get some meaningful crops, be prepared to spend.

Nor is it an attempt to jump onto the recent 'Allotment Bandwagon' that seems to have sprung up. Again. When I was a kid, I watched 'The Good Life', and I laughed as Tom drove the Rotorvator down the road trying to catch up with Jerry and Margo on their way to the pub. At the time, there was an upsurge in people trying to grow their own, and then it seemed to quietly go out of fashion again, as things do. Of course, there was then, as now, a 'Hard-Core Contingent' that kept on doing as they had for years, growing veg quietly, with no fuss. Again, recently, there seems to have been an upwelling of enthusiasm for growing your own, and even the Queen doesn't have to use Tesco as much (or is it Fortnum and Mason?) as she has a Kitchen Garden on the go (I wonder if they tested the soil for heavy metal contaminants. Central London air was far from pure 50 years ago). Many people have a go at growing their own veg, as I have over the years, and many people fail (as I have about 6 times). And so one day in the future, might I. I may get bored next year, and give it all up. Sell the rotorvator, and go flying again, heading into the blue like a homesick angel. But I may not. I may keep growing veg. We shall see. But one thing I am not trying to do is make a big noise about it.

Nor will you hear me harping on about purely organic practices and materials. I have very much respect for people who care enough to take the time and trouble to find an organic or environmentally friendly way of doing things. I try to as well. I will use as many organic materials as I possibly can to feed and nurture my plants, as it is natural, but if I feel I have a need for something inorganic, or perhaps a chemical here and there, and I feel it benefits me or my plants, I will use it. I am an impatient man. And also a selfish one. I put a lot of hard work into that allotment, and I would like to sample the majority of my wares. I have tried many methods of removing pests and diseases from plants, and some do not work, so sometimes I must resort to something nasty. I have no qualms about it at all. But I am careful about what I use, thats all. I am not about to let something that was perhaps hard to grow and expensive (like my asparagus bed for example) be ruined by some creepy crawlie. I dislike losing out to nature after all that hard work. It saddens me. So if I want to be rid of some pest, and more environmentally friendly options have not worked well, it gets nuked. Period. But I do TRY to avoid chemicals of any form if I can. (By the way, I have an old gardening book that advises on using Arsenates of Lead as a remedy for slugs. This, we catergorically do not do.)

However, I will add that it is my personal belief, that if more people grew their own veg, this country would be a healthier and more knowledgeable place.

My Dad grew wonderful veg when I was very small, and still does to this day, as did his Dad, and his Dad before him, and I can remember turning my nose up at his Broad Beans (I used to hate them, along with sprouts), but I always liked the Runners, and as I got older I started to miss these small things you have as a child. New spuds. Runner Beans. Yum! Thanks for taking the time and trouble to grow them Dad!

My Dad grew veg as a bit of a necessity, as times were hard when I was small. I can remember lino on the floor of the bedroom, icicles on the inside of the window and only a small parrafin heater on the landing to take the chill off those bloody cold winters. I am of the firm opinion that Dad grew veg to help ensure we always had good food in our tums, and as far as I can remember, we never went hungry.


I had grown some vegetables in the past, but this was more or less limited to half a dozen attempts to grow spuds and runner beans, but we ate well off them. But I have never been one to stick at something very long, and the veg growing episodes usually occured after we had recently moved house (as we have several times over the years), and after a year or two the novelty wore off and I went on to get involved in something else, such as flying gliders, cycling, motorbikes, running dogs, church bell ringing, or other small amusements that are probably best not mentioned here.....I think Mum calls them 'Sacred Red Herrings', and yes, 'Flash In The Pan' hobbies are a forte of mine, I have done many wonderful things over the years, and had good fun to boot. I've come within a gnats whotsit of kissing my backside goodbye on a few occasions, and I've done some stupid things I deeply regret, but overall I've had a good wheeze.

And now, with this wonderful machine running Windows XP, and an 8 Meg internet connection, I will Blog.........

Or was that Monologue?

So here we go. This is how it all occured, and over the next few posts I will attempt to catch up to the present day, and, from there on in, I will add little bits as I progress through the various seasons.

In November of 2007, we moved to Cotton, and spent a good amount of time setting up the front and rear garden of our new house with various plants and shrubs. Our new neighbour, James, is very knowledgeable about such things, (he's a Garden Designer and runs his own Garden Centre, which I will plug later...... James correct me if I'm wrong please) and we would converse on the subject of gardening frequently, as we still do.

In May 2008, I was approached by James, who had looked into the possibility of taking on an allotment, but felt that possibly, a whole one was too much work, as he did gardening and all things plants all day, and would I like to go 'halves' on one. I thought this was a cracking idea, as I was full of 'New House' enthusiasm, and went and had a look at the allotments with him. We met Mr Bullock, a local farmer who looks after the allotments, and agreed to take one on.

The only problem was this: I have a bad back. And I mean a BAD back, and digging was not what I was prepared to do a lot of. I'm serious here. I mean Baaaaaad. I'm a fat git and need to lose a few stone, and my back is seriously unfit. If I strain my back in the wrong way, I am unable to walk for 3 days, and am useless for the next week or so. And all I have to do is push or pull something the wrong way, or lift something heavy at arms length, and I am out of action. And off work. And useless. Well, more so than usual.

As I write, I have recently begun to feel that my back is now completely healed from the last episode, but this is the danger. I will then get complacent and injure it again. So I have to approach the old 'dig' thing carefully. I first put my back out when I was 21 digging over my entire vegetable patch in one day, double spit depth, so I was a bit more apprehensive and careful this time round. I had recently left my job with BT due to back injury, and had started to work for Telent, so could not afford to let my back injury intefere with my new job. Easy does it!

My physiotherapist at the time recommended light excersise to re-fitten the damaged muscles in my lower back, but I don't really think that this was what she had in mind. However, touch wood, my back has not gone again in a big way since I took on the Allotment. So you see, I need to do this, for the good of my soul. And my lower vertebrae.

One of the other 'Allotmenteers' was a chap called John Miles, and one absolutely amazing thing John had was a tractor and plough. At the point we took the Allotment over, it was knee high in weeds. I strimmed it first, and raked all the weeds up, amd then John ploughed it for us, and also the allotment next to ours, which was also overgrown and unlet. In one fell swoop, all the weeds ended up 18 inches below the surface. Magic!

At about this time I was approached by another neighbour of mine, who offered to sell me a Howard 352 rotorvator, and after the plot was ploughed, I ran over it with the rotorvator to finish the initial soil preparation. This was hard work, but nowhere near as hard as hand digging it. My back held out, and the land was tilled to a fine tilth. It looked really good at this point, but it was only later that we were to learn about clay soil and its characteristics.

Bear in mind that this land had lain fallow for some quite considerable time, and was literally oozing with native life. Oh yes.........

And I had not had time to manure it the previous Autumn. I had to dig in a lot of Gromore pellet fertilizer.

At this point I need to backtrack a couple of months. As part of my 'New House' enthusiasm, I had had the bright idea of trying to raise veg in pots in the back garden. I had no idea of the size of healthy sprout or swede plants at this point, and, luckily for me, the veg never got that big before they were planted out in the allotment. I had bought some sweetcorn plants, globe artichokes and cucumber plants (which went in our shiny new greenhouse in the garden), I had raised some brusell sprouts, onions and swede plants in pots in a little mini plastic greenhouse in the garden.


This was all achieved in the period leading up to May 2008. As I am sure some of you are aware, seed potatoes start coming into the shops in January/February time. By the time I got to our local garden centre, there were 2 bags left. A bag of 'Cara', and a bag of 'Pink Fir Apple'. I took these home, and in due course, planted them in the plot, and ridged them up as suggested in the new allotment book Sam had got me (The Readers Digest Grow Your Own Food From Your Garden Or Allotment).

I think I am right in saying that I managed to plant 7 rows, 3 of P.F.A., and 4 of Cara. I intended the P.F.A. to be eaten as 'Earlies', and the Cara to be saved as Maincrop. I then started some Runner Beans (Scarlet Emperor) off in pots in the greenhouse, and also some French Climbing beans (Blue Lake), in the meantime building the Bamboo structure you can see in the photo. The idea here was to have French Beans one side, Runners the other.

I then planted the Sweetcorn and the Globe Artichokes in the remaining space. I had filled my allotment. I was suddenly aware of how much more possible veg I had in pots at home, and also aware that there was another freshly tilled allotment next to mine spare.

I approached Mr Bullock again and asked if I could take on the additional land, to which he agreed. I rotorvatored all the rest of the land, and this, more or less, takes us to the stage we see in the photo attached to this Blog. James' 1/2 an allotment is to the left, mine to the right of the foreground, and my bigger plot is to the rear.

Here I will end this post and carry on later, as I can smell fresh runner beans simmering on the stove, so I suspect tea is nearly ready. Ciao for now.

Kev

(sp. See Me. Mum)