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)