It's a bug's life

One of the great things about creating an organic growing space is the amount of wildlife it attracts. Most things (apart from slugs and snails this year) work in balance if left to their own devices, and if you wait long enough, a natural predator will usually come along and hoover up the problem.

Despite being accused of taking photographs to avoid doing any work, I took a few shots yesterday to show just some of the insects that have been visiting the garden lately, such as these hoverflies and bees. The borage is also alive with bumble bees at the moment, but I had trouble catching them in a photograph as they were moving so fast.


Peter and David finished off one of the jobs that had been on my mind for months, filling the last of the high raised bed. We got off to a great start as Alan had been in at 6am and cleared the weeds off the topsoil pile, so we could get moving and sifting straight away. It didn't stay empty for long: it's now filled with spinach and salad seeds and some spring cabbage transplants.


It was too warm to do anything too energetic (not had that problem much this year!) so I weeded the onion bed (again) and cleared the nettles from the mint patch. The jerusalem artichokes were all over the place as they had been battered by the wind and rain, so they needed tying back in as well.

I took a break from the garden this afternoon and went to the beach (and had a wonderfully refreshing swim in the North Sea) as I've been getting a bit stressed about the amount of work to do before the open day. A friend recently told me that you have to be careful not to get too obsessive about something you love doing and end up changing your relationship with it, losing some of that element of fun. Possibly a bit 'heavy' for this blog, but wise words indeed :)

Peas, perfect peas

Every visitor to the garden has to leave clutching a posy of sweet peas at the moment - it's obligatory. I can hardly keep up with picking them, and their sweet scent has been wafting through our kitchen for weeks now. The mix of colours are also wonderful, and the plug plants which were near death (due to over a week of to'ing and fro'ing between us and the sorting office) have now recovered.

The plants I grew from seed in the winter are still the stronger though, and I've been advised to try them even earlier, straight into the ground with a fair amount of muck for company, so we'll see how that goes next year.


On the opposite side of the path from the sweet peas, the climbing nasturiums are trying hard not being outdone by their blousy neighbours, and are a great contrast to the blue bench.

Yesterday Peter, Paul and I managed to get a lot done, namely most of the old plant pots washed (it's a long job, but worth it to avoid transferring any pests and diseases); sowed rocket, chicory, American land cress, corn salad and squashes in the polytunnel; cleared weeds from around the pathways and brassica bed; and cut back some of those docks to let the wildflowers have more of a fighting chance of getting through.


(Above) One of the high raised beds, with straw-mulched asparagus, borage, poached egg plant and strawberries below.

Today I showed Marvin from the local Muddy Fingers Pottery and Gallery around the garden, as he's getting involved in the open day (2nd September). We're going to create a pottery welcome sign on the day, with the young visitors being the artists, finding inspiration from the garden around them. I'm really looking forward to working on this project as it will hopefully be the first of many artworks being created in this space.

Know your onions

It's great to see that there are some onions buried under the mass of weeds. There's something about onions that weeds just love, so next year I think I may be growing them through black plastic as, therapeutic as it may be to spend hours clearing the bed by hand, it's a bit of a back-breaker and doesn't seem to attract a lot of willing volunteers, which is why I ended up on my hands and knees once again this week.

On Friday, Paul, despite having lost his voice, made the effort to come along and managed to weed and mulch one of the rhubarb beds while Peter and I tackled the other one.

I also, rather rashly, set myself the target of clearing up the tomato plants in the polytunnel and tying them in before Alan had the chance to come back again, shake his head, and make car mechanic-like noises about how out of control they are. What I didn't reckon on was the heat - a mere 35 degrees in the midday sun under the plastic. It made for hot work, but they're much tidier now, far less of an embarassment, and there's even room for some chilli plants inbetween.

When it cooled down a little in the early evening, I transplanted the brassicas - sprouting broccoli, swede and cauliflowers - into their final positions in the main bed and gave them a thorough soaking to try and reduce the chance of them wilting on me and giving up the ghost.

We've now got some seaweed, fresh from the beach, to mulch the asparagus in about a month's time, but for now they've had a mulch of straw to keep in the moisture from the recent rain.

The hoses have come out this week as, before last night's rain, it's been really dry and I've realised how little sunny days we have had so far, as worrying about water hasn't been top of my list this summer.

The hops needed a thorough weeding around their roots (and, as usual, despite the gauntlets and all my body covered I still managed to get stung by copious nettles). Nettles look a little like hop leaves, but hurt a lot more.

I've also installed a soaker hose around the base of the hop plants so I can connect to the hose pipe through the fence and water them gradually whenever they need it.

Pea green

In a previous post, I lamented the fact that you weren't able to smell the gorgeous sweet peas, and this time it's a sense of taste that's needed to truly appreciate this (very green) pea soup. Despite not having a host of 'food stylists' to hand, I think it looks pretty good in this shot...

This soup is a Hop Garden creation, as the mint, garlic and peas are all fresh from the plot. The only addition - and I don't know any allotment grower who can conjure these ingredients up - is a dash of olive oil and some Greek yoghurt.

Picking the peas doesn't take too long, but shelling them all is a different matter. The fantastic, natural green hue was a delight, despite the fact that I nearly put David off by exclaiming (and those of a delicate disposition should look away now) "Come and see this: it looks as if I've liquidised a frog."

Update: People have been asking for the pea soup recipe, so here it is...

For the soup (serves four):

500g peas
1 tbsp olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
25g butter
Bunch of mint leaves
500ml fresh chicken stock
200ml Greek yoghurt
Salt and pepper

For the garnish:

1 clove of garlic
100ml Greek yoghurt
Salt and pepper
Extra virgin olive oil
About 10 mint leaves, chopped


Finely chop the garlic and mint leaves. Melt the butter with the oil in a saucepan over a low heat. Fry the garlic and mint until golden. Add the peas and stock and bring to the boil. Liquidise until smooth and season with salt and pepper. When cool, whisk in the yoghurt. To serve, pound the garlic into a smooth paste and mix into the yoghurt, then season well. Pour the soup into bowls, add a generous dollop of seasoned yoghurt, drizzle over some oil and sprinkle on the chopped mint. Then enjoy!

Squashed bench

I did think this was a courgette but I think I mixed my labels when I moved the plant, as even though I have some round courgettes this time, this looks more like a squash to me. And it has no slug/snail damage!

The squash/courgette is modelling a rather fine addition to the allotment - David's first ever picnic table, built entirely from scrap wood leftover from other jobs on the allotment.

We welcomed a new volunteer to the allotment on Friday, who had read the article I'd written for the Rowlands Gill Directory. Paul finished digging over the roots bed, which has challenged nearly all of us over the past few weeks, so he made a very good first impression and I hope he'll come back again.

Taking advantage of the clear roots bed this afternoon, I sowed some beetroot, parsley hamburg, corn salad, winter spinach and some Chinese radish and a couple of late squashes as well. The remaining third of the bed has hungarian rye for green manure over it - to improve the soil structure and because I'd run out of root seeds to sow!

It's now getting close to the Open Day on Sunday 2nd September, which will be on from 10am until 4pm. So, if you're reading this and have only experienced the garden 'virtually' so far, this would be a good time to come and have a look around.

Dastardly docks

This is the wildflower meadow a month or so ago, when I'd cleared the plot (or so I thought) of pretty much all the weeds, give or take a few tiny ones.



This is the same site now, looking more like a den for docks than a wildflower meadow, although to be fair, a few hardy souls have managed to rise above the rest of the weeds. Is it any wonder I close my eyes and dream of docks....


On a much more positive note, these lovely sweet peas (which I wish you could smell via some sort of computer smell-a-vision) were given to me by a fellow allotment holder, Jimmy. Coincidentally, I'd seen him on his plot from the community garden and was heading up there, secateurs in hand, to cadge a few blooms to tide me over until ours get going. As I arrived at his gate, he was holding this bunch of flowers, about to head down to see me.


I had some extra help for a few hours this morning from Ruth (the local teacher who runs the Greenfingers Club) and her husband. They worked really hard on the school beds and also did a spot of weeding on the main potato bed as well, which was an added bonus.

While weeding their main crop potatoes, they came across this strange alien-looking growth, and as the plant itself was looking a little worse for wear, we decided to pull it up. The spuds underneath looked pretty healthy, so it was a bit of a mystery until Alan told us that it was simply seeding itself. He's seen it dozens of times apparently, but this strange object was a new one on me.

I manged to get the asparagus/strawberry bed weeded, some straw around the fruit corner and David put the finishing touches to his information boards, as well as tackling some of the more wild patches of the garden with a grass hook.

As my water butt is no longer full to brimming, I had to resort to the allotment tap this evening for the first time in ages, and also, as a special treat for the tomatoes, tested the soaker hose in the polytunnel that I'd put down months ago, by connecting up the hosepipe - a rarity on our plot.