Leeks are go, sown in Rootrainers in my crappy plastic greenhouse. Would have sown them earlier, but the weather's been so grim.
I'll put these in the space left by the early potatoes. Assuming the potatoes figure out a way to push through the ice.
They say, don't they, that it's a sign of madness to do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result. Hence my favourite dictum:
"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."
I try to live my life by this creed. So the question begs itself: Why the bloody hell am I planting garlic again?
Two years running, rust has all but destroyed my crop. Now I'm seemingly going for the hat-trick.
Nurse: The straitjacket.
Gorgeous day today. The sun was shining, my back felt pretty good and I got a load done at the plot.
The main achievement was to get eight bags of horse shit spread on the asparagus bed. This will pay tasty dividends when the spears are coming through.
I will of course regret planting the row of garlic. After last year's rust disaster I don't expect much.
But life without garlic is, like, unthinkable. Right?
Midwinter storage check: To my surprise, the blighty potatoes haven't rotted in store. Sure, they're sprouting a bit. But that's normal, and no big deal.
A word on storing potatoes. They must be stored in the dark, or they sprout within weeks.
And whatever you do, DON'T keep them in sub-zero temperatures. Like parsnips, their starch turns to sugar and you'll get a sweet taste – which isn't very nice. Too-cold storage also ruins their chipping quality.
Astoundingly, the mildewed onions have also done OK. I've had to chuck away a few, but that's a breathtaking result given their lousy condition at harvest.
Apparently the gods didn't entirely abandon me in 2007.
Hurrah. The season's first leeks are, at this very minute, winding their way through my digestive tract.
There's a thought for your morning coffee.
These were the biggest, and frankly the only ones worth eating. I'll have to wait for more to mature, but it was worth it. Fresh leeks fried in butter are a delight.
I'm gagging to get my teeth into these leeks. I go to the allotment salivating,
hoping against hope that today's the day when they'll be ready. But they're still not quite there.
This is the plant with the thickest stem, and it's still less than an inch in diameter. I can't bring myself to harvest leeks that small.
The parsnips are also keeping me waiting. They're more than big enough, but without frost they don't taste of much. And these days, we don't get frost until November at the earliest.
So it's all rather frustrating.
These Musselburgh leeks have come on a bit since planting. What they really need, though, is a drop of water (never thought I'd type that sentence in 2007).
The allotment was bone dry when I did some weeding yesterday. Even a foot underground.
Just where the hell did all that water go?
My money's on another winter drought. Although at this point, I'd open a book on locusts, raining frogs or any other meteorological anomaly.
Chez Soilman is a weird place at this time of year. Since I daren't leave the onions outside to dry, they're in the house.
The warmest room is the conservatory. Ergo they share my work station with me. And until they dry a bit, they're rather strong... so I'm wiping tears from my eyes as I type this.
Out on the plot, I planted my leeks in the gap left by the early spuds. They look rather chirpy and cheerful poking out of their holes:
Well, well. Who'd-a-thunk it? The onions are perhaps not a total disaster.
Most are still alive, albeit severely mildewed. They're tiny, of course, but I'm just happy to get something from the crop.
Onions: last row standing
I've harvested most of them. If I dry them very, very thoroughly they may store... perhaps. I'm leaving one row in, just in case they grow a bit more. A man can dream.
My mood's also been lifted by my terrific potatoes; I've never had such wonderful First Earlies. They're enormous.
Even the first spots of blight on my maincrop aren't dampening my spirits today. I've sprayed with Bordeaux mixture and I reckon they may still be OK.
Early spuds and maincrop
It's not warm enough for blight to spread really fast.*
*Editor's note: Given the pestilential blight that is now predicted to destroy the UK's entire potato crop in 2007, these words perhaps betray a somewhat irrational frame of mind in the writer
It's midsummer – you can tell from the weather. So I thought I should post some 'state of the union' pictures of the allotment. Just about every inch is now planted up or sown:
There are some salads at the front, too, but they're still very small. This is the view further back:
Behind the asparagus are the peas and onions:
There's a row of celeriac behind the onions. Leeks will soon replace the First Early spuds. And my winter brassicas will go in the gap left by the onions. Which I'll probably have to harvest soon, because downy mildew is knackering them.
The glut would start any minute... if the sun came out. But I'm beginning to suspect – aren't you? – that we're in for a traditional, old fashioned British summer.
In other words, an utterly shit one.
I got precisely 13 (coincidence??) worthwhile garlic bulbs from two 5m rows. Here they are drying in my conservatory. The rest were so small I binned them.
Rust is the villain of the piece. I've never had it so bad. The spores must have been insulated by the mild winter, then turbo-boosted by all this rain.
Given what I paid for the planting bulbs and what I got, this is the most expensive garlic in history.
Should I eat it or mount it in a golden display case?
Grown a bit, haven't they? These cauliflowers are coming on a treat. All the rain we've been having is suiting them. That and the chicken shit I've been watering on.
For every ying, however, there's a yang. Check out my onions:
This is downy mildew, which we got last year too. Left to spread, it either kills the plants or renders them useless for storage. Bad news.
It's serious enough to demand serious action. I've done what I loathe doing, which is spraying with something non-organic – in this case, mancozeb.
How I justify it: This is my most important crop. It makes me almost self-sufficient in onions. Better one spray than losing the whole crop and buying shop onions all year. Onions that are sprayed endlessly with everything. And that come mostly from Spain.
How I really feel about it: Shitty and guilty.
Here's something you don't want to find on the allotment: Garlic rust. The orange pustules on the stems contain millions of spores that will gradually colonise the whole plant.
I have a problem with rust. It comes every year, although weirdly it never affects leeks... which it should, in theory. It's not a terrible drama, though. Provided I catch it early, one spray of Bordeaux mixture usually keeps it in check. Some people use Dithane, but for me that's a step too far into agri-chemical gardening.
Got the cauliflower seedlings out today. Deeply satisfying. I love growing brassicas. Great to eat and a challenge to grow well.
It will be extra challenging (for which read 'impossible') if the weather forecast is accurate. They say it will hit 40C this summer (gulp). Say what you like about global warming. At least we'll die with a tan.
OK, so it's not wildly exciting. But at least these onions have rooted and are thriving. I'm beginning to feel a bit jinxed this year. The sweetcorn I sowed before I went on holiday also failed to germinate. Curses.
*howls impotently*
Still, at least I managed to get the celeriac out. Here it is planted out in final position. Though I say so myself, and bearing in mind the dangers of hubris (see above), I'm pretty good at celeriac. Grew some monsters last year. 'Monarch' is a great variety. Tastes good and is easier to peel than others.
And yes, those ARE slug pellets you see. I'm not terribly proud of it, but nor am I a moron. Celeriac's a prime slug target. Don't tell me I can keep them off with sand, or crushed eggshells, or slug collars, or incantations, or the blood of a virgin spilled on Walpurgis night. Tried them all (the virgin was a bugger to find in my area). They don't work.
Hard to believe these will one day be edible. They look pretty anaemic now, but leeks are the most valuable of all winter veg. They stand for months and provide valuable fresh greens during the dark days. This is Musselburgh, probably the UK's favourite leek. I love them fried in butter (obviously). Actually, here's the thing: I love everything fried in butter. Probably comes as a shock, I know, but there it is.
Growing some other seedlings, too. These are cauliflowers:
It's a purple variety called Graffiti. Very expensive seeds. I hope they're worth it.
Well here it is. Doesn't look much at the moment, but it will grow. So far, all that's really growing is the garlic you see in the foreground. Here's a close-up:
It's doing pretty well, although I don't like the yellowing of the leaves.
I planted the maincrop potatoes today. It was sunny, but horribly windy. Am growing Arran Victory (fantastic chips) and Desirée. The latter is reliable in our soil, which is very dry. In summer, the watering is agony. All of us are at the allotment site every night for at least an hour. There's gravel about 18 inches below the top soil, and water seeps away in seconds. 
Tomorrow I'll sow the first carrots and beetroot. I'm using Amsterdam Forcing and Bolthardy, which should do fine as an early crop. Carrots are a bugger, aren't they? We have the wretched carrot fly on our site, so Enviromesh is a must. It works, but it's horribly fiddly. I tuck it into the earth along the rows, but some people sensibly use iron bars to hold it down. But that's another thing on the vast and growing To Do List, so I never get round to it.
Last, but certainly not least, I'm afraid I simply have to post a picture of my beloved cat Herbie. Apologies to ailurophobes, but he's going to get a few mentions in this blog so you'll have to get used to him.
