Soilman's Allotment Blog

Okra update

Please wait...

Copper-bottomed plotter

Hurrah! Celeriac plants are out on the plot. Left them under a fleece tunnel for a week to get fully acclimatised to allotment conditions.

Talking of which, it's not just the plants that need hardening off. After my massive dig-and-weed-a-thon on Saturday, I have a seriously stiff arse. Sitting down is posing problems.

Wasn't aware gardening exercised the gluteus muscles so effectively. It's yet another benefit of the madcap funster allotment lifestyle.

Soilman: Buns of steel.

Nonsense about me

This is one of my onion sets. Sprouting at last!

But it's not the reason I'm posting. Lucy at the Smallest Smallholding has tagged me to answer some questions. So here goes:

What Was I Doing 10 Years Ago?
I'd just become a magazine editor for the first time. I was a few months into it and starting to realise that nothing I'd done thitherto remotely prepared me for the job.

My To Do List for Today/Diary of What I Actually Did
Sow carrots. I'm staggeringly late with the early carrots this year. Been meaning to sow them for about two weeks... but keep not having the time. And I failed again tonight.

Snacks I Enjoy
Halva, Bombay mix, chocolate. Had no interest in chocolate whatsoever until my 35th birthday, when some mysterious chocaholic gene switched itself on. Now this addiction is threatening my sanity.

Things I Would Do If I Were A Billionaire
Quit the allotment, buy a place with a VAST garden and become an urban peasant. Total self-sufficiency, full-on organo-fascism.

Three of My Bad Habits
Arriving early (for everything), colourful language, detail-blindness

Five Places I Have Lived
Dorset, Oxford, London, eastern France. Oh, and Swindon (the Glamour Years)

Five Jobs I Have Had:
Bus conductor (number 11, Fleet Street to Putney), waiter ("More cherry cake, Madam?"), life insurance salesman (total sales: 1 policy, later cancelled), teacher, journalist

Five People Who Write Interesting Blogs That I’d Like to Tag (but don't bother if you've done it already or don't have time):

• Laura at mas du diable
• Welsh girl 
• Gina at My Skinny Garden 
• Kayle Garkut 
• Greenmantle at Quotidian

The touch of okra

Still not convinced the doomed okra will survive. I've read all you Australian bloggers saying they need hot, dry conditions. Not exactly what these shores are famous for.

But as you can see, they're still alive – for now. So there's still a flicker of dangerous hope. I'm now enjoying a Gladiator-style dream in which I stroll through a field of perfect okra, my fingertips lightly feathered by their topmost leaves in the rosy light of a summer evening.

Which shows I know sod-all about okra. Apparently the leaves are as rough as a badger's arse.

National weeding week

No need to pinch yourself, reader. This is not an illusion. The sun is shining and I have got out of the house.

Jeez, I was even warm enough to take off my jacket – at 8.00am. After the deluge of the last few weeks, I felt like Noah on Mount Ararat.

It was all frighteningly productive. I planted onion sets. I trimmed borders. I dug seed beds.

And of course, I weeded. Famous though I am for my can-do, glass-is-half-full attitude (Ed: Er, hello?), I can't help feeling pretty cheated here. I mean, we've had the March from Hell and nothing's grown... but the plot's already getting choked with groundsel and couch.

It is, in short, a very weedy sort of Spring. Anyone else got this problem, too?

Bhindi balls-up

This is my 2008 season car crash. It's okra. And here's the thing: I know it won't work.

Most years I attempt an exotic – or at least, something vaguely out of the ordinary. Nine times out of 10, it fails miserably.

For what it's worth, okra apparently needs a long growing season (so says my work colleague, who used to grow it in Mumbai). So I'm bringing it on indoors until it's warm enough to plant out. Anyone have any okra tips??

My hopes are not high. Ladies and gentleman, I bring you... this year's miserable failure.

Promises, promises

I have three hippeastrums flowering at the same time and I'm thrilled.

Shame I can't say the same about the vegetable plot. Haven't been since Saturday. No point – it's deader than a dead thing in a cemetery.

It even looks a bit like a cemetery. Give me a few mourners and a hearse and you'd never know the difference.

This weekend, though, it's going to be different. The potatoes are definitely going in. I'll finish the digging and edging. I may even hoe weeds and plant onion sets.

And pigs might fly.

Most excellent, dude

Very flattered to be given a vote of confidence by Melinda at Elements in Time. I'd like to thank my wife, my agent and my pussycat.

Ashamed to say I'm ducking the challenge of naming 10 other excellent blogs. Seems invidious to pick out 'specials' from so many great bloggers. Suffice to say that every site in my 'Other Blogs' list has my implicit approval. I enjoy them all.

Seeing as it's still winter, and I still can't sow seed seriously (wow, get that alliteration), I'm reduced to posting more flower pix. Check out this gorgeous Paphiopedilum orchid:

PS I'm aware this is a vegetable gardening blog. Honest. Cut me some slack here.

Oops, I did it again

Couldn't resist the unusual seeds. This happens every year. As I'm scanning the online seed catalogues, I'm telling myself: "Cool your jets, Soilman. Don't choose the weird ones. You know they never work.

"Stop now. Just stop. Are you listening?

"HEY! DON'T CHOOSE THE WEIRD..."

And then it's done. 'Make payment' is clicked. And more temperamental/ungrowable seeds arrive in the mail.

Maybe I'm being unfair. It could be me; perhaps I just don't know how to make the exotics work. God knows, they never do.

Anyone out there tried any of these and succeeded?

Soilman on soil

Digging again today. Not my favourite job, but quite satisfying; you see the result of your efforts so clearly. So unlike most everything else in life.

Also, I like soil. I love the smell of it, and the way it crumbles (you hope) when you dig it. I like watching worms writhing in it.

I am, in short, a soil sadster. It's grown on me as I've got older. As the date of one's interment in the stuff approaches, one naturally takes a greater interest.

Back from the turd world

No, I've not gone clucking mad. Not obviously, anyway. Went to my mother's farm for the weekend. These are her pretty bantams, a variety called Silver Sebright.

They produce excellent eggs; they have a rich, orange yolk unlike anything you find in eggs bought from shops.

Most relevant, from my point of view, are the ready sources of shit for my allotment: my mother's chicken house and her Beltex sheep.

Some people look at sheep and see charming creatures that go 'baa'. Some see a steaming roast. I'm afraid I just see a woolly manure factory.

Last ravings of the season

Went walkabout at the allotments yesterday and found this peculiar plot. Looks like a snap-shot in time, circa late August. The gardener was abducted by aliens, or something, as (s)he was harvesting the pumpkins. Nothing's been touched since.

I found myself wondering how long it would take the bindweed and marestail to cover my corpse if I dropped dead at the plot. Only days, I concluded.

And this led me to reconsider the dead-in-apartment-with-pet-Alsatian conundrum. How long before the hungry hound accepts you're definitely never going walkies again... and eats you?

Cheerful places, allotments.

Hot plot

Told you it would flower again. Either this dahlia is a mutant, or August came late this year.

I'm still mowing the lawn – weekly. Weeds are still growing. Roses are still blooming. And there's still only the merest smattering of leaves on the grass outside.

The temperature today is 18C (64F). I went digging at the plot and wished I'd worn a T-shirt. And sun cream.

This is getting freakish...

Did August come late this year, or what?! http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1274025949http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=1213897953

Surrey: Heart of the rainforest

Most evenings, just before sunset, my allotment and garden get a visit from some rather exotic visitors on their way to roost. I find them absolutely captivating.

Ring-necked parakeets in Surrey http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1213943053http://www.brightcove.com/channel.jsp?channel=1213897953

Soilman's Stool for Business

Who'd have thought shit could be so expensive?

This stuff is good, but it's £10 for four bags. They must be making a fortune.

Mental note: Business idea - bag and sell own shit. Strengths: Money for old turds. Weaknesses: Can wife and I produce enough? Will food costs increase? Opportunities: 'Soilman' brand acquires new significance. Threats: Cholera, E Coli

I got some free horse manure from a friend a few weeks ago, but I don't have a van – so I had to hire one. It's nuts, of course: Every stable in Britain is drowning in the stuff and under a legal obligation to dispose of it safely.

But will they deliver to allotments? Will they hell.

OK, enough of that. I've ranted enough this week already. Here's my last courgette of the year, gamely growing on a very mildewed plant:

Trial by ordure

Today I 'achieved' this pile of shit.

I didn't produce it, you understand. That would have been easier, and no doubt more enjoyable. No, today's task was to hump a ton of horse manure from a nearby stable (thanks Vanda!) to my allotment.

So I hired a transit van and spent the day barrowing it from place to place. I ache all over, I smell dreadful and I'm utterly shagged out.

But hey, who cares? Because next year's brassicas are going to be great.

ASBO winners 2007

Some excellent entries for the 2007 ASBO (Allotment Success despite Bastard Odds) awards. I fear I must surrender the crown to two particularly worthy competitors.

Joint ASBO winner is Liz Wallace, who's not strictly an allotmenteer. But she's battled with evil conditions on her garden veg plot on a hill just outside Bath: hellish rain, battering winds and all the misery of blight and mildew.

She lost her whole tomato crop to blight. Incredibly, though, she's produced these gorgeous onions:

There can't be many organic onions that beautiful in the UK this year, Liz. So feel free to bask in ASBO glory.

At the other end of the success spectrum (ahem) is Celia, whose onions – though tragically small – did somehow survive the worst of the floods in Oxfordshire. She even, she tells me, got a meal out of them. Er, just.

I think you'll agree that this must constitute the tiniest and crummiest onion in the world:

Inspirational though it is, this is not Celia's best entry. Oh no. For that, which cruises effortlessly to joint 1st place, we must turn to the Smallest Courgette In The World. This picture, which cracks me up every time I look at it, sums up the purest essence of the ASBO spirit:

A big thank you to everyone whose sense of humour was sufficiently intact to send in an entry. The awards are closed now, but I'll gladly give an Honourable Mention to any late entrants.

7 random facts

TopVeg has tagged me to give 7 random facts about myself and my gardening. So here goes:

1. I'm scared of spiders. Really scared. In Cyprus last week, I discovered that the banana plantations there are infested with European Tarantulas. The nearest banana crop was 1km away, but I couldn't sleep properly after that.

2. I used to loathe beetroot. Then I married Mrs Soilman, who's Russian. Eight years later, I love beetroot.

Honest.

3. I'm obsessed by lilies. I grow almost 20 different cultivars and species. My garden is a sort of shrine to them. If I had the space, I'd allow myself to get equally obsessed by delphiniums.

4. I adore broad beans, but I've never grown them. Wife doesn't like them, and it seems like an indulgence to grow something only I can eat.

5. I have a bad back. An orthopaedic consultant told me recently that digging is the worst thing I can do to it. I must, apparently, stop.

And doctors wonder why we don't listen to them.

6. I'm not strictly organic. I aspire to it, but I occasionally lapse. And actually, I don't think it's the most important thing. Growing your own food in situ, and not transporting it all over the world, is the main objective. I try to follow my own vegetable APPROVAL guidelines.

7. Mostly, if I'm honest, I grow for taste. I love to eat. I am, in fact, a greedy bastard. And fresh vegetables, just pulled from the soil, taste so much better. It makes me very sad to think of all those millions of city-dwellers who've never eaten fresh peas or sweetcorn – raw – just plucked from the plant. This has got to be one of life's greatest pleasures.

Phew, that's it.

Here are the 'Random 7' rules I'm supposed to relay:

Each player starts with 7 random facts/habits about themselves. People who are tagged need to then report this on their own blog with their 7 random facts as well as these rules. They then need to tag 7 other garden blogs and list their names on their blog. They are also asked to leave a comment for each of the tagged, letting them know they have been tagged and to read the blog.

I'll start by tagging Matron, Big_M, Jac and Welsh Girl.