Gardening

I did a quick flit to the plot this weekend to harvest roast ingredients and to rescue the developing mushrooms. I was surprised to find a beautiful chestnut fungus occupying the place where my foetal oyster mushroom had appeared only days before. I obviously got my logs labelled incorrectly and these were actually the...
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  Life dried off a little for December and I managed to get down to the plot quite a few times. The grotty dark nights resulted in a couple of torchlit digging sessions but I also found myself shamed into a day of weeding after passing by on the train and noticing the big blocks off...
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I rose early enough today to make a quick detour to the plot to source a traditional array of Christmas dinner delights. The carrots may have been merely bite-sized but the parsnips have got to be world-record challengers. I got so carried away that I dug an entire bed of them. That should make...
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  October and November were such washout months that I hardly got to the plot at all. When I did go down, the place seemed just a little too grim for photography and so here I am, left with a tiny handful of snaps with which to rustle up a double ”month in pictures” montage....
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I’ve been finding it difficult to find the time to get down to the plot recently, but faced with the prospect of yet another meal of tinned mushroom soup, I thought the time had come to rescue some of the remaining winter roots. Armed with 4 high power bike torches I headed down to...
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I woke at the crack of dawn, dreaming of crunchy roast potatoes. Fortunately I didn’t have a stash of Kerr’s Pink in the flat or I think I would have been chomping away long before 5am. Not one to delay gratification for too long, I waited for daylight and then headed down to the...
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I had a phone call this morning reminding me that this was the perfect week to hide my abyssmal firestarting skills. What better than bonfire night (week) to hide a terribly smokey attempt at a fire/smouldering embarassment? Having received much advice of the paraffin/petrol variety, I thought I was assured a bonfire of truly...
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My parents visited again this weekend and while I was spoiling myself with another half marathon attempt, they were perusing the seed aisles at Wisley. Here’s my share of their finds: It’s a pack of 10 assorted yet edible Italian squashes. The seeds were packed together so there was hours of fun trying to...
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It was a bit of a struggle to find enough for photos for Septembers month in pictures. What a wash out it’s been. I’ve hardly made it to the plot at all this month. I’ve started saving a few seeds and amazingly some of them have even dried out enough for storing. In the...
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The weekend was a scorcher, which was a blessing as I had quite a few onion sets to plant. I arrived thinking I had a fairly big job on my hands trying to find a home for about 200 onions but when I opened the padded envelope and ripped open 1 of the 3...
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