Digging & Dreaming

Coming To Life

This is the time of year when the allotment and garden really start to come to life. Helped along by a little warmth and wetness seedlings are popping up all over the place. And perennial plants and shrubs that have been quiet over the winter months are coming back into their own. Suddenly the allotment is a very crowded place! Unfortunately the one thing that can be guaranteed not to grow in relation to the plants (and weeds!) is the time that I have got available to tend my plot...

Over the last couple of years my work life has changed significantly, moving from fulltime employment to working freelance and running my own small business. This means that my work hours follow a less regular pattern and take me away from home more frequently - making the time I can spend on the plot much less regular. I have tried to reflect this new routine in the way that I cultivate my plot, thinking more about perennial planting, keeping the ground covered and allowing plants to seed themselves more and find their own space. However, the challenge with this is that my plot is not presented in regimented lines and layout which is more typical of traditional allotment plots. Which can cause conversation and consternation between other plot holders, who may mistake a productive polyculture as a space that is messy and uncultivated.

Has anyone else got any examples of less traditional ways of growing veg and cultivating an allotment space? I'd love to see them if you have.

Cosmos seedlings coming along in the greenhouse

Apple blossom

Chive flowers - soon these will be cut back to make a mulch

Early Calendula - beautiful but also delicious to eat

Tiny gooseberries

Brassica flowers on last year's kale - I leave them as the bees love them

An artichoke starting to heart - this is the first time I have managed to grow them!

Looking down over the whole plot

Spring Flowers

There are few things that I love at this time of year as much as beautiful spring flowers. I can't get enough of them and my garden is crammed to bursting with tulips, daffodils and cowslips to name but a few. I especially love pots jam packed with tulip bulbs until you can't fit another one in - ridiculously indulgent but so gorgeous when they flower. And isn't a bit of indulgence what you need as you drag yourself out of winter into the abundance of spring? That's what I tell myself anyway...

Wild Northumbrian Places and Spaces

Northumbria is one of my favourite places. So wild and desolate, but also beautifully fresh and pristine. I try to get up there at least once I year to enjoy the huge Northern skies and the crisp, fresh air, aiming to go up there off season when the beaches are as quite as possible. Here are some pictures of the the beautiful places we visited during a stay up there last week.

Stormy skies looking North from Bamburgh beach

Sand dunes on Ross

Barnacles at Low Newton

Lindisfarne lichen

Gentle waves at Low Newton

Misty morning on Lindisfarne

Charles Dowding's Veg Journal

From time to time I am lucky enough to be offered the opportunity to read books that may be of interest to readers of this blog. When this happens, as much as I may be tempted to fill my house with wonderful books on gardens and growing, it is my preference for refuse the offer unless it is a book that I think will be of particular interest to the people who drop by this site to have a look at what is happening on my allotment and in my Permaculture life beyond. For this reason I was delighted whan I was offered the chance to review of copy of Charles Dowding's latest book - Veg Journal. Charles is one of my favourite writers on the theme of growing, with his books on Winter Veg and Seasonal Salad Leaves being firm favourites for me, so I leapt at the chance to give this new book a read. Charles is also one of the leading advocates of no dig gardening so I was keen to see if this book would give me further insight into this way of growing

 

This book is beautifully laid out making suggestions of what to do on your veg plot each month, whilst also giving tips on the wider context of soil care and organic growing. On this basis it is much more informative than some of the month by month gardening books which are available which simply give lists of what to do but not why to do it.

I particularly enjoyed the top tips and how to guides for popular crops that you may want to have a got at growing. There are also good sections on dealing with different perennial and annual weeds with suggestions how you may begin to get rid of them.

The book is beautifully designed and I think it would be especially useful to people who are early on in their growing careers who want a helping hand along the way to get started.

 

Month by month tips of what to do when

 

In-depth background information building your knowledge as a grower

Top tips on popular crops

To order Charles Dowding's Veg Journal at the discounted price of £12.00 including p&p* (RRP: £14.99), telephone 01903 828503 or email [email protected] and quote the offer code APG69. 

 Alternatively, send a cheque made payable to: 

Littlehampton Book Services Mail Order Department, 

Littlehampton Book Services, 

PO Box 4264, 

Worthing, West Sussex 

BN13 3RB. 

 Please quote the offer code APG69 and include your name and address details. 

 *UK ONLY - Please add £2.50 if ordering from overseas.

 

Cooked - A Natural History Of Transformation

Over recent months I have been reading Cooked by Michael Pollan - a book that I picked up because I had enjoyed The Ominovore's Dilemma by the same author so much.

As a book Cooked is beautifully formed in four distinctive sections, on the premise that the fundamentals of how we cook can be directly connected to the four natural elements of fire, water, air and earth. It  explores how the power of the elements can be used to transfrom the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink.

Pollan is a superb storyteller and in this book he weaves a rich narrative around the ways that we prepare food. From the traditions of barbecue to the magic of cheese making, his stories are powerful advocacy for the argument that the further away we drift from food and its transformation, the less rich our lives become. Alongside this he makes strong arguments why eating mass produced food is making us ill.

The book is superbly accessible, and the division into sections makes it brilliant to dip in and out of. It is an essential read for anyone who loves food and who values the quality of what they eat and how they eat it.

“Well, in a world where so few of us are obliged to cook at all anymore, to choose to do so is to lodge a protest against specialization—against the total rationalization of life. Against the infiltration of commercial interests into every last cranny of our lives. To cook for the pleasure of it, to devote a portion of our leisure to it, is to declare our independence from the corporations seeking to organize our every waking moment into yet another occasion for consumption. (Come to think of it, our nonwaking moments as well: Ambien, anyone?) It is to reject the debilitating notion that, at least while we’re at home, production is work best done by someone else, and the only legitimate form of leisure is consumption. This dependence marketers call “freedom.”

Michael Pollan - Cooked