mulch

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Chipping the rasps

It’s still bitterly cold out but the thin, improving light means we are unquestionably heading towards spring. I enjoy a cold snap during March and April; it’s nature’s way of reminding us to not get ahead of ourselves, to not go speeding off. This winter has been kind to us, actually, with plenty of slow time and a few opportunities to get out and explore. The snowdrops at Colesbourne Park in Gloucestershire were wonderful, and a half term visit to London led to a surprise visit to Fulham Palace, with its ancient wisteria and enviable walled garden.

Snowdrops and cyclamen at Colesborne Park, Gloucestershire
An extraordinary ancient wisteria at Fulham Palace

I’ve been making an effort to cook again too, minded towards seasonality and health (sounds dull but actually I enjoy feeding a family with nutrition in mind). Forced rhubarb is still eye-waveringly expensive so it’s only had two outings this season, baked with blood oranges and honey. And the freezer is giving up last summer’s fruit hoard, with blackberries, blueberries, blackcurrants and raspberries making their way into puddings, compotes and cakes.

Roasted rhubarb and bread & butter pudding with blackberries

Outside, slowly but surely, there is emerging life. The spring bulbs have greened up the garden, whilst hellebore hide their bowing heads against the wind. The sweet peas that I sowed back in January are doing well, as are the broad beans.

January-sown sweetpeas coming along nicely

February is time for that most unpleasant of allotment jobs: cutting back the autumn raspberries, which actually means attempting to remove the rampant blackberries that have taken hold whilst not getting stabbed in the eye by a spent raspberry cane. I cut the canes back about two weeks ago now, taking advantage of a mild day, and rooted out the brambles as best I could (I will never win, it’s just a question of who – woman or bramble – has the balance of power at any one time). In order to keep the grass and weeds down, the patch also needed a really good mulch, which is a nuisance of a job because bark/compost/manure etc is HEAVY and everything has to be moved by hand. For the last three years I haven’t bothered but last summer the grass was taller than my head, and the raspberries also hated the drought, so action needed to be taken to keep weeds out and water in.

The raspberries – BEFORE

So last week we took advantage of a school strike day and had a family trip to Canon Frome in Herefordshire, to collect a van load of wood chippings from Say it with Wood. They make fences and stakes and suchlike from coppiced hard wood, and sell their waste wood chip for about £30 a square metre (that’s one JCB-scoop), which is about half the price of buying bark from a garden centre. I like this for three reasons: one, it’s a waste product that is having a second life. Two, it’s a local loose product, so its carbon footprint is low and I don’t have heaps of plastic to get rid of. Three, it’s always fun to visit small creative rural businesses, and they had a puppy to play with. Granted, mulching an allotment this way requires a van and a bit of elbow grease, but luckily for me Matt enjoys this kind of thing.

A JCB-scoop of wood chip takes a surprisingly long time to move by hand
Say it with Wood at Canon Frome, Herefordshire

So the wood chip was collected, moved from Herefordshire to Harborne, wheel-barrowed from the car park to the plot, and then spread over the raspberries. As usual, I could have taken the same amount of mulch again…it never stops amazing me just how huge our plot is and how it eats up raw materials.

Whilst Matt moved chippings, Harry and I planted out the calendula and cornflowers that I started off last September as an experiment in autumn-sowing. Truth be told, they are probably some of the worst plants I have ever grown – leggy, with a few greenfly – but if we get a harvest one- or two-months earlier than normal then it might be worth it.

Raspberries – AFTER
Autumn-sown calendula and cornflowers were planted out whilst Harry’s tractors seem to have endured a major incident

The slow season is drawing to an end now, and in a few weeks the sun room will be full of seed trays and pots again. I have dahlias and iris to pot up, and heaps of flowers and veg to start off. We’re just waiting for more light, and of course, a little more heat.

Also this month:

Harvesting and growing: Not much to harvest apart from last season’s soft fruit from the freezer. Planted out calendula and cornflower. Started off more broadbeans, mustard mix and snapdragons.

Cooking and eating: Slow roast lamb shoulder with tadig; Toscaka; lots of pancakes and waffles with freezer fruit; heaps of things from the River Cottage Good Comfort book including dahl soups, cowboy bangers and beans, cornbread and oaty cookies.

Out and about: Fulham Palace Gardens, Natural History Museum and Horniman Museum during half-term; lunch with friends in Godalming; Birmingham Botanical Gardens; Athletics at the NIA; Matt did a half marathon with more in the pipeline; RHS exam number 1; yin yoga workshop. Thinking ahead to summer visits and inspirations.

Reading: Lucy Worsley’s biography of Queen Victoria. Sandi Toksvig memoir. A pile of reading for my RHS course that is waist high.

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Veg patch to bed, rather later than planned

I always enjoy the first few weeks of January. The chance for a fresh start, with optimistic thoughts for the year ahead, and after the hullabaloo of December, the refreshment of a quiet month. It’s not so quiet for me actually this year due to some high octane work projects – but you get the point. This time last year we were all sick with Covid and locked in the house; this Christmas, there was the opportunity to get out and breathe. And after several months of intense work (and less than zero family time), we needed it.

The view across to British Camp, 27 December 2021
Trees caught in mid-winter mist

A day or two before Christmas I found time to wade through the armfuls of dried flowers that I’ve had hanging in the sun room since the summer, harvested from allotment and garden. I’d been finding their presence low-level stressful…every time I go in there to fish something out of the freezer, it was as if they were shouting at me: ‘why have you not used us yet eh?!’. And so I did. Vivid yellow tansy now sit next to the pale fawn of dried aqualegia, allium and teasel, with the lighter rounds of honesty giving contrast. I love the mixture of shape and form. It’s accidental – many of these plants were self-sown. I notice that tiny bunches of dried flowers now sell for £10 or more in the shops, and I am reminded how fortunate I am to be able to gather and keep my own supply.

The allotment and garden blessed us with armfuls of dried flowers this year
Two Christmas arrangements, with tansy, teasels, honesty, aqualegia and allium

There is one, rather larger, job that has been nagging at me as well. Usually I get the allotment mulched and covered in December, an enormous task that in previous years has involved one lorry, an entire pallet of manure, two strong men, one strong(ish) woman (me), and painfully frozen fingers. But this year, since my Dad has retired, we no longer have access to his lorry.

Plan B was to carry as much as we can in Matt’s van: 30 bags to be precise, barely enough to cover the smaller of the two main plots, but better than nothing. So in an enterprise that lasted two days, this weekend we drove to Worcestershire, pinched 30 bags of manure from my Dad’s seemingly never-ending supply, stacked it into the van, drove back to Birmingham, walked the bags from van to allotment, emptied the bags, then spread the black gold with a fork. To be on the safe side, I then covered the two plots with black plastic, my back-up armoury in the war against weeds. Muck Spreading Day is the most physically draining task on the allotment but possibly the most important one, hopefully keeping the annual weed seeds down, and also blocking light from the grasses and buttercup that seems endemic.

30 sacks of manure makes for only a scant covering of the first plot, so to keep the weeds down I’m playing safe with a covering of black plastic
The larger patch won’t get manured this year, but the covers are down – leaving the heads of sweet fennel and sweet william to poke through

There’s part of me that enjoys the cleanliness of a freshly manured plot more than when it is covered in plants. With plants comes some inevitable disappointment; with black soil comes only potential. With the ground put to bed now for a few months, thoughts turn to planning, seed-sorting, list-making. The joy of searching the seed catalogues; the pull of creative potential!

In the meantime, planning for 2022 has begun

Also this week/month:
Allotment: Manured the small plot and dahlia patch, and covered the two main plots with plastic. Could be harvesting kale, chard, rocket and mustard leaves, except that I’m not, for I am a fair-weather gardener. Sowed a few sweet peas, with little expectation for them. Planning for the season. Peering at the amaryllis and paperwhites daily to check progress. Listening to the Sarah Raven / Arthur Parkinson podcast for inspiration.

Cooking and eating: Enjoying the time for proper cooking. Baked ham with a chipotle and marmalade glaze; bavette steak with tenderstem broccoli, feta and roasted red pepper; quince sticky toffee pudding; still working through Christmas biscuits and panettone.

Also: Booking up tickets for fun things after two years of austerity. Reading Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley, a brilliantly radical feminist re-telling of a familiar biography.

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Muck spreading

Last week, with the concrete skies and the poorly-but-not-that-poorly baby, I fell into a fug of dis-inspiration. When Matt is working all hours and in contrast my work is quiet, I end up spending long days at home, alone, with little stimulus. The days drag and the evening are long. The radio predicts the end of world (well, Brexit) on an hourly basis. No point doing a nice dinner – who’s going to eat it? No point having a tipple in front of the fire – I’ll just get a bad head and then will be stuck with an entire bottle to get through. No point having my long-planned day off in London. No point doing anything really. So the days lull together into an endless tedium of cleaning and tea and afternoon telly and Instagram and feeling broke and singing chug-a-chug-a-choo-choo.

The thing is, these days of Fug are actually rare, and tend to only last for a week or so until a new creative project comes along. I am so, SO, acutely aware that for women in previous generations, and women in different circumstances today, this was/is their life. The endless drudge of housewifery, with no option of a professional life or a creative life or whatever it is that keeps a person inspired and alive. Don’t misunderstand me – I love my family, of course I do, but the weeks where I am home all the time are hard. So I think of those women who went before me, and pushed for the changes that mean that I have at least got the option of having a different kind of life, and I offer them a little prayer of thanks.

In the meantime, there is muck spreading to be done. 25 sacks of manure have been piled up by the compost bins since February, waiting to have their contents piled up onto the ground where the sunflowers used to be.

25 x 50-litre sacks of manure still do not cover an entire bed

It’s phenomenal just how far these heavy bags of manure don’t go. All that heavy lifting, and there’s still several square metres of land that didn’t get mulched today – just not enough to go around. As I worked, the inquisitive robin hopped around the plot, taking advantage of the feast of snails, slugs and woodlouse that emerged from underneath the plastic sacks. The weather was dry today after days of wet, and the sun was low in the sky but surprisingly warm…enough to thaw out fingers that had grown numb inside sodden gloves.

Both veg beds are now covered in plastic as best I can, to keep the weeds down

If there’s any doubt about the efficacy of covering ground – this patch has been hidden under manure sacks since February and all greenery has gone, leaving a feast of slugs and worms for the robin

I have now covered both of the main vegetable beds in plastic to keep the weeds down, weighed down with more bricks and stones that have been uncovered now that the wilderness area is being cleared. A bit of graft now is much preferable to hours and hours of weeding in the early spring – and sometimes, getting mucky and soggy can be an effective way of removing The Fug.

On Thursday I was drenched…

…but today merely covered in poo

Also this week:

Cooking and eating: Matt’s amazing curry dinner (tandoori chicken, chicken curry, spinach flatbread, Tune’s carrot salad & aloo jeera), profiteroles, Jean’s cider loaf. I have rashly pre-ordered a goose from Mrs Goodman for Christmas, which will live in the freezer at Grove House for a month, and thereby saved myself about £30 by buying early.

Illness update: Harry is now fine but has passed his mouth disease to Matt.

Reading and watching: Winter by Ali Smith; the return of Escape to the Chateau on C4 (once again coveting all things Dick & Angel, including the berets and kimonos).

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We plough the fields

I inhabit a few different worlds. My professional – and quite a bit of my personal – life is spent with energetic creative types who do fun and inspiring things amidst the urban din of Birmingham. People like this lot, who will be leading Birmingham’s Handover ceremony for the Commonwealth Games this weekend. There’s a rapper, a choreographer, a principal ballerina, a spoken word artist and a film-maker. We spent yesterday morning telling the press about plans for the ceremony, with time for a photoshoot amidst Digbeth graffiti. They will perform this Sunday to a worldwide television audience of around 1 billion people, so no pressure then (you can watch the Handover as part of the closing ceremony of the Commonwealth Games on Sunday from 11am on BBC2).

The artists taking part in this Sunday’s Commonwealth Games handover…watch it on BBC2 from 11am

Then there’s the country/foodie life, which made me take a two hour round trip at the weekend as I had a hunch that new season asparagus would be on sale at Hillers, near Evesham. I was right.

Meanwhile – asparagus is here!

And then there’s the parent life, which involves a lot of nappies, washing-up, more nappies, cuddles, early nights and giggling.

Harry is 7 months old and has discovered the shelf of baking equipment

It’s a good mix of things. When the arty stuff gets too irritating I can head to the hills, and when the shire is too stifling I can retreat back to Brum. Or indeed retreat to the allotment. Last week I was blessed with four hours childcare – FOUR HOURS! – and headed down for some grafting with Gary, Matt’s Dad. The snow seems to have finally gone, and whilst it’s not warm, it is definitely now spring and there was mulching and manuring and soil-prep to be done.

Gary gets to work on the allotment

Whilst I cracked on with putting a thick bark mulch on the raspberries, blueberries and currants, Gary stripped back the black plastic sheeting from the main vegetable plot. It was a relief to see that the soil was not in too bad a state: instead of forking and weeding it over in the autumn as normal, last October I merely pulled out the last of the sunflowers and covered the plot over with plastic (there was only so much I could achieve with a 1 month old baby). It survived this mistreatment well and only needed a light weed and fork before being mulched with rotted manure. Gary is incredibly neat and methodical, I discover – must be where Matt gets it from. I, on the other hand, take a ‘that will do’ approach and dig/manure half of the other plot in about an hour. I know whose approach is better (clue: not mine).

A few hours later, the main plot is forked over and manured. He did an amazing job.

I focused on putting a think mulch of bark on the soft fruit

My efforts at manuring are significantly less tidy than Gary’s…but it will do. The broad beans take up their new home.

After just a few hours the plot is transformed from winter weeds to clean edged plots ready for planting out. The soil is still cold – daffodils only just coming out now, a month later than I would expect – but there is a tiny harvest to be had: I take the opportunity to pick a handful of new sorrel leaves, to toss with new potatoes and butter.

One and a half plots, ready for planting

First picking of sorrel, for tossing with new potatoes and lashings of melted salted butter

Also this week:
Cooking and eating: A vat of bolognese, first season asparagus with salmon tart and new potatoes (phenomenally expensive but worth it), chicken marinated with yoghurt and ras al hanout, last of the simnel cake
Reading: Hidden Nature by Alys Fowler, a love letter to Birmingham’s urban waterways

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It’s dirty work but…

It’s time to feed the allotment. I spent much of the spring thinking that we must have the most rubbish soil imaginable, given that nothing was growing. Then the weather got warm and suddenly the plot exploded into action – so maybe the ground isn’t as lacking in nutrition as I thought. But now a good feed is in order. Luckily for us, I have a friend who keeps horses. Horses make poo. Lots of poo. And horse poo is just what we need.

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A pile of glorious rotting poo

So last weekend we trundled down the M5 to go and visit Chappers and her horses. She’s spent the last year or so piling their doings into a rotting mountain of dung, now covered in stinging nettles and full of worms. That’s what your oldest friends are for you see, free fertiliser. It’s not as disgusting as it sounds.

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Chappers and Matt investigate the manure pile

Whilst I ‘supervised’, Matt bagged up five bags of the good stuff. That’s about as much as we could carry – manure weights a TON. And then we went to say thank you to Tegan for her offerings. She is a young cob, described by Chappers as “lively”, which I translate as “terrifying” (I am most definitely not a horse-woman).

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Me, Chappers, Tegan

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Sun setting over Castlemorten

The following day Matt was left in charge of moving sacks of manure from van to allotment. The plastic sacks were fine….the papers ones fared, hmmm, less well. I hope the good people of Harborne don’t mind a bit of poo on their doorsteps.

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Oops

So all that’s left to do is actually spread the stuff. I’m still working up the energy.