The time has come

The special Festival of Britain issue of the Illustrated London News for February 11, 1951 has come into our house and the above advertisement naturally caught my eye because the gloves are named after me (prefer not to think I am named after gloves). I fail to grasp the reference to gloves and baldness, however, but it is probable that I was very bald at the time the magazine was published, having been born just over a week previously. Indeed, the publication has a picture of the King opening the festival at noon on Thursday, May 3, 1951, when little Andrew Baldwin would have been just one hour old. Ah!

The lack of blogging for the past month reflects my lack of activity in the garden. The time has come to put a bit of effort in and over the next few days I shall buy potatoes to chit and persuade Susan to drive somewhere where I can get two or three bags of stuff to dig in to the soil.

I have roughly mapped in my mind what's going where, although the back patch where I had the potatoes last year remains a problem. The soil is poor, very stony and the sun doesn't get there much. My mate Steve suggests beans. Runner, broad or French: or all three. They're tough, and their nitrogen-fixing root nodules will help to enrich the soil, he says. That'll do me.

Now then, do they still make Andy gloves? The hunt is on.

It's peas in our time

Here's the first of my crop of peas - and I suspect it will be the last.

My mate Steve kindly gave me some heritage seeds last year and I planted some of the peas near the runner beans, but they have been a dismal failure. I expected about five or six plants to grow, but got only one.

Other people seem to have had difficulty with peas this year, so I am not alone. But it is damned frustrating.

There. Got it off my chest. And no dreadful pun about peas please me.

Farewell, my friend

My Cherokee Trail of Tears beans are finally on the wane as autumn gathers pace. The leaves are turning yellow and some have dropped to the ground, I noticed today as I hobbled around the garden, still suffering from back pain.

I was intrigued from the start by the name and their history and they have turned out to be a good crop. It has been a real pleasure watching their progress from a dodgy start, when I thought they would never grow. Thanks to my mate Steve for sending me the seeds.

A sluggish day

Sheltering indoors from the rain this morning, I muse over that old saying ne'er cast a clout...etc. We shouldn't really be surprised about English weather, but would do well to remember these adages. Wisdom in a sentence.

I also fell to thinking about slugs and nematodes. My mate Steve has filled me in on them and says they tried them once, some years ago. The result? "The slugs and snails were unaffected and we were poorer."

He goes on to give me the information that nematodes include the threadworms that infest cats and dogs and I tell him that I definitely won't be using them because of our pets. Ah, not so simple, says Steve.

The phylum Nematoda is vast. The intestinal parasites found in vertebrates are passed on via eggs in the host's faeces, and then ingested by another host. Some of the nematode species are very host specific, but others will infest a wide range of hosts. The slug killer only zaps the slimy bastards, with no effect on vertebrates. Some nematodes are plain weird: one species lives only in the felt beermats that were used in German bierkellars.

His technique is to clout slugs with a hammer. His wife Marianne says that's too brutal: she stands on them. End result is the same.

My plans for tomorrow include earthing up of the spuds now they have reached the suggested height of about 8in. The internet is a great invention and includes an incredibly handy video on the Videojug website.

I marvel at how I'm quite happy to look at it, yet would shun any TV programme called How To Earth Up Potatoes. Some 17,000 people have viewed it. Mind you, there have been 779,360 hits for their video on how to get out of the car without showing your knickers.

I suppose I ought to say that I resisted the temptation.

Any excuse

My mate Steve has sent me a message entitled Trenchant Thoughts, ie bloody get digging. He doesn't actually say that, but that's the gist of his explanation about the science of soil preparation.

Sound advice, which I followed immediately by getting out in the garden with spade and shovel. Ignoring a slight problem with my left hand, I got stuck in with my version of gusto - until a bit of a hiccup followed. Striking down hard with the shovel against an awkward root, a severe jolt went up my hand and arm. The pain!

Four days later and I am still not right despite extensive easing up on using that hand (the left one, not exactly convenient for a left-hander). Yesterday and today I have had to resort to Ibuprofen.

Who remembers now the great Robertson Hare? He would have a phrase for it - Oh calamity.

Grim up north

My mate Steve has emailed from his corner of Kent to say he has been out to his allotment and seen the first shoots of garlic coming through. He's lucky to see anything at all, my little vegetable patch has been covered in snow for the past week and got a fresh fall last night.

All this means is that I can do nothing but dream on for the time being. I like to think it's similar to cooking - it will all come together in the end. Hope so.

Looking out of the window over the past few days, I notice the birds have largely spurned the seed we have been putting down for them. My theory is that more food is being left out for the birds as people become more aware of their needs and the birds can afford to be choosy. Our seed was Lidl's finest - obviously not good enough for them.

Now that's what I like - it's cheap

My friend Steve has been in contact today and has sent me an article from the Guardian about gardening on the cheap. It's fascinating reading and gives some useful and practical tips. Well done to writer Alys Fowler for inspiring me.

Obviously, no sign of the Phacelia tanacetifolia coming through yet. Steve says they're tough buggers and will probably see out any frost. 

Herbs are coming on nicely, though, and it seems highly likely to me that I will have to do something about them soon. Apparently, it's a process called pricking out. No comment.

The potato planter turns out to be...a potato planter

In a previous posting, I speculated on whether the potato planter tool had another name or not. I did a quick search on Google and failed to find an alternative.

My mate Steve, who sent me his photograph of one, says he's never heard it called anything other than a potato planter. I think he should know as he is an expert in his field (not to mention his allotment).

Yet my wife Susan still insists there is another name. She used to work in the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, where they had thousands of agricultural implements in stock, and believes she came across it there. Perhaps the name they used was peculiar to Lincolnshire. 

Eh! It's getting a bit like the hunt for the yeti or bigfoot. The truth is out there somewhere...

In the meantime, I have discovered the herb cutter, a handy device for the kitchen. I tried one in my friend Jan's kitchen the other day to chop her herbs as she was preparing a meal and it was brilliant. My problem as a left-hander is that I find a lot of implements and such like, including scissors, are set up for right-handed people and I can't handle them properly. (That's my excuse anyway, and I'm sticking to it). The herb cutter wasn't like that - even I got it to work.

Susan says I have had a very sheltered life never to have heard of a herb cutter.

Universally challenged

Marooned in the house because of the incessant rain, it's still constant thinking instead of action on the vegetable patch.

My mate Steve has sent me a message about potatoes and how he looks forward to the planning and the planting. He sent with it a photograph of his wife Marianne with their 'spud planter'. My wife Susan thought the tool had a proper name, but couldn't for the life think of it. Neither could I.

The gaps in our knowledge are remarkable at times - or is it a sign of memory fading?

There's a photograph of it shown above. I haven't edited Marianne out of it through aesthetic reasons, but rather because some people don't like their image put all over the internet. Ony right to respect privacy.

Mm...green manure. Something to savour

My friends Steve and Marianne, who know all there is know about growing vegetables, urge me to be optimistic about my little patch. Some seeds might wake up and have a look above ground, they tell me.

In particular, they warn me about autumn digging and leaving the sods bare for winter frost to break up.

Here's what they say:

"Soil is a living structure , and needs to interact with plant roots. Only dig ground and put in manure and/or compost just as you're about to sow/plant crops. If you have bare soil grow a green manure in it. One of the best is Phacelia tanacetifolia, which you might have seen growing on our plot. It's not related to any crop plants, so it won't affect your
rotation. Bees love its flowers. It's incredibly easy to pull up and compost. (Don't try the digging in idea: too much hard work!) Phacelia seed is hideously expensive though, but it goes a long way."

Needless to say, I had been planning on leaving the soil bare. I'd never heard of Phacelia or even green manure. Having boned up on it all, I believe I will give it a go.

They get theirs from the Organic Gardening Catalogue and I reckon I will do the same. In fact, I'll peruse it to see if I can buy anything else at the same time for when I do start planting.