We Grow Our OwnWhat we grow, what we cook, what we eat …

Well it turned out that the weatherman was wrong, and the bad weather missed us. I realise from speaking to other people on here and on Twitter that we were the lucky ones, especially considering the amount of flood warnings around at the moment.

We finally managed to dig over the rest of the beds, so that all the spuds and onions can be transferred from the house next week to the lottie. Good job as well, because I had the rest of the seeds delivered this week, so there are plenty of seeds to take their place in the dining room and greenhouse!

Currently my house is filled with chitting potatoes, and seedlings which desperately need another home.

Today’s plans to dig over some more of the lottie were scuppered this morning, when I woke up to three inches of snow on the ground!

Oh well, gives me an excuse to sit on the sofa in front of the fire, and read the new Nigel Slater book that my wife bought me for my birthday.

As it is my birthday weekend, both myself and my better half decided to take a long weekend, so that I could recover from my hangover by clearing more of the allotment.

We were told by the allotment secretary that our hedge would be cut by the local crims as part of their community service.

Unfortunately, when we arrived we found that not only had they butchered the hedge down to 2 feet in places (they won’t win any design awards at the Chelsea Flower Show!) they had also left all of what they cut off, all over our freshly dug beds!

So, instead of marking out more of the beds, we spent four hours taking all what was our hedge off our plot, and piling it outside for someone to collect and burn!

So, by the end of today, we managed to get the plot back to where it was when we left it left it last weekend. Oh well, there isn’t much of the hedge left for them if they decide to cut it again!

Yesterday, the brains of the outfit, (in other words my wife!) said that instead of mindless digging and clearing, we should draw up a plan of where the beds are going to go, so that we only clear what we need to.

The plan for this year is on the ‘Masterplans’ page.

Looking at the weather for this weekend, it doesn’t seem that the temperature is going to get above freezing this weekend. This rules out any chance of digging, which the plot desperately needs!

Lets hope they are wrong, like they invariably are!

We spent the majority of the daylight hours at the allotment this weekend to try and make a start on it.

Those very nice people at Figo Frames gave me a ‘taster’ pack of their new product, to show me how easy it can be to build things to protect my crops in my allotment, or to help them to grow.

I had tried various other products to build things like fruit cages, or tripods, and always got frustrated because they never allowed me to build it how I wanted it.

We finally got to sign the tenancy agreement today for our plot, and started digging straight away. We are going to ache in the morning!

We have been lucky with this plot, as it has been tended recently, but for some reason they gave it up.

Last week the Heritage Seed Library catalogue for 2010 arrived. As a member of the HSL I am allowed to make 6 choices from this list of non-commercial vegetable varieties, and can choose whether to receive a 7th ‘Lucky Dip’ packet as well.

Like a lot of HSL members I’m concerned by the control big business has over the food chain and the resulting loss of biodiversity. The Heritage Seed Library work to safeguard rare vegetable varieties, that were once the mainstay of British gardens.