Shop Keepers New Year Meetup

We have a shop at the allotment, and a large number of people give up a couple of hours of their time to man the shop. We normally have a christmas meetup, but due to one thing or another we didn't manage to get it scheduled, so instead we shifted it to a New Year's meetup instead.

Much gossip, tea, coffee, and assorted goodies were had by all.

I also took a quick trip over to the plot. And although things have dried out a bit, it's still too cold and damp to be able to do any real work there.

So instead I'm comforting myself with ordering seeds and making plans for the year. Maybe I'll take the whole of April off work and get it all sorted out.

End of year roundup

Another year rolls around and we seem to be ending the year on a damp note.

This year has been very "challenging". Most notably because of the serious health issues I faced this year. At one point I was only a few hours away from death and it took a long while to recover. However it has shown that in the face of adversity then a lot of help can be had from friends.

I would particularly like to thank Michael for his offer of help which we gladly took him up on. His work allowed us to keep on top of things and make sure that the plot did not get too badly overrun. Also I'd like to thank Richard and Annette. We've been feeding them spare courgettes and beetroots for years so we made sure that their help in dealing with the plot will keep them in courgettes for years to come.
I'd also like to express my appreciation to other plotholders who all enquired after my health throughout the year.

So how did the year go?
January - Frankly, nothing doing. Only basic visits to drop off our home organic waste into the compost bins. Nothing worth blogging about.
February - Starting to get the plot into shape ready for the year. Culling weeds and cleaning. This is possibly the start of where everything went wrong.
March - We started planting. I broke our old garden fork back in 2018 so this was the first chance of using the new one, an all steel construct, which was far sturdier than the previous one. It made short work of the beds. But we did manage to get our seeds started.

April - This is where things started going downhill rapidly. I had been coughing for a couple of weeks. I am a severe asthmatic so I really didn't give this much thought as it is common for me to have breathing problems from time to time. Especially living in London - the only place you can get your daily intake of minerals in one breath. So when I took a week off work to do an Allotment Week, I didn't manage to complete it.
May - This was my first hospitalisation of the year. I saw one of the leading lung specialists who immediately admitted me to the Royal Brompton hospital. I spent a week in there on some pretty high strength anti-biotics, undergoing daily blood tests, a CT scan and lung tests. Overall I left hospital a week later with a different medicine regime (actually the new medicines have worked really well) and a gradually reducing steroid programme.
June - Very weak still and trying to recover. However the last week of June saw me rushed into hospital almost at Death's Door. My wife managed to keep the plot alive, but she was far more worried about me than the plot.
July - Meh. I did absolutely nothing but try and live throughout July. We didn't pot things up properly, nor keep up with watering. So the plot from here on out was pretty much neglected. Anything that did manage to survive this neglect was tough and resilient.
August - I did manage to get back to the plot but it was pretty much a weed infested jungle. The courgettes were not performing as well as hoped, but they did produce some. The beans did generate some results, as did the Patty-pans.
September - It was during this month that I started doing pulmonary rehab at St. Georges in an effort to try and get back to reasonable shape. The change of medicine from my Royal Brompton stint, and the rehab has worked wonders. But sadly the plot by this time was seriously neglected.
October - December - with nothing doing on the plot now, we pretty much left it alone and concentrated on getting my health back.

I'm glad to say that I am now fully recovered. I can now blow over 500ml on my peak flow (which is pretty good for me) and now use less salbutamol than ever before.

There is a lot of work to be done on the plot to get it ready for planting again. Weeds must be pulled. Paths must be replaced. And the rear of the plot which hasn't been touched for a couple of years will definitely have to be sorted out before the Committee start complaining.

Walking in a Water Wonderland

It's been raining a bit.

OK, amend that. It's been raining a lot and as you may well remember from earlier times, our plot is on top of London clay, so that means it collects water every time that there is a small flood. So I was fully expecting it to be a little wet when we visited today.

Of course the greenhouse, being on the lowest part of the plot gets the brunt of it of often gets flooded. Here it looks like there are dry parts, but that is because the weed membrane has risen up in the flood. Step on it and it squelches down about 6 inches.

But the rest of the lower part is also fully under water.

As is the new addition where last year we had the courgettes growing.

As I said last time, maybe I should take up rice growing. They're perfect paddy fields.

All quiet on the Eastern Front

It's a little quiet round here these days.

No I haven't been ill again. I'm really feeling a lot better. The pulmonary rehab that I'm doing at the hospital these last few weeks has really helped. I'm feeling so much better now. And the change of medicines has done wonders. I've gone from using my sulbutamol two or three times a days to two or three times a week. At my last assessment I managed to blow 500ml on my peak flow test. So yes, I am really feeling much, much better.

No, the reason why it's so quiet is that we just don't have anything left at the allotment that's worthy. The only trips we do is to empty the weeks bio-rubbish into the compost heap. So today's little trip was a quick flying visit during a break in the rain.

We had a frost at the start of the week, and that killed a lot of the remaining plants. The Morning Glories are now sadly done for, and the high winds we've had a while back has ruined the arch.

The rest of the plot is now rather a damp bedraggled mess. If this rain ever lets up for a weekend I might be able to get round to clearing it up a bit.

In the greenhouses the frost has ended some of the chillies. But you might just spot a bit of red in there of a couple of the chillies that have actually matured. I don't know whether you can use green chillies in the same manner, but there are quite a few of them still in there.

Other than that, there is not much to do at this time of year. Maybe if I wasn't so ill during the main part of the year, then there may be something worth having. Still, there is always next year. Time to hit the online seed shops and dream of a better tomorrow.

Murder at the Allotment

So when we arrived at the plot it was a scene of utter carnage and devastation.

Firstly one of the Foxes had murdered a pigeon and left a load of feathers everywhere.

Secondly the Tomatoes had been murdered by Blight.

Thirdly the Courgettes and Patty Pans had been murdered by time.

The biggest issue was of course the blight. We had to rip out all of the tomatoes and bag them up. They cannot be put into the Green Waste or into the compost bins. Fortunately we had a few bags from compost lying around so we chopped up the stems and roots and put them in along with most of the fallen tomatoes. Then we dragged them to the waste area for collection by the Council.

The blight has come about because of the amount of rain that we have had recently. It seems to have affected most of the site as there are other plot holders who are also in the process of ripping out their plants. Fortunately for us, the plants in the greenhouse seem to be unaffected. But I still don't think that they'll produce any more fruits.

The courgette plants we simply pulled by hand and threw them into the green waste bins. The feathers....? No those we just left in place as a testament to our guardians of the plot. Pigeons, Rats and mice. Foxes are welcome to any or all of them on our plot. I just wish more people saw the usefulness of them clearing up the vermin that eat our seeds and produce.