Our allotment orders are in. Many sacks of well-rotted heavy horse manure and a ‘dumpy bag’ of ‘superior soil conditioner’ (for which read more manure, plus grit and composted bark). By the time you read this, we hope to be digging it in on the plot.
A wise woman once told me you need cow muck for growing vegetables, but horses are best for blooms. I don’t know what she based this on, but she was reliable on everything else.
Maybe it was lockdown that did it. Maybe it was a change in mood or the absence of other gardeners, but there has been a shift on Plot 29 from growing mainly food to tending mainly flowers.
This call for colour will continue this year – at least until we know more about the ‘new’ soil and how it responds; what grows well in it.
There will, though, be beans and peas as Howard has sorted a new supply of hazel sticks and I’ve succumbed to a Franchi Seeds of Italy (seedsofitaly.com) sale in support of Ukraine. So we’ll have leaves: black kale, swiss chard, lettuces, radicchio and numerous herbs. Plus, our saved amaranth seed and orache; the shoots of flowering fennel.
We will grow nasturtiums, of course, and more calendula. I also have two new nesting boxes anxious for a home before it’s too late.
I have missed Mary and her sunflowers, her giant wall of runner beans. We’ve stacked some of her sacks and structures on the bank behind the plot. I am pining to bring it back down.
There will be working parties and summer barbecues. Fallen trees to trim, new paths and friendships to make. Soon I’ll be sowing and weeding with Howard and Rose. A family of fellow growers.
For nearly half a year of exile, the allotment has been largely absent here. A ghost almost. We literally lost the plot. Happy Easter everyone.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
