I started then neglected this blog last year now I want to try again with the new season. I thought I would still give you what insights I recorded from last year. Last spring was predictably (it is the UK after all), unpredictable. We had a mini-heatwave, and then the weather persistently refused to emulate the epic levels of the previous year (2020). It seemed to be cold and windy a lot of the time and I expected to find my twigs and seedlings frozen each time I went to the plot.
It was with trepidation that I climbed the hill to the allotment each time but then joy when I found that most of what I had planted was still intact and the view was great as ever.
The fruit bushes or Twigs, as this is what they look like at the time, were still there and looked like they had even grown a little. I hadn’t yet done much reading on their care regime but I didn’t expect fruit the first year. This is my investment in the future of the allotment.
The plants that I ordered online still hadn’t arrived so I popped over to the conveniently situated garden centre – it’s just across the road from the allotment entrance, handy eh? I bought a few brassicas to plant – one of my treasured memories of my mum was the first time she grew cabbages in our garden. I remember the day when we harvested the first one. Sitting in our garden, she chopped off a huge cabbage and cut into it, slicing it up and giving us pieces of the raw vegetable. We sat there chomping on these bits of cabbage and it was the best thing I had ever tasted – even better than the strawberries we had grown before. This memory is why I’m so determined to grow brassicas.
I also took a leap and selected an aubergine as well. I saw some of these mini growing tunnels and thought I’d try some plants with protection.
My planting was still a little random and ad hoc but it’s a learning process. I have tried to approach this in a way that I describe as “positively pessimistic”. I know that this may all come to nothing, I’m prepared for disappointment but also ready to be pleasantly surprised.
Now of course the waiting begins and we will see what I’m rewarded with.
How do you feel when planting, full of hope or cautiously optimistic?
Anticipating everything and anything.
To the roots of it 