Episode #17: Tales of allotment scavenging
Plus rain, a new rose and experimental cake.
Last week was all about wind, with Storm Bert rattling the site, this weekend rain, rain, rain. It was 1 December on Sunday, and the wet meant putting off some planned jobs, while being opportunistic about some scavenge.
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This week’s Plot Shot
Wind. Rain. Wet. Together they don’t make for the best shots of an allotment. There are a lot of frost-blackened plants now turning to sludge, and broken branches left by Storm Bert. Having an allotment can sometimes feel like a never-ending game of Pick Up Sticks, and this weekend was another round in that game.
But the raindrops are showing up new buds on the fruit trees. Promise of next year’s growth to come. Every year they surprise me. There are no buds and then there are buds, like a magic show.
Plot work in progress
This end of the year is the time for planting bare root roses, and one arrived in the post this week, a rambling rose ‘Sir Cedric Morris’ from breeder Trevor White. Here’s Sir Cedric, soaking in a bucket of water and taking in the view.
I’ve had Cedric’s spot marked out for a few months. There’s space for a rose to scramble up the trunks of the old cherry plum tree. Trevor White describes this rose as ‘A vigorous rambler bearing clusters of small white single blooms. Fragrant. Leaves and young shoots have a purple tint overlaid with grey. Summer flowering. Good autumn hips.’
I’m looking forward to the purple-grey shoots and white blooms should go well intertwined with the apple blossom clematis on the other side of the plum. A vigorous thorny rose should also deter the small children who sometimes sit in this tree as a vantage point, even though they shouldn’t be on plots without permission.
There will be more about artist and plantsperson Cedric Morris in future episodes here. I’m expecting a few more Morris-related plants to make an appearance on the plot, especially if I can snag some of his Benton irises or the poppies named after him. They’ll be an echo of art schools, now that art schools aren’t my day job anymore.
Harvesting now
After some weeks of sulking and flopping, the candy-striped chard is glossy green and growing again. Perhaps it has needed some cold to buck its ideas up. This variety is called candy cane, as it has a few orange stems mixed in with the peppermint pink. Seeds from Real Seeds, always good quality.
The plants will need netting over to stop hungry wood pigeons from shredding them, but they should keep going all winter. The leaves make good gratins or layers in a vegetable lasagne1.
Making and eating
Last week we were tempted by crates of newly-arrived citrus, Spanish clementines still with their leaves on. These took the week to ripen and be added to a cake.
Husband Clive loves an experimental cake, and so a Jaffa Cake this became, an adapted lemon drizzle cake recipe, with clementine juice rather than lemon drizzle, and a dark chocolate top to finish.
It looked a bit lumpy on top, but tasted of pure summer sunshine.
Like all homemade cake on allotments, this magically evaporated as soon as it was taken out of the box at a tea break. Allotment folk can make quick work of cake, like scavenging hyenas falling on a savanna carcass.
E17 Local Hero
My heroes this week were the first of the indoor bulbs, making their debut on the kitchen table. We grow a bowl of white narcissus indoors most years, part of the rhythmn of the house, in defiance of the dark, wet and cold outside.
These are a mix of ‘Paperwhite’, ‘Inbal’ and ‘Erlicheer’. I mixed up the bulbs thinking it would make a more interesting display, but they are growing in order, three distinct groups, making the mixing a bit pointless.
Community of Practice
I added this section to the weekly Plants and Practice episode intending to provide a space for reflecting on how allotments are great places for invention, creativity and learning through doing.
There’s a practice to allotments, a gradual slow time accumulation of adults learning what works and what doesn’t through a routine of multiple failures and the odd, surprising success. However, this week there was something which almost got the title ‘Whose stupid idea was this?’
Allotments are places for scavengers, for recyclers and creative cheapskates. Folk turn up with random stuff heaved out of skips or found out on the street, all of which goes to making wonky sheds and structures for not much money. I’ve carried all sorts of random rubbish home - offcuts of scaffolding board, fish tank stands, old sash window frames, shop fittings. I once found a plaster-moulded Corinthian pillar dumped outside a Greek restuarant which was closing down and brought it home on the night bus. Totally normal on the number 73, nobody batted an eyelid.
So imagine my delight when a street neignbour had a crate of logs delivered for his trendy new woodburner. Top quality scavenging opportunity. Said neighbour seemed a bit taken aback when I intercepted him walking his dog to ask if I could take the wooden crate the logs came in, but he agreed that me making a compost bin or a bug hotel out of it would be better than him splitting it for kindling.
Of course, the crate was much heavier than it looked, as I discovered by dragging it eight doors down the street to our house. It was even heavier as I wrangled it onto a wheelbarrow to move it to the plot. I’d clearly forgotten one of the cardinal rules of allotment practice, that random found items are *always* heavier than they appear. Like objects in side-view wing mirrors being closer, scavenged stuff always weighs far more than it looks. But we forget this every darn time, dragging stuff to the allotment with huge enthusiasm, only to question our stupidity later.
The crate will be great, made into something. Totally worth the scavenge, honestly. It just doesn’t add to the produce tally2.
Weekly Fox News
Foxes weren’t about much this week, keeping out of the rain. Only Big Ted came out to eat as much cheese as was on offer, and take pieces of raw chicken back to his den in the hedgerow for later.
Until next week, Big Ted says stay dry, and keep out of the weather.
Ang
300g of organic chard, currently £2.50 per 200g for Natoora rainbow at Ocado, total £3.75.
Total this week, £3.75, making total to date since Episode #5, £200.34. Thirteen weeks’ produce tally, based on current supermarket or local farmers’ market prices.
As a fellow creative cheapskate, I approve that crate 😂
Thanks for this lovely update. It’s a great idea to keep the production tally.