Episode #23: More fixing than growing
22- 31 January - Ifs, butts and the Rule of Three.
January 2025 is done, over. Lots of jobs have been done, and the plots are in better shape heading into February than at the start of the year. I even have a new journal to plan my planting and growing for 2026. Super organised here in E17!
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This week’s Plot Shot
There was one stunning sunset over the allotment site this week. It started off as small flicks of pink in the west, and over about ten minutes the whole sky was a blaze of shifting red and orange. A shepherd’s delight indeed. Not that there are shepherds in Walthamstow (as far as I know), but if there were…
My smartphone camera doesn’t do this justice by any means, but it was a joy after all the damp, dull, concrete greys of this January, now ended. Better weather and longer days are coming, folks. Plus this photo made me appreciate the shapes of the old mature trees we have on the site. They are battered and scruffy (and defy the stupid ‘no trees over 2 metres’ latest allotment rules), but these huge trees are part of what gives the site its character. I might start a photo series of them, stark and leafless in winter, to capture their skeletal shapes.
(Technical note: there are usually a *lot* of photos in these posts. This might not all fit in your email. Hitting the View Entire Message button at the end should sort this out, as will reading via the app or online versions of Substack.)
Plot work in progress
I’ve kept the work rate up on Plot 101, determined to get as many fixing and building jobs done over this winter as possible, so that the structures keep going for at least another year, and that I can concentrate on sowing and growing once the soil warms.
The latest coat of purple paint on the shed is weathering down, no longer quite so vivid My Little Pony pink, and I’ve shuffled the water butts about to make better use of them and be able to get a watering can under the taps without something else being in the way.
In classic allotment fashion, one job always leads to at least three others, so moving the water butts meant juggling about with bits of broken paving slab to put them on, using any broken roof tiles lying around to level them, then realising that the two butts I’d moved would need extra bits of guttering and pipe attachments to make the whole plan work. Gah. That’s next week’s pocket money allowance then.
Elsewhere on the plot, I splashed some more My Little Pony paint around to weather-proof the last few bits of decent edge board I have left and make a new 4’ x 4’ raised bed to fit around the medlar tree at the front of the plot. (Raised bed boards are traditionally measured in Imperial feet and inches, the classic width being four feet for an easy arm’s length reach across the bed without needing to tread on the soil.) The boards will be patched up at the back, planks screwed over the broken or rotten sections of others to make everything fit, but then the purple paint will make it all hang together. My Little Pony purple will hide a multitude of my amateur woodworking sins.
The ‘do one job, add three more’ principle is going to apply here as well. I’ve sawn old wooden boards to size and painted them. Now to turn over the (mainly couch) grass, dig out the nettles and bramble roots, then move and replant an errant pink peony and a lavatera, both of which have popped up in the wrong place. Oh, and plant the 15 deep purple tulip bulbs I’ve kept back for this bed. It’ll be great, honest.
Harvesting now
I recently outed myself as a lover of bitter leaves and chicories here on Substack.
The lovely
put up a great post about them, and I Could Not Help Myself, they were so beautiful. This made me think hard, as this is precisely the time of year when I should be harvesting my own chicories and making winter salads with blue cheese, citrus fruit and walnut oil dressings. So why haven’t I got any growing? Gah, again.
In a rush of enthusiasm, determined to be better-cropped this time next year, I’ve started a gardener’s journal for 2025, adding notes in the January section about which crops I *wish* I’d sown or grown earlier to have them ready for harvest now.
Weeks went by in the early autumn when I kept staring at my allotment task list and ‘plant winter salads’ got bumped down, not done. Poor planning, Ang1. But next year, if the Grand Planting Plan works, I’ll be chicoried-up, delighting in Asian greens like mibuna, mizuna and frilly red mustard leavess, and stir-frying my own pak choi.
Making and eating
Back in the kitchen, husband Clive has kept the allotment gang going with cake. The cake disappears so quickly I’ve not photographed either the three-way chocolate (cocoa powder in the batter, chocolate chips mixed in and melted dark chocolate crust on top) or the second blood orange drizzle cake. Both somehow evaporated. The blood oranges are beautiful this year.
Otherwise, last year’s stash of gorgeous damson gin is sadly running low. On the plus side, this means boozy damsons will soon be liberated into a crumble, but the lack of flavoured gin has had my mind turning to the possibility of drowning the last of the blood oranges. Or perhaps some Sevilles, if there are any to be had?
E17 Local Hero
This post’s heroes are, without doubt, the Spring bulbs, which are braving the grey, the cold and the damp. I don’t have any crocus in flower yet, just a few snowdrops in long grass, but others in the gang have a few purple crocus open in short bursts of sun.
The more I look, the more bulbs there are: daffodils in the currant and berry beds, alliums in between the raspberry canes, the odd too-early tulip in the heads and feet of the vegetable rotation beds. Of course, this means that I can now add even more jobs to my list, as seeing the bulbs means I can weed out the nettles and couch grass around the bulbs without digging them up, or pushing a fork through them by accident.
Community of Practice
The gang’s collective endeavour to rescue one of our sheds from decay is coming together, after three weekends’ work in the dreich. Said shed now has a roof covered in smart new roofing felt, the wooden structure underneath remade with ply boards and new struts to give it a level surface and front-to-back slope. Behold the wonder of a repaired shed roof.
Now the shed is weatherproof from above, the structure beneath will start to dry out, and we can plan the rest of the repairs. There’s guttering to go back up along the back, one side (out of shot) to rebuild, painting to be done. That’s another three jobs already - the Rule of Three kicking in again.
Weekly Fox News
Our shed repairs have been supervised by Leo, the main man at this end of the site. Here he is, keeping a casual side-eye on things from the next plot, clearly unimpressed at our efforts.
Until next week, keep count of those jobs everyone. The Rule of Three will apply.
Ang
No produce to add to the tally this week, so January’s (and the year’s) total to date is a firm £0. February will be better, and 2026 better still, if the planting plan holds.
Lovely update Ang. I’ve also promised myself early salad planting. I plant mine in long window boxes and keep them in cold frame. I can’t plant in beds as Still too many slugs who like mustard here in Islington. ❤️
Thank you for the mention. Of the roughly 30 Radicchio seeds sown, about 10 have survived, are still very small and only a few have not been eaten/nibbled. I thought that bitter leaves were safe from predators. We now know better.