Episode #24: Purple sprouting
1 - 10 February - Crocus, broccoli and more projects.
This February feels slow. I thought January would never end, but somehow February is taking longer to rev up than usual, and it has been a sluggish start to the year (and to my Substack posts, if I’m honest which are lagging behind weekly right now). But there are now signs of life, and particularly a few purple things growing on the plot.
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This week’s Plot Shot
So far, there has been one single sunny day in February, a month which has otherwise been unrelentingly grey. But that one bit of sun was enough to wake up the purple crocus where the sun hit their beds. Ta dah! Instant spring time.
Of course, these are crocus that have been where they are for a few years, not the ones newly-planted last autumn. The newly planted are pushing up spindly leaves which the foxes are treating like a walk-through salad bar.
(Technical note: there are usually a *lot* of photos in these posts, and they might not all fit on 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 had a long list of plot jobs to do this week, mainly fixing up bits of broken things and patching rotten wood, but then the sun came out and it was too nice not to do things with plants instead of power tools. I swapped the screwdrivers for secateurs and got pruning.
First up were what we refer to as the ‘bonkers berries’, a 12’ bed of mixed berry bushes, which become increasingly unruly every summer as they outgrow their own bed and send fresh canes running off into neighbouring ones. We try a different method of wrangling them every year, but haven’t hit on a way that works yet.
We know that there are five different berries, but all but one of the original labels are long lost, so there’s some guess work to the identification. The Japanese wineberry is the outlier, not one of the European blackberry-raspberry hybrids, but a separate species of Asian raspberry with stems covered in sneaky red thorns, fine as hairs. That’s the easy, vicious one.
Then it all gets a bit tricker. The tayberry (‘Buckingham’, the only one still with its original label) is thornless with long green stems, the loganberry also thornless. Both have long, rather than round, fruit. That leaves the boysenberry (small thorns, round fruit, more like a raspberry) and the tummelberry (very thorny, large long fruit). At least, I think that’s how they go. But of course, as the canes grow and the bushes intertwine, the berries always get picked in a mix of whichever are ripe. All my efforts at curating them go to pot.
Berries tamed (for now), I moved on to the currant bed next door. There used to be a couple of small whitecurrant bushes, but these got swamped by the reds and died. These redcurrants were on the plot when I took it on, so no labels on them to show the varieties - generic old school allotment redcurrants then.
Post pruning and before the daffodil bulbs flower there’s a small window of time now when we can get into both the berry and currant beds and weed out the rampant nettles and bindweed. If we miss this chance to wage war on these two, they’re impossible to weed out once the berries or currant bushes are in leaf.
Finally I topped out the new guttering scheme for the relocated water butts with some fancy flexible pipe, and all three are now filling in their new locations. Operation Butts is almost complete - just draining them down, cleaning them with citrus disinfectant and we’re good to go for the new growing year.
Harvesting now
There are a few snowdrops out, but not nearly as many as this time last year. In fact, this photo is the whole clump. Pretty, but very few.
This time in 2024, there were many, many more snowdrops. A whole solid bank of them in the grass, at least as long as the 4’ end board of the bonkers berries’ bed. But not this year. Last year, they were ‘harvested’. Another plot holder picked handfuls of the flowers when they were at their best which is probably why they haven’t come up this year.
Making and eating
Finally, in February, the plot’s produce tally for 2025 has kicked off, thanks to a small surprise crop of purple sprouting broccoli1. Beautiful broccoli, yes?
I love purple sprouting broccoli, PSB. It is the veg grower’s equivalent of a bunch of spring flowers, spring florets. Takes months of slow time to grow, but when it finally sprouts, it is worth the wait and the sprouts are always a surprise.
I say a surprise, because somehow they always seem to not be there for weeks and then all of a sudden they are. Ta dah! Brassicas are like that, at least on our plot. We once grew cauliflowers, never having done so before, and kept checking and checking for anything that looked remotely edible, then one weekend we had six full-sized heads of cauliflower all at once, and not enough freezer space for them all. We ended up passing round cauliflower to bemused friends. Meanwhile, the PSB is headed to the wok for a stir fry with a dash of oyster sauce.
E17 Local Hero
On the one sunny day the sky was clear enough for a a view of Venus, rising just below the moon. Even a shabby allotment in Walthamstow can be beautiful. Not bad, E17, not bad at all.
Community of Practice
As we’re still in February, seed sowing hasn’t yet got going out on the plots. It is still too cold for that. I’ve yet to start the annual practice of sowing the Med veg (tomatos, aubergines and chillis) at home in the heated propagator, let alone sow anything in the greenhouse. We’re still passing seed catalogues around while drinking hot soup, and planning the year’s planting.
Instead we’ve been concentrating on getting more bird food out in the cold weather, cleaning the feeders and checking nest boxes. The mixed flock of sparrows and finches on the site are demolishing fat balls faster than we can restock the feeders, so there’s some research into bulk-buy bird food to do. Note to self: need to buy a bird bath this year, and find a good spot for it.
Plus I’ve still got to make something out of the huge wooden crate I scavenged a few weeks ago, and which is now taking up space as a workbench/dump space for all the random bits of scrap that I heave out of skips. A friend sent me this photo of a possible project - not so much a bug hotel as The Ritz for bees and beetles. Isn’t this just great?
Of course, I don’t have all the components of this to hand and buying new bricks or paving blocks from our local B&Q goes against the scavenger grain somewhat, but it is An Idea. Maybe I’ll find a spot for the crate, and then fill it, bit by bit, according to whatever turns up over time. I’m sure the bugs won’t mind the hotel being built up around them. Another allotment project for my ever-expanding list.
Weekly Fox News
February is prime mating season for our fox family, who are now all spread across the site according to where the vixens have marked out their dens and taken their chosen boys with them. Matriarch Vinnie is still keeping her eye on our work to ensure standards are maintained.
Until next week, we’re supervised.
Ang
Purple sprouting broccoli, roughly 300g. Compares to Daylesford British organic PSB on Ocado, currently £3.90 per 300g. The 2025 produce tally is underway, total £3.90 for the year to date.
You are not the only gardener to report few snowdrops - I suspect the wet weather has more to do with the few flowers that picking them last year.