Episode #25: Nothing like the sun
11 - 18 February - Pruning, bed-making and losing Chips.
The year is waking up slowly here in E17.
We’re well past the 1 February Imbolc point of midway between the winter solstice in December and the spring equinox in March, but the sun hasn’t shown itself much. Everything feels as if it is waiting for the sun, and suddenly it seems really obvious that growing on allotments is all about the sun. Allotments are literally solar powered. Or not quite yet, in February.
Plants & Practice is a reader-supported publication, free to everyone. If you’ve already subscribed - hurrah! and thank you! - a new episode should pop into your inbox each week. If not, click to enter your email here and join the allotment gang.
This week’s Plot Shot
Last week we were cheered by purple crocus opening at the first sign of sun. This week there’s a small clump of the yellow, but there wasn’t quite enough sun to open them.
(Technical note: there are usually a *lot* of photos in this post, and it 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
My main job this week has been rose pruning, and I have the scratches and small thorns in my fingers and blood stains on my dungarees to prove it. It is probably a good thing that the handles on Felco secateurs are red (like the perforated metal decks on HMS Belfast) as I always end up bloody. Can you tell I’m not a fan of gardening gloves?
Most of our climbing roses are old and vicious, and they put up a fight. It always surprises me how they grow so much over one year. They’ll be tight up against their arches now, lashed in place after the winter prune, but by the height of summer there will be whole new branches swaying above my head.
Harvesting now
There were a few leaves of second sprouts from the over-wintered Cavolo nero this week, but barely enough to make a portion, a small salad garnish then. There is more PSB, purple sprouting broccoli, coming, but I left the sprouts to grow a bit. So no change to the plot tally this week, although there are crops coming1. Also, the rosemary bush is flowering, which is always a good sign that it has survived the winter wet.
Making and eating
Husband Clive’s making this week was a great success with the allotment gang, but entirely unrelated to our plot produce. He baked a triple chocolate loaf cake (chocolate sponge with chocolate chips and a melted dark chocolate on top) but snuck a surprise layer of raspberry jam under the chocolate shell.
I wish we could say that the raspberry jam was our own, but it was M&S’s raspberry seedless. The cake was a triumph, and mysteriously evaporated when exposed to the allotment gang, as always.
E17 Local Hero
The week’s show of heroism has been put on by last year’s tulip bulbs, who are most definitely UP, while their newly-planted relatives are still snoozing. These are either ‘Time Out’ or ‘World’s Favourite’ (both bright orange varieties), possibly a mix of both.
There are bulbs planted at the ends of most of our raised beds, headers and footers of jewel toned tulips and gaudy summer gladioli packed into a few inches of space, bookending the veg. I had to pull some of these back through the netting which is keeping hungry pigeons off my PSB, so there are a few broken tips of leaves, but hopefully they’ll flower. We lost so many of our tulips to 2024’s wet spring that I’m pleased to see these have made it back above ground for another trip around the sun with us.
Community of Practice
Elsewhere I had to enlist some of the allotment gang to help assemble the new bed around the medlar tree as more hands were needed than my two to juggle all the cut bits of wood into position while one person screwed them together, corner by corner.
Of course, building the bed would have been *much* more straightforward on an open piece of ground without a fully-grown tree in the middle of it, or on a dry day rather than one with drizzly rain making the wood screws slippery, but that’s how things work on allotments. Finally, the bed is in position, ready to be pegged into the ground once the ground is dug over and the nettle roots and knuckles of ancient bramble removed. The bright purple paint will weather down, over time.
The medlar still looks in a state of permanent surprise. Or perhaps there’s a hands-in-the-air silent disco going on amongst the fruit trees, who knows. It will be even more surprised to be surrounded by purple ‘Queen of the Night’ and ‘Victoria’s Secret’ tulips in a few weeks time. Plus there is a pink peony heading its way, which needs digging out of a path. (Note to self: new tree stake needed, and some gradual coaxing into a more upright position.)
Weekly Fox News
We’re a member of the fox family down this week. Lovely girl Chips was found dead on one of the main paths on the site. We think she must have been asleep, probably sunbathing, and been hit by a near-silent electric vehicle, as her hip bone was broken.
Everyone has been sad to lose such a healthy young vixen, one who was just starting to be comfortable around the friendly humans. They are wild animals, and the life of most wild foxes is nasty, brutish and short, a lifespan of probably five years at most. They aren’t our domestic pets, but the allotment gang put a lot of effort (and a fair bit of cash) into keeping the fox family going. We treat them for mange, feed them decent quality dog food, raw chicken pieces and cubes of cheese. So to lose one of them from the site’s skulk like this seems a waste.
(No, I didn’t know that ‘skulk’ is the collective noun for foxes, but I just Googled it, so we all do now.)
Until next week, skulk safely, friends.
Ang
Plot tally for 2025 stands at £3.90 to date. No change this week.
First of the orange crocuses popping up here - the colour divides opinion but I love the burst of colour