Holding on to normal - days of COVID-19

24th March 2020, North Yorkshire, UK

I write this on the day after the announcement from the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom about the lockdown measures being imposed on all citizens in order to try and control the spread of Coronavirus COVID-19.

Having an allotment, and having had a lot of career experience of preparing disaster recovery/business continuity plans, I've got perhaps a little bit of a head start on some when it comes to being able to deal with the situation we all now find ourselves in. Whilst scorn was poured out by some on those people that were stocking up over the past year or so in preparation for the "expected" dislocation of a no-deal Brexit, those that did and who kept topping up the "Brexit box", now find themselves not having to worry too much about the provision of many staple foodstuffs. 

Having the allotment means that we have also have plenty of jam in the cupboard and chutney too, and for any lighter moments or the need to forget, several bottles of parsnip wine! 

There was some good news today about being able to go to allotments under the new movement restrictions when Michael Gove was specifically asked about whether going to an allotment counted as exercise. 

https://t.co/6q8CmqzpjO?amp=1

In terms of hygiene, our allotment site does not have an association and so there's no a communal area to worry about and locked gates are to each individual allotment so the problem that some allotments have with potential virus being left on a communal gate or on items in a communal area does not exist to the same extent as in at other sites. At any one time you are well above the 2m metres away from other allotment holders unless there was a chance meeting on the path to the site. 

Personally I would have regarded it also as going to get food! (though with only six or so leeks and a bit of rhubarb it would have been quite a small harvest right now!) . The virus has struck at the time in the year that the UK traditionally was in the "hungry gap", the time in the year that the winter stores are exhausted and the summer crops are still far from ready. Of course, with global food chains, the UK could in theory import food to service the needs of the population, but this is a global pandemic and two main sources of imported food - Italy and Spain - are further down the coronavirus timeline than we are right now and there are concerns as shown in the link below.

The Government have been behind the curve so far, and it is almost the case that knowing what will happen next can be based on what they say they are *not* going to do. The panic buying by some has created a unnecessary hole in the supply chain from farm to fork, but even so had that not taken place there are still downstream pressures
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-rationing-food-fruit-vegetables-france-spain-supermarkets-a9418446.html

I am no longer working as the shop I work in is shut for the foreseeable. So, although this is really not the circumstances in which I would wish it, I have quite a bit of time for Spring planting and sowing.

Jobs we are undertaking right now include:

Planting potatoes (red Duke of York, Cara)

Planting summer onion sets (Turbo)

Sowing Cabbages (Golden Acre)

Sowing Broccoli (Komodo)

Sowing Calabrese (Spridon)

Sowing peas (Feltham First, Onward)

Sowing Gherkins (Venlo)

Sowing peppers (long ones and bell peppers saved from previous years fruits)

Planting out broad beans 

Sowing Antirrhinum (Rembrandt), Aquilega, Sweet peas (various ones)

Over the allotment today were a family of buzzards - four circling and calling out, the local blackbirds and sparrows were going about their business and the dunnocks chasing each other about as usual!

Nature will carry on without us. The buds and blossom on the trees will bloom, flowers will open their petals, the leaves will appear on the trees, birds will nest and produce young.

All of can still enjoy that nature, as long as we obey the rules. The rules are there to keep us safe. No excuses. No second chances. Stay at home, apart from the exceptions outlined. Those who have to put themselves in harm's way to keep us safe from this virus deserve all our thanks and gratitude.

Michelle

Broad beans and pruning back

Better late than never! Have been able to plant some broad beans out in the allotment that I have started off indoors in order for them to catch up a bit!

Our seed planting takes several stages, firstly any seeds to be germinated start off in the warmest part of the house, next to the radiator in our bedroom! Then they will either go into the bathroom or into the downstairs loo to grow on a bit before being put into the lean to greenhouse to harden off prior to planting out.
Sounds complicated but it means that there's a succession of plants in different parts of the house at different stages of growing!

Over the past couple of days, with some time off work, we have been finishing off the pruning back - the holly in the garden has had a good cut back now it has finished producing berries for the birds. In winter it was quite funny to watch the blackbirds jumping up off a perch to reach the berries! The fuchsia has also had a third of the plant taken out in order to encourage regrowth and the ivy - as always - requires the secateurs! Also, the buddleia was cut back to about a metre above the ground, last year this was really good for butterflies as is its function!

In the allotment the hedge has been a work in progress in terms of trimming and today I used the Darlac cutter to get through some of the tough stems of brambles and of a hawthorn which is growing in the middle of the privet. The hazelnut got trimmed a few weeks ago, the tall whippy stems avoiding the ones with catkins on. The hawthorn in the garden has had a few branches lopped back to stop it from rubbing against the telephone wires.

All that cutting back has left us with lots of clippings - the hedge clippings seems to be doing a good job of rotting down in a pile at the allotment and the holly has been chopped into small pieces and added to the compost heap with some other garden pruning. The hazel, buddleia and hawthorn sticks will do really well as pea and bean sticks and supports for other plants in due course.

Not yet Spring.....

As I write this, the wind is getting up again as Storm Jorge works its way across the UK. (Who names these things? They would be more impressive named after Norse or Greek Gods imo!)
Doesn't feel like Spring in any way, shape or form although the local blackbirds are competing over a length of hedge, the rooks up the road are bringing sticks to their nests, and over in Strasbourg (where eldest is for a break) the White Storks are back and building up their tall nests again despite the sleet and cold rain!

The weather has curtailed much in the way of work in the allotment beyond making sure the pot lemon tree is protected, harvesting the last of the leeks and moving the swing frame down to the next section. Too cold for anything to go out yet though, but over the next week or so I want to get started with indoor seed planting.

I really should have planted some broad beans in Autumn but in order for them to catch up I decided to get some started indoors.

They are now trying to escape! They are getting hardened off a bit in our downstairs loo as it gets quite cold in there overnight, but to put them out now with all this wind would just result in them blowing over I think, even though they are quite hardy.

In my opinion they are not that tasty dried and stored, and are I think best eaten when young and boiled straight out of their pods.

I have in the past had to use some organic certified spray to control blackfly on them, though companion planting - marigolds, nasturtiums or poppies also helps.

As we start thinking about the forthcoming season, there have been a few remaining vegetables from last year, either in store or in the allotment.

There's a few leeks - now for some reason I have never been able to grow really thick leeks but as there is only me that eats them most of the time this doesn't matter too much and one small leek per meal is enough.
Swede have never been a success on the allotment, maybe it is the soil, which is a shame as we eat quite a lot of it, but turnips do well though, strangely. That being said, this is the biggest swede we have had for a long time and it tasted good!
A couple of weeks ago I decided to stop harvesting parsnips as they grew woody (4 months of parsnips was good!) though the rest will stay in the ground so that next month sometime I will start off another batch of parsnip wine! We've eaten the last of the onions (7 months supply), garlic and apples (4 months supply) from store. There's still plenty of jam - we never run out!

 A general view of the allotment. Apart from the middle section and a number of other permanent beds and plants round the edges, the remainder is four rotational beds. Some people advocate no-dig permanent beds and there's been some interesting comparisons of the yields and benefits of both methods. However, I feel that exposing the top layers of soil to the elements for the frost to break up the clods and for the local robins, blackbirds and indeed both song and mistle thrushes to have a good search for slugs, snails and other grubs (and indeed worms - but there are plenty of them!) is also beneficial.
The bare section in the sunlight was where the potatoes were last year, these will move down beyond the permanent fruit bushes at the back of that bed, with peas and beans, some courgettes and pumpkins replacing them in

the second bed this year. Brassicas will move from the bed behind the fruit bushes to the final bed at the bottom of the allotment with onions, garlic, leeks, carrots and sweetcorn replacing the peas and beans in the bed to the left of the camera position. This latter bed is already planted with some overwintered onions and garlic, the onions will be ready around the start of July, maybe even late June.






The middle bed (of the 5 main beds) is a permanent bed with blackcurrants, raspberries, a minarette damson tree and a late ripening Gala apple tree.
There is also rhubarb which originally was a cutting off the root of one grown at my parents' house in the Yorkshire Rhubarb Triangle (the area south of Leeds which is famous for forced rhubarb grown in large sheds by candlelight). I do wonder whether to make some rhubarb jam again but it doesn't seem to keep very long for some reason.






We're going to grow more bee friendly flowers this year for the garden and allotment, although already in the allotment the bees and hoverflies enjoy marigolds, nasturtiums, all the fruit blossom, some lavender and poppies as well as dandelion flowers (though we do cull these every so often before they seed) We also leave a couple of leeks to go to seed and also grow sunflowers in summer.
But, we feel we can do more and the buddleia in the garden attracts butterflies and indeed there's been quite a few different moths over the years (Buff Ermine, Apple Moth, Silver Y among others)

Just hope the weather improves and it dries out a bit!

In the not so bleak midwinter!

'Tis the season to eat holly.... well not quite! But the local blackbirds have been coming to the holly bush in the garden and munching berries, shame I can't persuade the waxwing that turned up at the Askham Bar Tesco in York to do so! (There was a waxwing very briefly in a tree at the end of our street in early 2017!)

We're putting plenty of food out for the birds, the gangs of noisy and squabbling house sparrows in the garden and the allotment, friendly robins, great tits, blue tits in both and today there was a Mistle Thrush pottering around the allotment and trying out new tunes. Have you noticed that thrushes and robins try out melodies very quietly at this time of year? There was a song thrush up near the University in Leeds doing the same the other day! The birds around the allotments soon made themselves scarce today as two Red Kites flew over low this lunchtime. One often checks me out when I am at the allotment, they have spread out so much since the re-introduction programme from Harewood House a few years ago, and indeed are actually historically quite urban birds, indeed a good place to see them is around Seacroft in east Leeds as they swoop around the flats there, and I've once seen a group of six of them (yes, six - people 30 years ago would have thought me crazy if I had said that then!) circling low around the A64/outer Ring Road roundabout one day as I was coming home from work. A trip to Leeds and back will usually result in seeing three or four.

The local starling flock has increased over the years, now about one hundred strong, good to see them making a comeback, and there's a noisy group of jackdaws that come down into the allotments too.

Anyway, much as I could fill this blog with bird tales, what about the growing?

Well the main job at this time of year is digging and tidying. This was the potato patch last season and now all that is to do is to go back over and collect any stray potatoes and allow the frost to break up the soil and the robin to have dinner!

At the back of the shot is the damson tree and we have been overrun with damsons this year, enough to make over twenty jars of jam! (approx three hundred damsons went into eight or nine jars of jam!) and there's still more in the freezer.

I've moved one of the rhubarb roots (or are they rhizomes?) over to alongside the asparagus in the patch behind the damson as where it was it was getting overshadowed by the comfrey very quickly. Seems to have established and is making the first shoot.

The winter onions and garlic are poking through now, these are going where the beans and peas were this year though in most of the patch I let the remains of the pea and bean stalks die off into the soil as is it a good way of fixing nitrogen through these roots. The remains of the nasturtiums that also wind themselves around this part of the plot also get left to rot down as they give ground cover to inhibit weeds.

Looking a little haphazard this is the winter vegetable area. There's some calabrese in the foreground, which will be ready in two or three weeks, and a couple of swede. This is the first time for many years we have been able to grow any swede, I thought the soil was unsuitable but maybe this variety is happy with the conditions. Further back we have some leeks for February/March and at the rear is a row of parsnips that have been going well for a couple of months now, some of which were consumed at Christmas dinner. Generally though we slice them up like crisps and deep fry them to have instead of potato chips or as an accompaniment to a roast dinner, they are in my opinion better crispier than in wedges.

Today's pickings, stray potatoes from digging over the patch and two parsnips for having with leftover turkey tomorrow!

Harvest time

This year here in the UK it is perhaps more important than usual that those of us who grow our own food aim to preserve and store as much as possible. Wherever you lie on the Brexit debate, it is clear that there will be issues in supply chains, I know enough about emergency planning and project management to know that it only takes one overlooked thing to send things off course with problematic consequences. The people in the know - those that haven't been silenced by NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) whether they be in retail, growers, livestock, import or transportation have been warning of issues for a long time and indeed the Government's own risk assessments have rather gloomy, if not highly disruptive, outlooks for Post Brexit UK.

Before I get onto our present allotment harvests, may I recommend "The Fall" podcasts by James Patrick (@j_amesp on Twitter) and Guy Dorrell (@GuyDorellEsq) for tips on how to prepare yourself for any disruptive event - the same advice is applicable to such as weather emergencies that disrupt access and transportation.

This isn't scaremongering. I will actually be glad if nothing happens. But it is better to be prepared and nothing happens than being caught out and wishing you had prepped.

Now, this year has been incredibly good for our allotment blackberries! Why anyone bothers to buy blackberries in a shop I really do not know, especially when commercially grown blackberries will have had goodness knows what chemicals sprayed over them. Even if you don't have your own supply, there are ample bushes out there - the "edgelands" in urban areas are often the places where foraging is most useful. My grandparents used to pick from the railway embankment (obviously not going past the fence separating the railway!) near their flats in inner city Leeds, and I remember going to do the same at a local railway station, as did many others.

Unfortunately, we are running out of space in the freezer, despite turning a lot of soft fruit into jam already! Four tubs of blackberries have been given to my parents too!

So, I have tried my hand at bottling blackberries in sugar solution today. Hopefully these will store and then can be used on breakfast cereal or in puddings.

Today was also the day that I started picking pears. Of course, they will need time to ripen in storage, but it was really nice to come home with a basket full of Comice and Conference pears.

We have two "Minarette" style pear trees in the allotment and whilst there aren't quite as many as last year there are certainly enough to keep us going for a month or two!

The three minarette apple trees in the allotment - a Gala, Chiver's Delight and Falstaff, aren't quite ripe yet and indeed the Gala is an incredibly late ripening one with some of the fruits only just ready at the start of December!

Also picked today were some more damsons and blueberries.

The pot blueberry bushes took about three years to come into full production but these past two or three years have been very heavy cropping. They are in pots as they need an acid soil - they are in ericaceous compost and if possible only get watered with rain water, though this has been difficult to keep to this summer at times.

The damson tree is supposed to be a minarette, but seems to have outgrown itself although we do try and keep it below 6ft tall. We might well prune it quite severely this winter to shape it a bit better.

However, this year it has excelled, in some years a late frost in May will destroy the blossom and reduce the cropping but I think this year there may well be around 150 fruits at least, never had that many before!

In our back yard (if you are reading this in the US - a yard in the UK, like ours, is usually concrete and often has a wall round it) is a pot fig tree and this year (after about 3 or 4 years maturing) is producing ripe figs - only two so far with two more on the plant but I had one for breakfast the other morning and it was very tasty!

Again, only gets rainwater and with any fig tree, the roots need to be constrained. It is in what probably is the most sunny spot in the yard and the wall behind the tree gets very warm in the sun, in fact the thermometer on the wall measured nearly 50 deg C one day in the recent heat wave! But a warm wall releases heat slowly overnight thus keeping the plant warmer than it would otherwise be.

Tawny Mining Bee!

The other day in the garden I was stripping off part of the lawn (I say lawn, it is a small patch of grass that has suffered over the years with a swing and children on it!) in order to plant some wildflower seeds. I noticed a couple of bees going down into the grass and a day or so later discovered some small neat holes in the bare earth where I have planted the wildflower seeds.

I also rescued a bee from the house. Very sluggish, maybe just woken up from hibernation. After I took a few photos I put it in the lean to greenhouse to sort itself out, which it did after an hour and then flew off.

Having struggled to match it up in the Field Guide to Bees of Great Britain and Ireland by Steven Falk (this is probably due to my problematic colour vision and nothing to do with the excellent illustrations by Richard Lewington!), I posted one of the photos in this post on Twitter and thanks to Brigit Strawbridge Howard (http://beestrawbridge.blogspot.com/) I now know this is a female Tawny Mining Bee (Andrena Fulva).

Planting out peas, and our friendly robin(s)

It is still feeling quite cold out there with possible overnight frost forecast. However, it is time the peas went out into the big wide world!

Last year, they got nibbled by the local house sparrow tribe so this year the sparrows will have to look on in envy as I have bought ten metres of fine mesh to make an ark to protect them, at least until the flowers appear and they are big enough to withstand any small beaks.....

Inside the ark there are sticks for the peas to grow up, the only thing that does worry me is whether the peas will use the mesh to grow up as we'll need it for protecting other crops later in the season and it will be really tricky to untangle the peas if they do grow into it.







Now for our friendly robins! They really are getting quite unafraid of us and will come down to about a foot away from where we are working. There's definitely a pair of them, if it was two males coming into the same territory then there would be open warfare!

What you don't notice when you see them at a distance is that they whistle quietly to themselves whilst pottering about! They also make a quiet "pseep" noise. Both of them do sing, but it will be the male that is blasting it out from the hazelnut tree in the allotment!