Joan's flower garden

I started tidying up Joan's flower garden yesterday. It is the patch up the top of my Swindon allotment, and when John and Joan had the allotment, it was her flower garden, and looked lovely. However, now it is overgrown with couch grass, and not many flowers have survived. There is one rose bush, some large daisies (chrysanthemums?), bluebells, lily-of-the-valley, some bluey geranium-type flowers, and a rhubarb plant, plus the fruit bushes I put in recently. After I got the allotment last year, Big John reported that John had asked him repeatedly when I was going to clear Joan's flower garden. It is the piece of ground nearest to their immaculate lawn, so looks terrible from their window. But it is going to take a lot of work to clear all the couch from it.

Apart from that...

Apart from that, Spring is here, and I've regained my enthusiasm, and am spending hours and hours down the allotment. It's mostly spent digging couch grass, but it's pleasant enough in the sun. I get endless advice from the Italians. One day, I had no fewer than three of them tell me I should be using a fork not a spade. I don't think they realised that my soil is so compacted, damp and clayey that it sticks to a fork, and you just end up with a great big lump on it and break your back.

Anyhow, it's getting dryer by the day, and I can use a fork now, though I still have to spend hours picking couch roots out of each clod. I had a bonfire tonight and burned a dustbin-full. And of course, it's springing up immortal and the top end is starting to look as if I never dug it at all. I'm contemplating Glyphosate (aaagh!), on that end at least, because I'll never conquer it otherwise. I was going to use ammonium sulphamate, only to find it's been banned by the EU, despite being safer than Glyphosate, and is now only available illegally over the internet. And of course it is expensive. The fact is, at the moment I can't afford either, so it's all academic.

Meanwhile, I do a bit a day, and though I've got a lot left that I haven't even touched yet, I managed to turn over a lot before the winter weather got too bad, and that broke down (on top at least) to a fine hoe-able tilth. So I had a good surface for my seeds, albeit riddled at both sides of the plot with lurking weed roots.

Bonfires and pay dirt

Still keeping up with my regulation digging of two rows per day. Am finding some horrible weed, like a monstrous version of couch grass, but the roots are brown and like string, and the knots of grass that spring from the nodes coarser than couch. I'm getting closer to the middle, which was cultivated last year, and there the soil is blacker and marginally softer. You could say I'm hitting pay dirt. In the rest, both grey and yellow clay lie less than six inches below the surface ("Too heavy," said a passing Italian), so I am digging in all manner of organic matter, including the grass clippings from the path which my neighbours, the Adver couple, had conveniently mowed yesterday.

I've been putting the roots of this vicious weed on the pile ready to be burnt, and yesterday evening I went down and lit two bonfires. You have to go down after six to do that, and a couple of others were doing the same. Jack had brought wood and paraffin to get his going, and was burning his potato haulms. I told him paraffin was cheating, and lit both mine with just paper. The one on the Cat allotment burned like wildfire - it was mainly dried grass - and I had to stand well back as the flames leapt into the air. It was over in minutes. The other, on the SA allotment, was an attempt to burn a collection of old brussels sprouts stalks and diseased tomato haulms in an old dustbin that Blue had joyously knocked holes in when he found it. The fire took ages and a whole issue of the Adver, complete with photos of Billie Piper, to get going, and then it petered out after a short while. "Too wet," said a passing Italian.