Spring update

Suddenly it's time to do everything. So far, in the last two weeks it seems, I've put in peas, carrots, lettuce, onions, beetroot, perpetual spinach, radish, spring onions, parsnip and broad beans.
The Italians, of course, are ahead of me. Though Joe, my next-door neighbour surprised me by saying he'd only just come back from a trip to Australia two weeks ago. Nevertheless, he has already put up most of his tomato stakes and bean sticks, despite the fact it's only mid-March and they won't be needed for a couple of months. Angelo is not well enough to do any gardening. He's got diabetes, and is waiting for an operation on his leg. This means that Joe is struggling to get Angelo's plot ready as well as his own two. He's enlisted the help of Gwillym to rotovate part of Angelo's plot. Gwillym's already rotovated one of Joe's plots, plus half the plots on the allotment from what I can gather. He will never starve. He told me today he is sixteen, and said, "I don't look it, do I?" I thought he was 14 at the most. He said he was doing a part-time college course in motor mechanics while he is still at school doing his GCSEs, which he finishes this year. His dad, Mark (Taffy) is moving back to Wales because his mother has cancer. Gwillym is staying on until the end of the school year, then moving back also. They have put so much into their allotment. They have built a chicken shed like no other: it doubles as a shebeen. Their friend and allotment-sharer will keep it on, and Gwillym will come up now and again to visit friends.
In this picture, Joe is talking to the other Joe, while Gwillym rotovates. I got very annoyed with the other Joe last year and avoid talking to him. I suppose he was only being a typical Italian male, but I got very pissed off with him whistling at me every time he saw me on my allotment, then laughing at me when I said I didn't like it. "It's flattering!" he said. "It's sexist," I replied. Whereupon he burst out laughing again and said "Sexy! Sexy! She says it's sexy!" He had had a few glasses of his home-made wine at the time. I think he realised later, when he saw how annoyed I was, that he'd made a mistake. Now I just avoid him. I found it so embarrassing. I think he's got the message. Fortunately, he's found another girl to chat up, the one on the allotment opposite whose partner is an alcoholic.

Today's haul

Blackberries, beetroot, lettuce, carrots and peas. The beetroot have now been pickled (the third or fourth batch I've made so far this summer - I've already eaten one batch, plus last summer's). The peas - Onward - are splendid. They are 99.9 percent free of pea-and-bean weevil, since I poured a dilution of nicotine over the roots early on. Apparently, this is now discouraged by our Government, but I find it works a treat. I by the smallest packet of tobacco and boil it outside over my camping stove in an old tin can for about ten or fifteen minutes, then dilute it with cold water, and take it down the allotment to murder the weevils.

Tunnels

I made some tunnels for my brassicas. The blue stuff is water piping bought from B&Q. It is slotted on to bamboo sticks about two foot high, which keeps it in place. At the moment, it's only covered with netting, which won't keep out the butterflies. I have been looking for some finer netting which will keep both the butterflies out and the whitefly, but so far it has proved very expensive (anything from £30 to £48 for both tunnels, which measure 5 metres in length and need 2 and a half metres to cover them widthwise). Don't be fooled by the fleece on the other tunnel - it is absolutely useless and blows all over the place like a sail in the wind, and is full of gaps, plus you can't see through it and it channels rain over the sides. The only thing it's good for is warming up the space underneath it, which in temperatures of 25 C is hardly necessary.

Onions

These are my onions drying. I have harvested them already, though it seems ridiculously early. I was going to leave them in a bit longer, but Joe 2 told me to take them up or they would split (that was after Joe #1 had told me the same thing, only Joe #2 said it more persuasively and in better English). Joe #2 is the one with the gammy leg. I thought he had polio, but someone told me he damaged it in a motorbike accident.

I want to put some onions in the show this year, and learnt from last year that you have to peel off the outer layers so that the top layer is unbroken, and you must do this before they dry. But I think I may have gone too far with the peeling, as they all look very bald and white.

I also didn't know where to dry them. I put them on the path at home to start with, then in my mini-greenhouse, but was afraid someone might steal them. Then I came across these two racks at the car boot sale yesterday, and they seem to be ideal. Last year's onions (of which I still have a few left) dried out very nicely in that corner, in a hessian bag inside a wooden box. But this time I am trying to make sure that at least three come out near-perfect for the show. I wish I had a book on how to present things for the show, because I'm making it up as I go along.

Flowerbed

On a whim last winter I ordered some packets of mixed flower seeds, and threw them in with gay abandon early in the year in a patch up the top that I'd just cleared. They grew like wildfire, the cornflowers drowning everything else out, including the hollyhocks I'd grown from seed and planted out there last year. But one magnificent velvet red hollyhock has shot up through all the cornflowers and tall poppies and is reigning supreme over the lot of them at the moment, utterly stunning.

This was meant to be my attempt at a herbaceous border. I will try to be more restrained next year.

Snack

Joe's son, Domenico, came up to fill his dad's water butts from the trough at about 4 pm. He came down my path with a carrier bag full of these snacks that he said his friend had made. It was like deep-fried pasta. It tasted okay, but was very greasy, and wrecked my diet for the day. He said he wanted to start a business selling them in shops, but I told him about having to get your kitchen checked by the Health Inspector, etc. I'm drinking some of the blackberry and apple syrup I made last year, diluted and carried to the allotment in a thermos with ice in it.

Joe

This is Joe just about to go home. He works mornings, and I get there just after lunch when he's just about to go. Then, when he arrives back after his siesta at 4 pm, I go home for my dinner. He has no hard feelings about this.

He'd just spent the morning pruning his tomatoes for the nth time (he said the next time will be the last), and was complaining that he had to look after Angelo's allotment as well as his two.