The best time

This is the best time by far. As we reap the rewards of lots of hard work from the previous months labour. Picking the produce large and small. Cooking with our own grown ingredients really does make everything taste so much better. Sugar snap peas picked and popped into the mouth instantly, you can't beat that. We are still eating our way through beetroot, courgettes (yellow, green and round ones), carrots, peas and at times head to the freezer for those pre-picked broad beans. Potatoes and onions are also on the table.

With the lack of rain, on a good note not much weeding but lots of water carrying. Its a good time to relax and enjoy the abundance.

Future planting we have well on the way for autumn eating are parsnips, Russian kale, Brussels sprouts and cabbages. Well that all depends on the emergence of lava and other brassica eating animals.

Food Glorious Food

Broad Beans, Courgette, Peas, beetroot - all ours...yummy

Eating your own

This sunny weekend was a weekend full of the tastes of summer from our plot. Friday night's plates were full of roast beetroot, roast new potatoes, feta (shop brought) and broad beans.
Sunday's feast incorporated salad leaves, broad beans, spinach, new potatoes and pak choi, and chives - all from the allotment. Absolutely wonderful!

Lots of weeding, strimming, netting (after the birds went crazy with the newly planted brussels sprouts) and water carrying. Other things planted: lettuce, spinach and chard.

My body is aching from all the activity and with a swim in the lido.

Sieving the soil!

After a long day on the stall yesterday we finally got around to some plot care in the full sun.
Now with half a red face and some aches we have just heard the SA land girls are aching from 4 hours of hard core sieving! Now that's dedication or pure madness.

Lots of brassicas were planted yesterday (brought from the fete); purple sprouting broccoli and red cabbage. Several early potatoes (rocket) were dug up as well as lettuce and spinach leaves.
Space is tight at the moment as we are waiting to remove some plants and plant overs (sprouts).

On the water front the water barrel is almost empty again. Where is are water fairy when needed? A couple of 25litre journeys up and down the garden makes you think about the ease of water at home. If only we had a tap on the plot!

Summer Fete

The morning of the summer fete (the allotments holders first) saw a flurry of contributions from many allotment holders and friends. From veg seedlings, to home baked cakes, quails eggs to badges.
The tables soon were overflowing with products. The Brazilian flag and punting was flapping in the
wind as the displays took hold. A great community event and working party. Good selling
techniques and knowledge were exchanged during the sunny afternoon on the field.

A grand total of £291 was raised during the day. Hard work but a successful fund raising day.
What to spend it on, not boys toys this time please! Well done to the hard working team and
the chair.

Logo launch

The committee designed logo gets launched at the fete.

Pick your slogan

Badges and visual materials are being produced for the fete (June 19th)

Power Tools/Girl Power

A hot humid day in early June saw the landgirlz out in force. Health and safety geared up and petrol motor purring, the SA landgirlz began the tasks of slicing bramble to its knees! A sweaty afternoon of cutting, weeding and seedling transplantations. Weeding with only a left arm proved too much for the broken wrist landgirl so she retired to the seat as the SA girls retired to their home comforts of beer and SA rugby. Leaving the last woman standing to hoe away.

Great progress on both half of our plots. Afew plants have succumbed to pests and non germination but all seems to be progressing well.

Elsewhere on the site a few bare-chested men worked away, but in all a quiet day on the site. The mystery of the half-filled water butt remains unsolved. Our guardian angel must have filled the water container as the news of a broken wrist spread throughout Rodborough. Thank god for water fairies!

Home Alone

With a broken wrist this landgirl had no option but to leave the country home and head to the city to be cared for by the other landgirl. This left the abundance of seedlings home alone. Along row of small plants could confront the helpful watering friends that came by this past week. All are well and watered.
Their transplantation awaits.

Another May Day

Four weeks have passed since the landgirlz wrote. Its not because we have not been hard at work on the plot but more about finding time to blog. May has seen hot weather, worries about the lack of water and the fight at this time of year re weeds. Seedlings have flourished in the warm weather.
We have planted out the much loved celery and sweet corn. Its almost been like seeing your teenagers leave the family home for the first time, hoping they will eat, sleep etc.

The success this year with the new addition of the raised bed and cover have proven to be worthwhile. An abundance of salad leaves (lettuce, rocket) chives, spinach and pumpkin seeds have left many passers by green with envy. Others crops have all left the start line and fingers crossed all growing.

The bad news of May is one landgirlz has broken her wrist (in several places)! That's not down to too much digging but a fall on the home garden steps. Out of action and in plaster for 6 weeks the heavy chores of water carrying, digging etc are now left to the other main landgirl. So June may be a punishing month on many counts.

So far this month we have eaten plenty of rhubarb, salad leaves and a little spinach. We are looking forward to the first crop of early potatoes, peas and broad beans in June.

Else where on the allotment the wildlife group have dug and built the pond, which is sited beautifully with Stroud views. The fence team have now plugged all holes and fingers crossed for no more deer. The fundraising team are preparing for the fete in mid June (to raise funds). And I am sure there are other teams for others jobs. The logo is complete and will be launched at the fete with postcards and badges to give visual awareness to the association.

All is well on the plot, goodbye May.

May day rocket!

The first of May saw a bumper cutting of rocket and muddy hands. Our first major day on the allotment for almost two weeks. The coldframe/raised bed was bursting with greenery and elsewhere were signs of spring weeds and a wilderness of dandelions. We spent a fair bit of our time on our knees weeding and deciding what was a weed or what was a seedling! No major mistakes as last year when we weeded all but five of the parsnips.

We also planted the second early potatoes (Nicola). Not holding out much hope for these as they got damp and mouldy in a plastic bag on the kitchen floor...

Elsewhere on the allotment: Fordism has taken hold on the upper slopes. There is an abundance of newies digging, sieving and planting. It's all very scary as it seems, almost in blink, a new regime has emerged. It almost feels like there's a race on; a competition to do better than your neighbour. Only a small strip separates these neat, well-sieved plots. I'm waiting for a shout ' get off my land!'. You may see a jealous tone in my writing but no, its just a yearning for the blackerry bush days of wilderness on the upper slopes.

Its raining...yippeee.

Logos at dawn

One land girl is designing the logo to promote the allotment. It will be used on letterheads, perhaps t-shirts and placed on items at the first fete in June. Several logo ideas were presented to the committee in early April and several of the members wanted to fuse two ideas together, which is always a designers nightmare. Watered down visual elements. Today a revised logo has been developed incorporating two elements together. Does it work? Not really but designing to a committee results in being designed by a committee. It will be presented on 28.4.10.

meanwhile on the windowsills...

The extraordinary process of growing from seed - an unexpected pleasure of allotmenting. Courgette and sweetcorn seedlings shooting from the soil and celery - just can't believe that these delicate seedlings could possibly grow into heads of celery!

Sunny days

What allotment holder wasn't out on their plot at some point this weekend, enjoying the sunshine and thinking that this kind of weekend weather perfects the allotment experience....?! The influx of new plot holders on our site has resulted in a show of industriousness at the top end which could put the old hands to shame. The removal of the blackberry bushes which previously shielded the rest of the site from the lane has also removed some of the character of the site, but the new faces, conversation and obvious enjoyment being had has to be compensation. And as well as the seeds, seedlings and seed potatoes, the landgirlz are enjoying the vigorous growth of the free produce on our site - rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb (gooseberries come later). We didn't force it properly but it's growing all the same. And in the cold frame, the lettuce and rocket are powering along, promising to beat the threatened ash-related shortage of salads in the supermarkets...

joining the two halves

Sterling work this week from the working parties (and action man J in particular - give that man some beer!), clearing the collected rubbish at the top of the allotment site, digging out long-unused plots and laying hardcore at the allotment entrance to prevent the gateway becoming a mudslide in rainy weather. These are the kinds of people on whom the infrastructure of allotments (and any community activity) depends.

It will be interesting to watch the way in which the site develops over the next six months - I suspect it's been a while since there has been so much change on the site, resulting in an influx of new plot holders. I wonder if this will resolve - or intensify - the tacit divide between the lower and upper plots on the site...?

One of the landgirlz met with another allotment holder - I'll call him Basil - tonight to discuss a new writing project. We plan to create a sociological map of the allotments and to flesh it out with a series of profiles, journals, visual images and creative pieces.

Reviewing last year

The Blues

Enough already...the shed is becoming a star in its own right! A coat of 'midnight blue' turned many heads today on the allotment. A working party of six men, building a new section of fencing (to keep the deer out) used my painting as a distraction and gossiping topic. "Blue for a shed, it should have been Barbie Pink, they are four girls". After the first few strokes the midnight colour was even more startling and I though we might be thrown off the site for breaking some parish law or allotment ettiquette! I made a dash for it after one coat. Let's see how many raised eyebrows and committee minutes the Blue Shed attracts....!!

Planting Chocolate Eggs

Easter Sunday saw us down on the plot, where small children hunted for chocolate eggs (which we did not see). First job of the holy day was to fathom out why our unique water collection system was not working and why two weeks of rain had resulted in a mere puddle in the oil drum. To cut a long and boring story short our water was going up hill! To resolve this gravitational issue one landgirl reversed the pipe work to point down hill.
Planting & Digging

Carrots, parsnips and beetroot were all sown (fingers crossed, as not had much joy in previous years with carrots). Creating a border for wildflowers turned into more of a landscaping exercise with the discovery of a huge bit of carpet underneath the earth!

how many women does it take to put up a shed?

Last Saturday four women struggled with one electric screwdriver, one hammer and a set of crap instructions to assemble a cheap three by four foot shed. An early estimate for the time it would take to complete (one and a half hours) was out by two (hours!). That was after the man on the neighbouring allotment took pity on us and finished the job in about 20 minutes with some well aimed hammer blows! Men do have their uses! Comments about the shed from fellow allotmenters have compared it to a public toilet and a sentry box. We don't care, it will keep the tools dry and we hope to set up a small bar inside in the summer! Then they'll be impressed! Of course the main purpose for the shed was to collect water (there is none on the site). However an inspection today after a week of rain showed poor results from our makeshift pipe system....??!

back pages

To recap on the month of March after our travels from New Zealand.
England had the 'worst' winter for some 35 years so returning to the allotment after two months away we came back to a frozen then a sodden plot. The upshot of this was that there was little weed growth and the 'professionals' who surround us had made little head way. We spent a few weeks preparing the beds and clearing the site for spring planting.
Our allotment association is in the midst of a viagra-like reinvigoration and has all kinds of new plans to increase the number of plots and plot holders, keep out the deer and create a communal area. As a result of this the workable area of our own plot, previously half covered with brambles, has now been cleared so we have bribed two other landgirlz (on secondment from the southern hemisphere) to do their worst with the new half.
As April approaches we have onions and garlic on the way (from a December sowing), newly planted potatoes, broad beans and peas. We are waiting for Spring to spring!

rainy good Friday

This is our first entry from the land girls blog. This is our third year of running a plot in Stroud, rural Gloucestershire. However this is our first session as allotment bloggers. We want to share our highs and lows of growing our own and the experiences of being part of an allotment community. Don't read this blog for expert tips on growing your cabbages, more for stories about the 'woolly jumpered' experts and characters with whom we spend our spare time.