April on the Allotment #2

Great day on the allotment on Wednesday.  The forecast proved correct, and the temperature rose as ambitiously as the price of Bitcoin to a solid 20 degrees plus.  The edibles are loving it.  I made a support for the beans from chicken wire and a couple of stakes:

I promised to wait until the first potatoes I planted showed any green before sowing any more, and sure enough:

So in go the next lot:

As for spinach:

The spare chicken wire I’ve had to use to protect it from the local cat-bastard who, apparently not deterred to the extent I would like by my newly planted coleus canina (aka the “scaredy cat plant”) having given up shitting in the onions, has moved only meters into from the spinach.  Not acceptable, so more extreme measures had to be taken.

It occurred to me you could perhaps lace your beds with chicken wire just below the surface of the soil, to stop cats digging holes in any of it, but that’s an experiment for another time.  My mood undimmed, I indulged in a quick selfie in the shed.

So is your face.

Onions are poking up, too.  I even harvested some juicy chives.  It’ll be interesting to see how long it takes them to grow back in this kind of weather.  In my experience chives grow very quickly when you chop their heads off.

Onion

Chives, decapitated and heady.

Here’s the blackcurrant bush:

Here’s a tulip:

Even the rhubarb, which I was convinced I had destroyed forever, has returned:

 

Yeah yeah, sod off.

One solitary kale seedling survived the great greenhouse disaster and settled into its new home:

 

Security.

In the evening I sat by my shed breaking some scraps of rotten wood down into a more chip-able size.  Woodchip seems to be something more experienced allotmentiers get very excited about.  It’s a valued commodity, and I can see why.  Scatter it where you don’t want things to grow.  Things like this:

These are sycamore seeds, and they’re absolutely everywhere.  Zoom out, and as you can see, they’ll even grow between the cracks of a picnic table:

And I'll see you, and you'll see me...

I wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one morning and find them growing between my toes.  They’re prolific little blighters.

Bucket of wood.

But who cares?  Things are growing, bursting, blooming into life.  Here’s that tulip again:

It didn’t have to be that colour, but it is.  Consider that.

Related posts

April on the Allotment
The Beast From the East Murdered My Greenhouse
A Shed is Born

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