Wednesday, June 21, 2006

The joint of beef

I once heard a story about a young woman who asked her mother how to roast a joint of beef. Her mother said "Well first you take the joint of beef and you cut about 2 inches off the end, then you put it in the roasting tin, and . . ."
"Hang on," said the young woman, "Why cut off the end?"
"Er, I don't really know," said her mother, "But that was the way my mother showed me and that's how I've always done it".
So the young woman went to her grandmother and asked her the reason, and she said "I don't know either, but that was the way my mother taught me to do it, and everybody always said my roast beef was the best they'd ever had, so I taught your mother the same thing".
The great-grandmother was still alive, so the young woman asked her why she must cut off the end of the joint of beef. This made the old woman laugh so much she couldn't speak for five minutes, and when she finally caught her breath she said "When I was just married we only had a small roasting pan and you couldn't fit a whole beef joint in it, so that's why I always cut the end off it!"

I've been getting a lot of advice off other allotment holders lately. One warned me ominously to net my pea seedlings to protect them from the pigeons, another expressed concern about the lack of slug pellets on my plot. Someone advised me not to even think of growing carrots because of the terrible carrot root fly infestation, although other plots seem to have crops of carrots. One chap gave me all kinds of wisdom for what felt like an hour - his rows of crops are at an oblique angle to everyone else's because he aligns them with the 12 o'clock sun (everyone else's seem to be aligned with the local drainage).

What am I to do? If I follow all of these suggestions it will cost me a fortune, put paid to any ideas of organic practices, and in fact be plainly impossible because many of the hints I've been given are flatly contradictory. If I do none of them I am quite sure that some disaster will befall at least some of my crops, and James on plot 23 will tell everyone "I did warn her to cut off the dock plants and pour salt on the ends but she thought she knew best!", unless it was Tony on plot 18 who was right all along about not overwatering but making the plants find their own water. I want to benefit from the advice of knowledgeable people, but I don't want to spend the rest of my life cutting the end off the joint of beef.

2 comments:

blackberry44 said...

This is a tough one. You'll probably get as many different kinds of advice as there are allotment holders.

I daresay you have a book about organic gardening. Why not consult it and make notes about what you've done and what the result is.

I don't know what to do about slugs. They're a perfect pest on what used to be my allotment, as well as in my back yard and I never came to a satisfactory conclusion about it. I've found the best thing to stop snail and slug damage in the pots in my yard is gravel sprinkled over the earth, but it's probably far too expensive and impractical to consider it for an allotment.

I've not yet found any organic alternative to the awful slug pellets which actually works.

Bear in mind that some of these slug pellets will poison other wildlife as well as slugs.

Anonymous said...

aaaa片, 免費聊天, 咆哮小老鼠影片分享區, 金瓶梅影片, av女優王國, 78論壇, 女同聊天室, 熟女貼圖, 1069壞朋友論壇gay, 淫蕩少女總部, 日本情色派, 平水相逢, 黑澀會美眉無名, 網路小說免費看, 999東洋成人, 免費視訊聊天, 情色電影分享區, 9k躺伯虎聊天室, 傑克論壇, 日本女星杉本彩寫真, 自拍電影免費下載, a片論壇, 情色短片試看, 素人自拍寫真,

做愛的漫畫圖片, 情色電影分享區, 做愛ㄉ影片, 丁字褲美女寫真, 色美眉, 自拍俱樂部首頁, 日本偷自拍圖片, 色情做愛影片, 情色貼圖區, 八國聯軍情色網, 免費線上a片, 淫蕩女孩自拍, 美國a片, 都都成人站, 色情自拍, 本土自拍照片, 熊貓貼圖區, 色情影片, 5278影片網, 脫星寫真圖片, 粉喵聊天室, 金瓶梅18, sex888影片分享區, 1007視訊, 雙贏論壇, 爆爆爽a片免費看, 天堂私服論壇, 情色電影下載, 成人短片, 麗的線上情色小遊戲, 情色動畫免費下載, 日本女優, 小說論壇, 777成人區, showlive影音聊天網, 聊天室尋夢園, 義大利女星寫真集, 韓國a片, 熟女人妻援交, 0204成人, 性感內衣模特兒, 影片, 情色卡通, 85cc免費影城85cc, 本土自拍照片, 成人漫畫區, 18禁, 情人節阿性,

免費成人影音, 彩虹自拍, 小魔女貼影片, 自拍裸體寫真, 禿頭俱樂部, 環球av影音城, 學生色情聊天室, 視訊美女, 辣妹情色圖, 性感卡通美女圖片, 影音, 情色照片 做愛, hilive tv , 忘年之交聊天室, 制服美女, 性感辣妹, ut 女同聊天室, 淫蕩自拍, 處女貼圖貼片區, 聊天ukiss tw, 亞亞成人館, 777成人, 秋瓷炫裸體寫真, 淫蕩天使貼圖, 十八禁成人影音, 禁地論壇, 洪爺淫蕩自拍, 秘書自拍圖片,