Allotments All the Rage

The BBC is reporting that allotments are all the rage. A combination of the credit crunch and eco-awareness is driving a huge interest in vegetable growing. National waiting lists for allotments are said to be over 100,000. According to the BBC:

In some areas, it's more difficult to get an allotment than it is to get in to the most exclusive London clubs, with waiting lists running to 10 years - those that have not been closed altogether.

In order to feed the demand, the National Trust is releasing enough land for 1000 allotments. What caught my eye about the story though was a link to Landshare.net. With a strapline "Linking people who want to grow their own food to space where they can grow it", it struck me as a brilliant idea whose time has come. The ubiquitous Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall appears in a video on the site explaining how the idea works. Or at least that's that it says - I couldn't get it to play. But from what I can gather it seems to be encouraging people to offer their underused gardens in exchange for some of the produce.

So if you can't get an allotment why not sign up to the Landshare website and see if anyone near you has a garden you could use to grow some produce? Or if you have good intentions to do something with your garden but you never seem to actually do it, why not offer your land to someone who desperately wants it? You get to see your garden looking cared-for and productive. You get a share of some of the produce. You get to build up relationships with people in your local community. It's a real win-win arrangement.

Back to the Allotment

Ed and I went back to the allotment today for the first time in 2009. We were almost scared of what we would find, and it certainly looked weedy and neglected when we got there. But we harvested some leeks and some borecole (a curly cabbage-related thing). And we found most of the weeds were shallow, surface-rooted things which came up very easily. In an hour and a half we had cleared about an eighth of the whole plot, which is very encouraging.

I'll go back later in the week and plant something in the ground we cleared. Broad beans and garlic can go in at this time. And we'll return once a week to clear a bit more. By the time spring really gets started we should have it all shipshape.

I enjoyed myself enormously. I had forgotten how much I love going there. It helped that it was a beautiful day. The sky was blue and the sun was shining, although there was an inch of ice in the water butt. But after only a short while of digging we had stripped off our layers of woolies and were in our shirtsleeves. I chatted to one of the allotment holders who filled me in on what had happened since I was last there. I took stock of what is still there - my soft fruit bushes, my apple tree, the rhubarb is already coming up and so are the daffodils. Ed and I planned what we would plant in the coming season.

It's good to have dirt under my nails again.

Broad Bloody Beans

Don't ever mention broad bloody beans to me again. I spent the weekend lifting plants, stripping 40lbs (18kg) of bean pods from them, carrying them home, shelling them, blanching them, draining them, popping them one by one out of their skins, then freezing them in handy portions. I reckon I spent about six hours doing it in total, and I had help from Ed and the kids at most stages.

Anyone know any good broad bean recipes?

Jungle Clearance - Before and After

As promised - "before" and "after" shots of the scary jungle area. There's still more work to do - more manure to shovel over all the plack weed supressing membrane, the final strip in the background still to be strimmed, cleared, membraned and manured, and then we can plant all our pumpkins and squash in it. But we've made a heck of a lot of progress already and it's looking much better.

Jungle Attack Plan Update

Quick update on the Jungle Attack Plan: We hired a strimmer (aka weed whacker) on Saturday and attacked the weedy 14 yard x 10 yard jungle on the allotment. We took down a fence that used to separate the two parts of the plot, and hacked about 90% of the weeds. But we shattered two strimmer blades in the process, and could not continue because we had no more blades.

We changed the plan a bit; we're no longer going to rotavate. Instead we laid weed supressing membrane over the cleared areas and heaped several inches of manure on top. Thanks to everyone who commented for all the jungle clearance advice. The membrane cost less than hiring a rotavator, and ought to be less work as well as more reliable at clearing the area.

I shifted 30 wheelbarrow-loads of manure today, and there's still lots more to do. There's still plenty of manure so that's no problem. I'll go to the allotment every day and pile on as much more as I can. Next weekend we'll hire the strimmer again and finish the job. As soon as the squash plants are big enough, we'll plant them out.

I took some "before" photos, but I didn't take my camera today so I have no "after" photos. I'll get some soon and show you what we accomplished. It's an amazing transformation. I feel knackered, but very happy.

The Jungle Attack Plan

Alice wrote:

Rotovators are a NIGHTMARE! They chop all the soil up so it LOOKS fluffy, which doesn't actually serve any purpose. Then all the weed seeds that have been brought up by the digging start to sprout, and all your couch grass, bindweed, dandelions etc which have been chopped into little bits start growing a whole new plant from each little tiny piece... DON'T DO IT!!!I cleared most of my jungle-like plot by covering large parts at a time for one whole season. A layer of cardboard excludes light really well, then a layer of plastic e.g. bin liners to speed things up by excluding water, then something heavy on top to weigh it all down e.g. old carpet.Take it all off in late Autumn and dig something organic into the soil like manure, and off you go!

Actually I'm going to combine parts of this plan. The whole plan for the scary weedy jungle is as follows:

1. Strim all weeds to ground level
2. Rotavate
3. Plant 17 pumpkin, courgette and squash seedlings which we have been bringing on at home
4. Plant tall things such as sweetcorn and sunflowers amongst the pumpkins and squash

The thick broad leaves of the pumpkins will (with any luck) smother the ground and suppress any weeds that try to come up after rotavating. Potatoes might also work but it's a big area and we'd end up with a heck of a lot of spuds. I think I can barter pumpkins more easily than spuds. I'll take the courgettes we want to eat and the ones we don't want can rot on the vine for all I care.

The size of the area is what deters us from the cardboard and old carpet method. We really couldn't get enough cardboard and carpet to do it. In any case, I've found the same thing with that as you found with rotavating - the really bad weeds such as ground elder and couch grass just lie dormant under the carpet and they pop up again when you take it off, even after a whole year. There's no way to get out of forking all the roots up, but if we chop them into tiny pieces with a rotavator we'll put them back long enough to get our pumpkins established, backed up by daily hoeing.

After the first frost when the squash plants all deflate like popped balloons we will fork the area over and remove any remaining weed roots. Then if we can get it we'll cover the whole area with as much manure as we can - at least a few inches. Or we might go the green manure route, although Ed's not a fan of that.

That's our jungle attack plan. Phase one starts tomorrow.

Celery

I've never grown celery before, but apparently this is how you do it. It needs support, so you sow it in three-feet-square blocks with a cane at each corner. You wind string around in this pattern. Then you can plant nine celery plants and they will all get support from the string. You can add more string higher up as it grows.

I've searched the internet, and I can't find anywhere else it recommends doing this. But this is the method told to me by my allotment gardening guru, so I'm going to stick with it and see how it turns out.

Rhubarb Flower

Did you know that rhubarb has flowers? I didn't. It makes sense - most plants have flowers of some kind. Generally, gardeners like flowers on plants where you eat the fruit or the seeds. But they don't like them on plants where you eat the leaves, stem or root. Once a plant has made flowers and set seeds, it stops putting energy into the other parts of the plant. Last year some of my onions did it, and when I cut up the onion bulbs they were all hollow in the middle. So gardeners are alert to plants "bolting" (it means making flowers, often on the end of a tall stalk), and the chop the flowerheads off when they see them.

I've never seen rhubarb flowers before, but this year rhubarb is bolting all over the allotments. It could be that the weather conditions are right for flowering rhubarb. But I've long had a sneaking suspicion that bolting plants send some sort of chemical signal to their fellows. When you let one go, they all start. Of course, that would also happen if they were all responding to the same weather conditions. What do you think? Is my "chemical signal" theory just rubbish, or is there something to it?

Anyway, the wonderfully phallic rhubarb flowers had to get the chop. I winced when I did it, but they had to go, or they would have sapped the plant and I wouldn't get any lovely pink rhubarb to eat and make chutney out of.

Hug Your Allotment Chairperson

On our allotments, right next to the entrance, is a huge heap of manure. Someone laid a few paving stones to make it easier to get round this bog of eternal stench. The other day I was chatting to one of the plot-holders who was grousing about the paving stones.

"They should have made the stones more level. And they should put more down," she complained.
"Who is they?" I asked, "There is no they. There's only you, and me, and all the other plot holders here. One of us put the stones there. If you think there should be more, you do it."

I probably didn't make a friend that day.

But it makes me mad. Who is this invisible army of young, well-paid labourers who she thinks does all the work around the allotments? I'll tell you who. It's our allotment chairperson, and a couple of others on the committee. But they're not paid at all, in fact they have to pay rent on their plots the same as anyone else. Their average age is about 102 (warning - statistics in this blog post are made up). They have no budget, but when they see someone throwing out a few paving stones, or some old carpet, or some hawthorn hedge trimmings, they pick them up and bring them to the allotments to make good use of them. I've had a think about some other things I know they do, and I've made a list:

• They mend the fences when hooligans break them
• They repair the lawnmowers and keep them filled with petrol
• They arrange the delivery of big piles of manure
• They lay stepping stones to help people get past the manure
• They put up with people whinging about the above two points
• They liaise with the council, who own the allotments
• They arrange delivery of compost, fertiliser, seed potatoes, onion sets and all the other things in the shed
• They make sure they are on site to take delivery of these things.
• They used to empty the toilet bucket, and now we have a chemical toilet they empty that (for that alone they deserve a medal)
• They collect the rents and pay them to the council
• They maintain the waiting list and the allocation of vacant plots
• They keep their own plots in spic-and-span order
• They dispense free advice to newbies

There's probably millions of other things I don't even know about. Even if you have complaints about your allotment association committee (and allotment-holders always seem to blame their committee for something-or-other), they deserve your gratitude and your respect.

So hug your allotment chairperson the next time you see him or her. Or at least shake his hand and say a heartfelt "Thank you". I'm sure a bottle of malt whisky wouldn't go amiss, if you feel so moved. They really do a heck of a lot of work for no reward at all, in fact they usually catch a lot of flack instead.

Starting to Look Like a Proper Allotment

Well so much for the weather forecast. I went down to the allotment before 8am in case it rained later, but it stayed dry all day. At 10am I came back and picked up the rest of the family and we all stayed on the plot until 5pm. We weeded the garlic. It's looking good - I'm really keen for the harvest. I helped Eleanor plant her part of the allotment with sweet peas, pansies, violas and other multicoloured flowers. She didn't want anything edible in her part of the plot, just flowers.

We weeded, dug and manured a scary weedy area full of ground elder and dock. We sowed peas, planted cabbages, celery, and Jerusalem artichokes, and created an area for Tom. He wants to grow carrots, strawberries, blackberries and bananas. I asked him if he wanted any flowers, but he doesn't.

It doesn't sound much when I write it down, but we must have put in 15 back-breaking man-hours. I've caught the sun on my arms and the back of my neck. Ed says it's starting to look like a proper allotment.

Tomorrow if the weather stays good we'll weed the soft fruit and tackle another scary weedy area. I've still got some red cabbages and some onions (red and white) to plant, and I want to sow my runner beans. That will be the whole of the "old" part of the allotment, leaving only the new area to do. If some of the bits we've got now are scary weedy areas, that part is a terrifying jungle, but I'm determined to tame it this bank holiday weekend.

Gardening Leave

"Gardening leave" is usually a euphemism for someone being suspended from their job. But Ed actually took a day of his precious holiday time to work on the allotment.

We dropped the kids at school at 9am, and then spent all day at the plot. At 3pm I collected the kids from school whilst Ed remained on the allotment for another hour. Then we swapped shifts and I stayed on digging for another couple of hours. All told I think we did about 12 man-hours today.

We weeded about half the area we had last year (we have a new bit - a scary jungle to be tackled later). We dug and manured the bare areas and planted leeks, carrots, curled borecole, calabrese, purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflowers, and French marigolds. Yes I know it's supposed to be tagetes for companion planting, but I couldn't find any. And the main reason I wanted them is that I resolved to have more flowers on the plot, just for pleasure, so French marigolds are as good as anything.

We weeded amongst the overwintered shallots and broad beans, so now we can see how well they're coming along. We weeded and tidied the herb bed and planted some bronze fennel and rosemary for height at the back.

We strimmed the green manure I planted in late autumn and Ed dug it it. Ed says he does not like green manure, simply because he does not like the "digging it in" part. If anyone wants to tell us that part is not necessary, we'd be pleased to hear from you. In any case, there is an enormous pile of the brown sort of manure and we made good use of it, so the green type seems unnecessary.

Fortunately the weather remained glorious all day. The forecast says heavy rain over the weekend, although Monday (a bank holiday here in the UK, and the reason for Ed's non-euphemistic gardening leave) is forecast to be fine. We'll see. When it's fair, we'll garden, and when it's pouring, we'll do something else. When you put it like that, the forecast is neither here nor there.

Buddha of the Onions

On one of the allotment plots I found this Buddha head, nestling among a row of onions. The plot belongs to a white-haired cloth-capped Mancunian gent, who I would not have suspected of being a closet Buddhist. When I asked him about it he told me "it just turned up one day", and he rather liked it, so he set it among his onions.

I know little about Buddhism, but I thought that onions, garlic and other alliums such as chives and leeks were forbidden foods for Buddhists. But I've been searching the web and it seems that only some branches of Buddhism observe this rule.

I rather like the Buddha of the onions, and I hope he feels at home here. During my web research I came across the same story many times; how as a young boy watching his father plough a field, Buddha had fallen naturally into a state of blissful meditation. Perhaps he can meditate on we allotment holders digging our plots, too.

Getting Ready for Planting

We haven't been down to the allotment so far in 2008. Either the weather has been dreadful (you can't really garden in a gale) or we've been very busy doing other things, or we've been ill. So last weekend we took the opportunity to get stuck in.

I planted some raspberry canes and weeded a bed full of some kind of alliums - they're either onions or shallots, or possibly funny-looking garlic. I simply can't remember what I planted there, and if I put a label on then it must have blown away. Anyway, whatever they are they're looking well. I do remember where I planted the garlic which came from the garlic fairy. That's looking great, too, and I'll get round to weeding it soon.

Ed dug some ground elder out of a bed ready for us to plant something there. There's a lot of things need planting soon and we haven't yet decided what is going to go there. The broad beans I planted in October have grown slowly all winter and are now ready to leap into action as the days start getting longer. I hope we'll get a crop off those fairly soon, although I've planted far too many and always intended that some of them would just be dug back into the ground as green manure.

I also planted as green manure a proprietory mixture from the garden centre. It contains rye and tares and other things I can't remember or identify. It has come up nicely and has smothered out any weeds in the patch where I sowed it. It now needs mowing and digging in, then leaving to rot for a little while before I plant out the nicely enriched bed. It's basically the same thing as the fallow part of old crop rotation methods, putting nutrition back into the soil. So I'll plant something hungry there that will appreciate the extra nutrients.

I could go on - there are a couple of clumps of daffodils that always make me smile when I visit the allotment in Spring. Next time I go I'll probably cut a few unopened ones to bring back to the house. My rhubarb is starting to come up, but the variety on my plot is a late starter and I'm always jealous of my neighbours with early rubarb varieties. Maybe I can barter some early rhubarb for eggs or something. I've still got brussels sprouts growing on the plot, and late-season spuds in storage, although I'm pretty sick of them by now. I'm clamming for fresh home-grown salad, radishes, tomatoes, peas, mmm-mmm. I want it to be summer already but it's not even the equinox yet.

Plans for 2008

As 2007 draws to a close, what are our plans for 2008?

1. I've signed up for a 9-week beekeeping course run by my local beekeeping association. I'm hoping to supplement what I learned on the 2-day intensive course I attended last spring. Maybe I'll even get a honey harvest from my bees, unlike 2007.

2. We now have a full allotment plot. With any luck the weather in 2008 will be warmer and drier than in 2007, and we can raise a fabulous harvest. Ed wants to grow giant pumpkins on our new section of plot.

3. We've discussed going on holiday to Cornwall this summer. We went down there in 1999 to see the solar eclipse and had a wonderful time. We'd like to take Ed's telescope and view the stars without the light pollution we have here. I want to visit the Eden Centre. Can any Bean Sprouts readers recommend other places to visit and things to do in Cornwall?

4. I'd like to learn a new craft. I have books about hand-made paper and hand-made books. That sounds like a lot of fun.

5. I want to add a regular podcast to this blog. It would be a 20ish minute-long MP3 you could download and listen to at your computer or on your iPod. It would be about the same topics I write about - fruit and vegetable growing, beekeeping, poultry, sustainable living etc. And I'd include interviews with interesting and knowledgeable people. I hope to produce one a month, and see if it is popular.

That's it for plans. I have shedloads of vague ideas (I'd like to mill my own wheat and make a loaf of bread absolutely from scratch) and grand ambitions (I'd like to buy or rent a plot of land and keep some livestock. Goats perhaps, or pigs). And I'm sure lots of interesting things will happen in 2008 that aren't planned or foreseen. But for fixed plans, that's my lot.

What are your plans for 2008?

The Task Before Us

This is the new bit of our allotment, the bit that Ed wants to grow pumpkins on. As you can see we've a big job ahead of us to clear all this in time for the growing season.

2007 Retrospective

2007 was the year it rained. Non-stop. We had a lovely warm spring, but in May it began to rain and it didn't stop until August. This had a bad effect on our fruit and vegetable growing. Although some crops did well, others suffered either directly from the wet, or indirectly from the slugs and snails and our failure to go to the allotment as often as we should.

We got two colonies of bees from Ally of Ducking for Apples, but they went berserk and attacked all my neighbours, so I had to move them to an apiary a few miles away. We haven't taken any honey from them this year. Due to the weather the bees weren't able to forage as much nectar so their honey stores by the end of the season were low. But our own foraging efforts were pretty good as the weather dried up somewhat in the autumn. We made beer, which exploded, several batches of wine which aren't ready yet, and lots of different types of liqueur.

I became interested in ginger beer, and made a yeast-culture ginger beer plant from scratch. I later learned that real ginger beer is made using an authentic symbiotic culture called ginger beer plant. So I got one of those and now have my own continuous ginger beer production line. I picked wild mushrooms for the first time in my life. I cooked and ate them and didn't die. Which was nice. I haven't had any success identifying other types of mushrooms in my area, though, so I've left them alone. The ginger beer got me interested in other useful microbial cultures, and so I started making sourdough bread using wild yeast rather than packets of dried yeast from the shop. There are other types of useful culture, such as kefir and tibicos, and I'd like to try those in future.

I'll be glad when 2007 is over, just because of the ghastly weather we've had all year. The rain has been heavy again in November and December, and often when I've been out driving I've had to slow right down to go around puddles that cross both lanes of a dual carriageway. There are what look like ponds in the middle of many fields which should be dry, but they have had a standing puddle so long the grass underneath must be dead by now. I know there's no logical reason to imagine that on 1st January 2008, the sun will come out and everything will be different. But psychologically it feels like it might.

Weed of the Week - Brambles

Brambles, or wild blackberries, are obviously a very useful plant. I used to say I'd never grow cultivated blackberries, as there are plenty of wild ones to be gathered for free, and they're invasive so they can be a bother in the garden. However they're a perfect candidate for my edible vandal-proof hedge, and they were given to me free, so the one in the photo is a cultivated variety.

I don't need to list the uses of blackberry fruit do I? In the last few weeks I have used them to make jam, wine, pies and liqueur. You can make a cordial from it, you can eat them fresh with cream, make ice cream, add them to yogurt. They're a wonderfully versatile berry.

The leaves are also useful. Gather them when they're young, dry them for a week then crumble them and use exactly as tea leaves. Bramble leaf tea tastes good (you'll find it in the ingredients list of most fruit-flavoured herb teas) and is reputedly good for diarrhoea and a long list of other ailments. But I prefer to mash the berries, pour boiling water over them, steep for a few minutes, then strain and serve with a spoonful of honey for a sweet fruity drink full of vitamin C.

Brambles are also very important for wildlife. Apparently they form an important part of the diet of deer. They grow into thickets which provide protection for small animals, as Uncle Remus, traditional author of the Brer Rabbit stories, well knew. Birds eat the berries in autumn, when worms and insects are becoming scarce (then perch in the tree in my drive and crap purple all over my car, damn them). And insects such as honeybees consume the nectar from the flowers in spring, pollinating the plants in return.

They spread by seeds, but if you spot a bramble seedling early enough it's no bother to get it out. The trouble comes from the runners. Brambles put out long straight branches which grow along the ground with amazing rapidity. Where the tip touches the ground, the plant puts out roots and forms a new plant which can survive even if the runner is severed. Cutting the plants off at ground level only encourages more suckers. If you have a large area infested with a bramble thicket, as dad has in Ireland, or as Welsh Girl had when she first took over her allotment, you have a major task on your hands to clear the ground. Do wear protective clothing as the prickles are vicious and the tough stems form natural tripwires that lacerate your ankle as they knock you face-first to the ground.

Like nettles, they're such a useful plant that I'm very glad to see them growing wild where I can easily gather them. But like nettles, I don't tolerate wild ones in my allotment or garden, and I keep the cultivated ones in check.

Good Day on the Allotment

It was my turn to be on duty in the site shed again this morning, and I had an exciting time. We'd had a new portaloo delivered with an actual flushing toilet. It may not seem much, but it's a huge improvement on a draughty shed with a bucket in it. You can imagine how pleased the chap is whose job it used to be to empty the bucket.



I also found some raspberry canes leaned up against my compost heap. They're from my lovely friend Hazel, and I'll be putting them in the ground very soon.







And I was given a bag of apples by a nice chap called Stuart, who got them from a neighbour. He's going to try to get me some more, in exchange for a bottle of home-made cider.







Finally I picked up a free magazine from a chap called Terry. All in all, not a bad haul for a cold and miserable day on the allotment.

Weed of the Week - Comfrey

I think my favourite thing about comfrey is the name. It's one of those words that is pleasurable to say. Say it out loud - comfrey. Com - frey. Ooh, lovely.

It's also a very useful plant. Its deep roots bring up nutrients from the subsoil, especially potassium. Think of it as non-smelly manure you can grow. You can add the leaves to your compost where they will speed up the decomposition in much the same way as fresh farmyard manure. You can stick bundles of leaves in a bucket and cover with water where they will rot down to a really foul smelling "tea" - you then dilute it to the colour of black tea and pour it on hungry plants as an organic plant food (you can also do this with fresh manure - see what I mean?) Or you can just stick the comfrey leaves in a bucket with no water where they will decompose spontaneously to thick black slime, which is just an even more concentrated form of the same plant food. It absolutely stinks to high heaven, so the manure analogy continues. If you dig a trench you can drop comfrey leaves all along the bottom, as you would well-rotted manure, and then plant crops such as potatoes in there. Or if you are planting out a pot-grown plant or seedling you can shove a comfrey leaf or two in the bottom of the hole. And you can lay a few leaves around your seedlings where they will act as a mulch to prevent water loss and enrich the soil - just like well-rotted manure. This is especially helpful for tomatoes which guzzle the potassium. Don't feel afraid to cut as much as you need - even as far as cutting back the whole plant. It will regrow with amazing rapidity, and seems to come back stronger every time.

It's clearly invaluable to an organic gardener, but it is also prized for its healing powers in humans. One old name for it is "knitbone", and scientific research has confirmed that it is beneficial in bone disorders. However it must not be taken internally as it can have very bad effects on your liver. If you come across any old herbal remedies that advise you to drink it as a tea for example, you should know that this is now considered a very bad idea. But preparations of comfrey for external use, such as oils, ointments or the fresh leaves, are used for skin conditions such as acne and rashes, for bruises, and for broken bones and sprains.

So why is this "weed of the week"? Why not "Very useful and beneficial plant of the week"? Well, if it's growing somewhere you don't want it to - bad luck. It's very hard to get rid of. Its deep roots which give it such useful properties also mean you'll have to dig an enormous hole to get it out. The roots are very brittle, so if you don't dig a deep enough hole, you'll snap the tap root and leave a bit behind. And sure as God made little apples, this will regrow. Don't think you can just cut it back either. As I said earlier, the more you cut it, even cutting off every leaf, the stronger it seems to get. It doesn't spread terribly fast, although if you let it set its pretty purple flowers, seedlings will appear. Deal with them quickly before they establish.

The best approach seems to be this one: if you have comfrey growing in your garden or allotment, declare that place to be your "comfrey patch". Erect a little sign if it makes you feel better. Fence it off if you like. Consider yourself lucky to have a healthy comfrey patch, and don't neglect to make much use of it. Because you probably couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to.

Break In

Each Sunday morning the shed on our allotment site opens for an hour to sell onion sets, seed potatoes, and other supplies such as weedkillers, fertilisers etc. and allow access to the lawnmowers and so on. It was my turn to man it this morning. But when I opened, up daylight was shining in through the roof - someone had climbed up and kicked their way through the corrugated plastic, and stolen the cash box containing about £5.

So instead of spending an hour playing shopkeeper and chatting to the other allotmenteers in a cosy dry shed, I had to climb up and help cover the hole with some sheeting and weigh it down with whatever we could find, then phone the police to report the crime.

But it wasn't entirely a wasted morning. I was talking to the chairman and I have agreed to take on the remaining part of our plot. Last year we had about a quarter of plot 19. This year we've had two-thirds of it And now we have the whole plot. Ed has ambitions to grow enormous pumpkins but I was reluctant because I know how much space they take. I've negotiated a deal with him, and he agrees to help dig it over (it's extremely rough at the moment) if I let him plant Atlantic Giant pumpkins on it. Tomorrow, Poland! Ha ha ha ha ha!

Cartoon from Climate Cartoons.