Plot 14 after six years

One morning last summer

‘In the leaves of every forest, in the flowers of every garden, in the waters of every brook, there are worlds pullulating with life, as innumerable as the glories of the firmament.” Thoughts on Animacules or A Glimpse of the Invisible World Gideon Algernon Mantell (London 1846)

Two months ago a young woman walking in Handsworth Park called to me through the fence behind my allotment. She wanted to know how to rent a plot here. I told her the procedure
“Contact Birmingham City Council Allotments Section or fill in a form on the council website, naming Victoria Jubilee.”
I asked gently about her experience of gardening “None”
“Go for a vacated plot that’s had work done on it. The ground here needs a lot of work. It can be disheartening.”
I told her something of the history of how these allotments had been saved from being built over and how relatively recently they had been opened by the City Council, handed over in far from adequate condition by the developer of the neighbouring houses on the Victoriana estate.

Plot 14 backing on Handsworth Park - just after taking on the allotment in June 2010

A few months later Winnie tells me that, while I was away, the person who’d enquired had taken on the almost entirely unworked plot next to mine, and another next to it. Both!

A sample of the stones and rubble strewn across the Victoria Jubilee Allotments

Since then, a month ago, we’ve seen no-one working either plot. Both are thick with couch grass,

Couch rhizomes long and shallow, leaching nutrients

large stones and, I suspect, the same additional rubbish that, over five years, we’ve slowly cleared from Plot 14. On the other side – Plot 15 – an old Sikh man drops in now and again and does a little more heavy hoeing at one end of the plot, cultivating a bed of onions and garlic. His plot, outside a few square yards, is also heavily overgrown with couch grass and brambles. He comes and sits in the shelter of our shed veranda now and then. He was grateful to Winnie for running a strimmer over his plot – a measure that also helps prevent his weeds spreading to Plot 14. Sometimes I wish we had immediate neighbours from whom we could learn, but at other times I like the relative isolation. Active gardeners from further away drop by to look and chat – so sharing happens across the site. I also like many of the wild flowers cropping up on our neighbours’ fallow ground.

The first consignment of 'Black Gold' is delivered to enrich the soil of Plot 14 in 2014

March 2015 – into the fifth year from the month the new VJA opened – saw Plot 14 becoming the success I always hoped for but didn’t quite expect.

Yes. By the summer of last year we had gluts, and suffered insect attacks and other failures but, between us, Winnie and I had got on top of the weeds, especially the ubiquitous couch grass. The steadily enriched soil, greatly de-stoned, is at last loamy and fecund, accessible by spade.

June 2015

My best crops were potatoes, Jerusalem Artichokes, garlic, parsnips, onions, peas, beetroots, broad beans and runner beans. Cabbages and cauliflowers disappointed. Turnips and Brussels sprouts failed as did some potatoes – riddled by wire worm.

'The Winnie Hall Fruit Pavilion' in March 2016. One plotholder called it 'The Taj Mahal'

This year with Winnie, my essential partner on the plot, we’ve constructed a sturdy 15’ x 15’ fruit cage, after one I started last autumn was blown away by winter winds...

Failed fruit cage last November. 12 well-driven stakes jubilee-clipped to plastic coated steel poles support the new one.

I've bought, and we've set up, an 8’ x 8’ wooden greenhouse fitted, like the shed, with guttering to harvest rain in two butts.

Winnie and her son Dennis help lay the greenhouse foundations

The greenhouse - an Alton - is old but high quality, re-erected on a solid but legal foundation of rail sleepers and compacted rubble next to the shed, where I used to grow Jerusalem Artichokes.

A greenhouse opens up more possibilities of incubating seed and bringing on seedling plants.
A small pond, put in last winter, seems to have attracted frogs. We’ve an asparagus bed of mature crowns donated by a vacating plot-holder. I’ve made a map of the plot’s 24, now 26, separate beds and am keeping a log of activities – what’s planted, what’s harvested, mistakes and successes.

First map of Plot 14, combined with a log for work on each bed

We’ve managed to get free supplies of wood chip and gravel to lay on several walking areas, all of which are covered with weed suppressant textile. I’ve got working compost organised into three bays - helped on some days by my beloved grandson...

...and friends.

My fruit trees are getting older and may even produce fruit this year, while I’m hoping the raspberries, loganberries, gooseberries and strawberries planted late last year in the fruit cage will produce a harvest, as also our three two-year-old rhubarbs. I’ve now got potatoes more organised, having grasped the idea of first and second earlies and main crop. And, latest news, we now have a colony of Buckfast bees – brought in by Gill Rose to replace the bees that went berserk last June and were so sadly but necessarily destroyed. And a wren has made her nest in the shed veranda...

As Amy said "A hole in the roof's better than a well-formed bird house?"

We’ve got a BBQ and tables and chairs for visitors and have already happily celebrated two birthdays on the plot – the gazebo in the shed brought out to cope with rain.

BBQ on Plot 14 organised by Amy for my 74th birthday

A greenhouse

Every morning. Rain. Grey clouds and rain and gusting wind. This grisly weather has been going on since we came back to England seven weeks ago. Our plane took us away from daily blue skies, blue seas, gentle breezes; warmth that had lasted longer than usual, even in Greece.

November dawn in Corfu

A few nights before we left we'd walked down to Sally's stables below Ano Korakiana to stand around a fierce fire, sparks spiralling into the dark.

We sat with friends around a large grilling rack  - 5 feet across - on which we'd brought meat to cook - chicken, village sausages, liver, pork, souvlaki; beside the grill, trestle tables of bread, salads and drink. Well fed, we gathered round the fire. When its first fierce heat dispersed. Some of us gathered more wood from a loose heap some yards away, braving the heat to push large palm logs to smoulder further into the fire. Lin and I walked home along the Ano-Kato road, climbing steeper alleyways and steps to home on Democracy Street.
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To stop having to grow seedlings from retailers and to extend the growing season and perhaps grow what will not survive wholly out of doors I'd like a greenhouse - a good one, wood not plastic or metal.

Preloved ~ Details 

Description: one eight foot x eight foot Canadian western red cedarwood green house, with one eight foot shelf and one eight foot staging, having concrete plinths.
in reasonable condition one roof panel needs repairing. all dismantled awaiting collection.
I have the original erection details and parts list. buyer to collect and pay cash price of two hundred and seventy five pounds, to buy new approx. twenty eight hundred pounds.

Before I can put up a greenhouse on Plot 14 I need four tanalised rail sleepers on which it can sit. My after-Christmas sally to a vast builder's yard in Wolverhampton, Carvers, using Lin's sat-nav I ended up in a cul-de-sac - a fragment of narrow Littler Street severed by city centre redevelopment - gazing through the drizzle at my destination beyond a dual carriageway that took 15 minutes to get across, via successive traffic lights and roundabouts. Through check-points, two lads in yellow wet suits lifted a 3 metre x 120mm X 240mm beam onto the roof of the HHH* van after struggling to get more than three inside. The rain sweeps across the yard - still part cobbled, old Littler Street. I pay at the timber office and head back by wet windy motorway to Birmingham...

...to unload the heavy wood on plot 14, beside to the greenhouse pieces Winnie and I had collected from a seller in Halesowen who'd advertised a 20 year old 8' x 8' Alton Amateur Greenhouse for £275 (including spare parts, concrete base, instructions, disassembled ready to collect) on Preloved. New it would have cost over £2000.

John Buckley, vendor, sees Winnie securing the largest greenhouse panel for transport to plot 14

Feeling the wind as it hurled itself across the allotments, having wrecked structures all over the site I changed my mind about siting the greenhouse at the top of the plot.

"Behind the fruit cage" I said to Winnie "It'll be protected from a lot of wind there"
"No. That'll get over shaded in summer. Why not where you've had the Jerusalem Artichoke forest front and right of the shed?"

Fixings

Now it's a matter of studying instructions, getting any extra spare parts needed, solving a complicated puzzle, laying firm level foundations; getting the greenhouse put together and used.

*used for personal work with HHH committee permission, fuel paid for.
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Notwithstanding Andrew's and Judy's Christmas card...

...my memory of this Christmas? Amy's best friend, Liz and her baby son, Henry and four generations of us at table on Boxing Day, the oldest, Arthur, saved from a 'pie' in the face - a game brought to the table by my son, Richard - followed by me, who gets a squirty cream splat, to the laughter of all - loudest from my three and a half year old grandson, Oliver. Dorothy, his great grandma, my mother-in-law, more interested in a photo album of her grand-daughter's wedding to Guy.

...and seeing this Alex, who lives with her family in France near the border with Spain, shared this with the message "Simon! Where you lead the dog world follows"

...and another memory of Christmas, just before Amy, Richard, Oliver, Hannah and I went to Lichfield - Richard and I by train from the new New Street Station embedded in the new Grand Central Development of Birmingham, which I like, not least for our new reflections...

Path from The Bull Ring to  Stephenson Street via the facade of  New Street Station under construction ~ 4th July 2015

... in the once pebble-dashed cliff that fronted the ugliest concrete warren of a rail station in Europe, which pleases Oliver gazing up at an big selfie in the stainless steel reflections of Alejandro Zaera-Polo's and Maider Llaguno's construction.

Lichfield offered us a small town with easy enough ways to get about and know where we were, but few finds when it came to buying Christmas presents - even from charity shops. Best places were pound shops filled from China.
I said to Richard "I wish we could have a drama series about life in Yiwu or any of the thousand and one Chinese factory estates producing all this stuff for every corner of the rest of the world!"
It was good to be in company with family, with Liz and her new son Henry James joining us for afternoon tea in the Tudor of Lichfield.

Richard, Hannah, Oliver and Amy in Bore Street, Lichfield

A lull in the weather ended. From mid-afternoon rain and wind advanced from the west.
"You take Oliver home?" asked Amy "Guy'll collect him tonight"
I knew she wanted time to chat with Liz.
"Gladly"
Richard and I walked back through wet streets to what must once have been an attractive railway station for the city. Despite the wet and the chill the waiting room was closed. I enquired at the ticket office.
"It's been urinated all over" grumbled the man behind the glass, almost resenting us for asking.
"Might have helped if the station toilets hadn't been closed" muttered Richard as we stood on the windy platform.
In 45 minutes we're back in Birmingham. During the journey Ollie had asked to go to the lavatory which was not only available but surprisingly clean. Thank goodness. Richard headed home on foot. I and Oliver walked to a bus stop on Station Street; the 16 bus pleasingly re-routed in only the last few months to a stop opposite the Old Repertory Theatre, a matter of hardly 50 yards from lifts into the new concourse. Oliver, holding tight, climbs to the top deck to sit at the very front where, as the bus stutters stop-start, through packed traffic moving below walking pace until at last we're past the St Chads Queensway lights heading out of the city centre down Old Snow Hill Street. He entertains himself and me drawing a mural in the condensation of the bus window...

Ollie top deck front on the 16 bus

...giving commentary as he draws. A sweeping curve on the right with small dots is "Corfu - a beach" I take it "the dots are people?"
"Yes" he says
I'm unsure how much we are inventing in his tracing.
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In Ano Korakiana...Η Χριστουγεννιάτικη Συναυλία της Φιλαρμονικής μας πραγματοποιήθηκε την Τετάρτη 30 Δεκεμβρίου 2015 στην εκκλησία του Άη-Γιώργη.Πολύ καλή η εμφάνιση των μικρών «συνόλων», της μπαντίνας με τη συμμετοχή αρκετών μικρών μουσικών και φυσικά της μπάντας, υπό τη διεύθυνση του Κώστα Ζερβόπουλου, ο οποίος μαζί με τον Πρόεδρο της Φιλαρμονικής Γιώργο Μεταλληνό προλόγισαν την εκδήλωση με αναφορές στο μήνυμα των εορτών και την προσπάθεια των (ιδιαίτερα των μικρών) μουσικών.

The Philharmonia's Christmas Concert in St.George's Church, Ano Korakiana