My Tiny Plot

Last year we grew Little Gem, Pentard Red and Webbs Wonderful lettuce, with great success. Obviously, because it was our first year we made a lot of mistakes.
We planted far too many seeds, all at the same time and far too close together. This year we’re much wiser. And… we’ve got Monty on our side. As I found out after reading his book, The Complete Gardener, Monty is crazy about lettuce. He grows it all year round and has a poly tunnel dedicated to the task. On his list of ‘approved’ lettuces are the following:
Cos Lettuce = Little Gem, Lobjoits Green, Rouge d’Hiver.
Butterhead Lettuce = Tom Thumb, Merveille de Quatre Saisons.
Looseleaf = Salad Bowl, Red Oak Leaf.
Red Lettuce = Red Salad Bowl, Aruba.
Iceberg = Mini Green.
Winter Lettuce = Winter Density & All the Year Round.
Out of those I have chosen one from each group – Little Gem, Aruba, Salad Bowl, Lobjoits Green, All the Year Round and Merveille de Quatre Saisons. I ordered them all from The Organic Catalogue and Johnsons Seeds (I did look at The Cutting Garden, Sarah Raven’s site but they were the most expensive and charged £2.50 for delivery, so I didn’t bother).
I know it’s a lot of lettuce to be growing, but we really like it, and you have to leave some for the slugs, don’t you?

Due to it being winter and cold and wet and dank I’ve been reading a few books. I have lots of gardening books but these three are my favourites. Ryan will testify to that. I’m no book reviewer but here’s a quick summary of why I like them. The first Delia’s Kitchen Garden is a great book full of gorgeous photography. It takes you through month by month and tells you what to plant, sow, pot up etc. It’s all geared towards veg (very little about fruit) and also assumes that you have a greenhouse. And of course there are the seasonal recipes which look delicious (haven’t tried any yet though). The second was a Christmas present from you know who. The Great Vegetable Plot is a personal look at kitchen gardening. Sarah Raven (the one with the unkempt hair on Gardener’s World) provides a little window into her vegetable growing world. I learnt more from this book than the other two put together. She’s great for little tips and tricks that you would never think of yourself. The third is my allotment bible. The Allotment Handbook is a true beginners guide. It tells you exactly what to do when and how. I always read each monthly chapter at least four or five times, just to check I’ve done all my chores that month. So there you go, the mtp reading library. It’s not an exhaustive collection, nor I suspect the book collection of choice for many. I’d be interested to know what everyone else is reading. Come on, there must be some HFW (Hugh Fernley-Wittingstall) fans amongst you, I’ll wager my best trowel.

It’s a well-known fact that you can’t run an efficient kitchen garden without making your own compost. You could buy compost but it doesn’t give you the same sense of satisfaction now does it? Since we bought our giant compost bin and kitchen caddy (small bin to collect kitchen waste such as peelings, coffee grounds, leftovers etc) we have been overwhelmed by the sense of ‘doing good’ that composting brings over you. It’s really quite difficult to explain. To think that all the good stuff that we throw away is being broken down by worms and such like so that we can dig it into the soil to nurish next year’s crop. The whole idea of it blows me away. Anyway you can see I’m pretty excited about it. Here is a photograph that Ryan’s sister took when she came to visit over Christmas. I had never thought of taking a photo inside the bin but it makes a great shot, don’t you think?

A wise man (David Hepworth) once said that you are always 25% worse than you think you are and your competition are always 25% better than you think they are. He was talking about magazines but I reckon you can apply that rule to just about anything you want. For example, at the end of the month I always have 25% less money in the bank than I think I have. Painting the living room always takes about 25% longer than you think it will. And… clearing one small allotment of couch grass infested manure takes roughly 25% more wheelbarrow loads to shift than you think it will. The under-gardener will get 25% more filthy than he anticipated and he’ll probably be 25% more knackered than he ought to be.