Aug 5th, 2005
Week 21
Week 21 is all about onions. Now that I have the plaiting down to a fine art I plan to harvest the majority of my onions this weekend. I’m not sure how many I have. Too many is the answer but as you can store them that doesn’t really matter. I’ll estimate I have around 25 red onions and 10-15 normal onions (as in the picture). I pushed the tops over a few weeks ago (after watching Clive do his!) and so now I reckon they’re ready for pulling. Some of them are huge in onion terms, at least 10cm across. What I will use such massive onions for I dont’ know….Village hotpot? New Year’s curry?…or maybe I could buy a second hand hotdog stand and start selling them (with fried onions) down the market on Saturdays? In reality I’ll probably give them away to our neighbour who works on the toll bridge. Every time he lets us across free he gets another bag of something nice from the plot. Vegetables should become the official international bartering commodity. Who needs oil and arms when you have onions?
Hoorah! We’ve finally finished marking out all the beds and the pathways – Holy biscuits, that was a mission! Now its time to sit back with a smug beer in hand and survey the work. Just look at the difference. We’ve been working like miners all weekend (I have the sunburn to prove it!). First we finished off the beds, then we cut some weed-supressing fabric to fit the shape of the pathways. We nailed it into place as it was quite windy and then dumped the wood chips over the top. As we ran out of chips near the end Ryan scooted off to buy some more which as it turned out were not quite the same as the rest. I think the two-tone effect is quite charming!
Everything is happening at once at mtp. I’ve put the carrot seeds in (in two rows, 12cms apart), the leek seeds have been sown, as have the perpetual spinach. Also one of our neighbours (a different one) gave me some young cabbage plants and the cucumber plants are happily hardening off in the cold frame (now that I am a hardening-off expert). The best news this week is that the potatoes are coming up. I’ve never grown potatoes before so I had no idea what they were suppose to look like when they came up. When I saw the first shoots I have to admit that I had to dig one up just to make sure that it wasn’t a weed. When I had verified that it was indeed attached to a potato then I quietly reburied it and the celebrations began! I’m so excited to harvest potatoes from mtp in a few months.
I can’t believe we’ve been working on mtp for eight whole weeks. The time has flown by, but of course we’ve got a lot done. The top beds are starting to take shape now and I spent the last 20 minutes yesterday flattening out the top area ready for our brand new bench when it arrives (up to now we’ve been sitting on Clive’s bench when he’s not looking but shush don’t tell him). I’m also toying with the idea of buying some artichoke plants to put in the middle bed. We love artichokes and the thought of picking our own makes the 
The beds are starting to take shape now. We had thought that we would edge each bed with wood to make the plot look classic, traditional, environmentally-friendly. But then we went to Homebase and saw the price of wood and thought hmmm….these plastic edging-type products look interesting don’t they? So the end result is that we have tidy-looking beds complete with ready-made walkways perfect for size 9 wellies but now the plot looks like my grandma’s garden. All we need now are some marigolds!
I can’t believe it’s already six weeks since we got the allotment. It has flown by. We’re busy digging the beds over and adding a little bit of lime here and a bit of manure there. We also bought a brand new fork (we bent the last one) and some edging to keep the beds in order. The potatoes are in (a week apart) and the garlic plants are doing well, as you can see. Our neighbour gave us some strawberries that are currently settling in over in the seed bed. So, it’s all good! Just hanging around waiting for the potatoes to show!
