Tales from the Plot September
I’m embarrassed to say I’ve suffered over the last few weeks from a lack of enthusiasm, some would say I’ve lost my Mojo although it would appear I’m not alone – I believe many recent events have led to this. Sadly the Syston Allotment Committee has disbanded due to losing members, with no new members able to commit, although we are still Syston Allotment Society. Then we recently had a builder trying to buy a part of the allotment land, thankfully the council rejected his application after what seemed like record numbers descended upon the council offices – although worryingly Angela Rayner has just given the green light to councils that want to sell off allotment land for building. As if the above wasn’t enough, myself along another plot holder were faced with confronting three men and two women that were stealing from the allotments, they tried to tell us in broken English that they believed it was OK for them to help themselves and steadily got more aggressive, when we told them it wasn’t OK and they were stealing, I feel all of this has sadly played a part in my loss of enthusiasm.
On a brighter note I rescued five heavily bullied hens from a local battery farm, they haven’t got a full set of feathers between them and one poor girl only has one eye! Although there was trouble at first they are all now feeling their feet and settling in with the three old hens that I already had. Every day I made sure that the one eyed girl got her fair share of food and water, the feathers are all starting to grow back already and I’m sure they will all be beautiful again, they’re already starting to lay wonderful eggs. Although the weeds are trying to take over I’m doing my best to keep them at bay.
Remarkably my plot is producing more than we can cope with, there’s lots of swapping of surplus produce between plot holders, French beans have done particularly well and need to be picked every day, the first potatoes have been beautiful although not large in quantity they don’t seem to have suffered from the terribly long dry spells we experienced through May and June.
Yes I’ve watered them, but it’s never the same as a good downpour. I had a good crop of cauliflowers that sadly came during the hot spell which is the time when you don’t really fancy hot dinners so most of them were given away as we have never really successfully frozen it, seems ok if you make it into cauliflower cheese then freeze it in a tub. Beetroot has been a very successful crop to grow so far this year, I’ve been picking it when it’s the size of a small apple twice a week we prefer it boiled and eaten without pickling, now is the time to plant more cauliflowers along with winter cabbage etc. to get us through the winter. This is a practice that is often sadly overlooked, I believe it is a must if you want to get the most from your allotment – if you want to supply fresh vegetables for the table on Christmas Day they need to be in and growing now.
Richard Thorpe 15 B Syston allotments