The week before last we had a day of sunshine. I seized the day and strode over to the allotment with a flask of coffee and a dustpan and brush. My mission: to sort out the shed. Simple as that. It really was a mess. Anything the size of a hand tool or smaller lay tumbled in one large plastic box, muddy and messy. Plant labels, string, coffee mugs, babywipes, tools and rubbish. I’m not the most patient of people and looking for a pair of scissors or some such item, I’ve been known (well, I’m not actually known for this as I don’t generally throw my toys out of the pram if anyone is within earshot, but I’m admitting it to you now) to throw everything out of the box in frustration. So I spent a very satisfactory morning sorting everything out, cleaned and organised in separate containers. I used the dustpan and brush to give the walls and floor a really good sweep. And it really did need it – onion skins, dried soil, wood lice, chicken manure, spiders and snails. A rake or spade just wasn’t going to cut it. I’m slightly embarrassed about the dustpan and brush thing though. I even put it in a bag to take it over to the allotment in case anyone saw me. I guess it’s because if I’m honest, if I’d seen anyone else on the allotment with a dustpan and brush, they wouldn’t have heard the end of it. At least I didn’t take over the handheld vacuum cleaner!
I’ve just been listening to Jeremy Vine on BBC Radio 2 and he has a ‘resident’ allotment holder called Terry Walton on the show who grows veg in the Rhonda Valley in Wales. Terry has just been talking about his parsnips and how he is concerned for their welfare due to the amount of rain we’ve been getting. Great. It’s not enough that our parsnips weren’t cooking very well, now I have to worry about their survival. I’m guessing that they start rotting if they get too soggy. We also had our first frost this week and I bet a hard frost would spell disaster for a soggy parsnip.However, it’s possible that the problem we’ve been having with cooking the parsnips is the particular variety we’ve been pulling out of the ground. This weekend Thomas pulled some parsnips from a different row. These ones were ‘Countess’ and the results were much better – not so tough and much creamier on the inside. I’m not sure which variety we were using before – they were either ‘White Gem’ or ‘Albion’ – but from now on I’m going to pay attention as it will help us decide which variety to plant again next year. Another factor though is that we roasted them in the goose fat that I’d bought from the supermarket ready for those Christmas roasties, so perhaps that helped.
Well swept!
