The Pigtailed One

The last ten days or so has seen some warmer weather and much increased activity in the greenhouse, garden and allotment. Various seeds have been sown including various lettuces, mixed salad leaves, chard, beetroot, leeks, tomatoes,celeriac,cosmos (starting earlier this year) and a perennial white stock. The latter is gloriously scented, but my plant became rather scraggy after a while. Luckily my sister saved some seeds last year from the plant that I gave her. Peppers sown towards the end of February have germinated. Still lots more seeds to sow but I am going for the little and often principle this year. I have divided more plants for the garden club plant sale. Hopefully astrantias and campanula persificolia will be added to the haul next week.

I have managed a few trips to the allotment now so it is looking neater and tidier. This afternoon I picked the last of my sprouts and decided not to bother growing them again. Never mind their miniscule size and the long wait for a nibble. The deciding factor in striking them off the to grow list is that they seem to have been a magnet for all the local whitefly population and then some more. Clouds and clouds of them flew off them into my face every time I touched the plants even in December. Never again! I have now pulled out the plants which were going to feature on the menu for D's chickens last night.



On Saturday evening we toddled off to our local arts centre where the pigtailed one aka Bob Flowerdew was appearing. I have nothing against men with long hair, but I have always felt that I would like to cut Bob's pigtail off. I resisted the urge to put a pair of scissors in my bag. For those of you who have not heard of Bob Flowerdew is he is an organic gardener who is on the panel of the long running Gardener's Question Time radio series. He has also appeared in a number of television gardening programmes in the past. He is known for being somewhat unorthodox and has some quite forthright views. The evening was split into two sections. The format of the evening was a talk which was followed by a question and answer session. An interesting evening although himself briefly nodded off at one point and sadly there were empty seats in the auditorium. I have sent off for some seeds of 'Yellowstone' carrots following Bob's recommendation. Tomorrow I shall try another suggestion - I will be scrubbing a shop bought sweet potato, planting in a pot of compost and then placing it on the heated sandbench in the greenhouse. Hopefully this will eventually produce shoots which I can than take off and plant up individually to grow on. He also suggested giving ginger bottom heat so I will be trying this too. Advice for allotmenteers from Bob - get yourself a fruit cage, veg are labour intensive. Don't I know !

NB - I can't take credit for either of the above photos. Forgot to take my camera with me.