All first time allomenteers grow radishes. Why? Because they grow quickly, require little attention and look quite cool.

Quite cool that is until you try and eat them. It’s then you realise (as I did) that you don’t like radishes, cannot give radishes away and know of no recipes that use radishes as an ingredient other than as a garnish.

I went to the BBC website and tired to find a radish recipe. (see results here) All I got was a number of salads that have radish in them.

So why does radish exist? Answers on a postcard.

(nice picture of an american radish…)

I thought they’d died out, but they haven’t - they are alive and thriving in South East London.

Their activities seem to be centred around my broad bean plants at present. They are making sure that the tips of the plants are covered in aphid (i think the plural of aphid is aphid…).

I have been reliably informed that instant coffee will deter the ants from returning to the plants. It would certainly stop me from coming back - I’ll post any results after the weekend.

It has taken longer than anticipated to clear the section of the plot we ear-marked for spuds due to the huge amount of ‘horse tail‘.
Before Christmas, some old geezer came up to me and started giving me unasked for advice. One of the things he said (and he said a lot) was - “Do you know what horse tail looks like?”

I should have taken this as a warning that he knew something about our plot that I didn’t. He pulled out a small shrivelled root and said, “This is horse tail - but don’t worry about it. It doesn’t take any of the soil nutrients.” So I didn’t worry.

At that time I foolishly thought that horsetail (or mares tail as it is also called) would be a bit like some kind of grass or something. There wasn’t anything to see in December anyway.

How wrong I was. I have since discovered that horsetail is a prehistoric plant that can grow from the tiniest section of root and is almost impossible to erradicate (especially if you don’t want to use chemicals). The roots, which are now like spaghetti (and the soil is like a thin smearing of bolognese sauce) go down 2 metres and cannot be fully removed.

So we have spent an extra 2 weeks painstakingly removing a huge mess of deep rooted weeds from a relatively small section of plot - plus watching horse tail coming up all over the rest of the plot.

I have it on (relatively) good authority, that if you continually cut the tops off horse tail it will eventually die. After two years. Clearing the ground nicely for the bind weed.

Anyway…. Here’s a list of what’s growing so far:
Garlic, onions, challottes, broad beans, runner beans, sweetcorn, mixed leaf salad, early (new) potatoes, main crop potatoes, spinach, carrots, purple sprouting broccolii, tomatos (two varieties), basil, coriander, chillis, sweet peppers, thyme, parsley, courgettes, squash, radish and jerusalem artichoke. Oh yes, and horse tail.

The greenhouse is finished - behold the raised bed (with dying plants) and the shoddy table made from bits of wood. And nails.

Greenhouse now in place - just need to put the glass in. Also, I’ve been reading that it’s a good idea to fix it to the ground…. nothing’s ever easy.

David jumps The Allotment Fire (of Death)

This a picture of the allotment on Sunday.

On Saturday, having uploaded a picture of my newly laid out potatoes (well I find it exciting) I searched Flickr for photos tagged with the word allotment and was a confronted with picture of the allotment I have a plot on, but from a different angle.

This proves one of two things:
1) The world is shrinking and (as Giles the poster of the aforementioned pictures said) Flickr can be both global and local. Or;
2) We are living in an elaborate Truman Show type setup in which I never really go very far from my home and any memories of foreign travel have been artificially implanted by a benign but manipulative TV producer.

I favour option 2 – option 1 is too unlikely.

Giles’ photos of his allotment can be found at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gilesbooth

A fox sitting in plain view at the allotment today - little bugger was probably watching to see if was going to leave another left hand glove unattended. Well not this time foxy.

Chitting 49 seed potatoes in egg boxes.
Not that interesting… but then you’re not the ones growing them.