Pushing up the daisies

Another stressful weekend. I had another run-in with Old Fart (Plot supervisor, previously accused of disappearing with some of the fund-raising benefits of the garden association, see previous posts), who said (I quote) that my plot was a tip that that "I wasn't going to do it". You should have taken a half-plot he said. I told him that I was told that I couldn't. He didn't believe me. I said well, I am certainly not taking a half-plot now that half my crops are in and the other half are waiting. He made a gesture towards the other plots and said"Well, you can see quite clearly that they don't look like yours (which is currently covered in cardboard and newspaper untill I can dig, weed, plant and mulch the tender veg and beans). I was furious, I replied (probably too loudly) that I was sorry I was not an elderly retired person who could work every day on their plot but that I considered I had done a lot of work, a lot was planted and I was simply trying to stop the weeds growing. "You must dig them out and that's all there is to it," he said, but I will look in the rules and see if there is a particular way you have to garden. "You'll be getting a warning letter," he said over his shoulder to which I sweetly replied "Just send me the letter, I am waiting with baited breath to read it." By the time we have argued about it, I will have had my holidays and the beans, tomatoes and other veg will be in and he will have to eat his words. But I was seriously upset and spent most of the time weeding my pea seedlings in tears.
I didn't remove the cardboard.
Instead I filled another black bag with weeds and dug my first bean bed, two rows of French dwarf beans, and another row where I planted my courgettes, 4 gherkin plants and I also planted a little bit of radish. I added a few more peas where the rows seemed to have gaps.
The potato bin is going great guns!! I added more fill, a mixture of peat, compost, soil, and my horse-stable waste. It would be so funny if I got it to grow.
Just when I had given up hope on the parsnips, I spotted ONE seedling, thanks to a photo posted on Allotments 4 All - so if one has made it, there may well be others. So I refrained from digging that plot over again and I will wait. Also suspect some of the carrots are starting. Yippee! About time, they have taken bloody ages.

Labels: potato, shit_happens