Ideas and Complications

I’m in the garden writing. The only complication is that I can’t see the screen very well, but I can hear the collared doves chattering and the tap-tap of a bricklayer’s trowel a few doors away. The air is cool but not cold. A jackdaw calls. The bricklayer has a hammer-drill. Two wood pigeons canoodle on the redundant TV aerial. Sunlight and shadows on the dewy grass. Nearby all the pots of mint are filling. I have lots of different ones. I have a million games to play today, a million happy things to do. I’m having a good week!

Action

The soil conditioner arrived. Soil conditioner is very good for plants and edaphon, but it also induces happiness in humans. Well, this human! Other gardeners at the allotment look at the huge heap and mutter about the work needed to move it, or give me advice on filling the wheelbarrow in the most efficient way, but I look at it with joy. I have this crazy no-dig idea, and it is an experiment, and I’m not doing what other no-diggers do, but to begin I need lashings of organic matter, to give life to the earth, to make it better.

Plants

I’ve planted the early potatoes. Two rows. I’ve also sown lots of seed in the open ground. I’ve used old seed from my stash. I’ve sown brussels sprouts, leeks and onions. Also swede. I’ve bought some new seed, as I have already mentioned, and more arrived yesterday, including radishes to sow along the line of the potatoes, and to go with parsnips. But I also have lots of old packets, and this year I plan to sow them all. They are better in the ground than in the drawer. The other plant introduction this week: a big clump of comfrey.

Method

My seed sowing method outside is a little haphazard, on the basis that plants wave their seed heads about in the wind and their offspring pop up all around them. So no neat rows. I have kept them in rough circles, with a label in the middle, and I have recorded the age of the seed. I hoed off the weeds and spread a thin layer of the new soil conditioner, watered it, let the water soak in, roughened it up, chucked down the seed. Voila! And then I protected them with a cage. The wood pigeons love succulent seedlings.

Harvest

The bounty of nature is astonishing. The greenhouse is already overrun with seedlings, and it feels as if I have not yet begun. Two weeks ago I sowed a pinch of seed in each quarter pot, two pots of each variety. I wanted to have one good plant in each quarter, making eight plants of each variety. They have all come up and yesterday I began the thinning. I didn’t want to waste the thinnings so I planted them in a tray. Thirty-seven extra plants! And that is one variety. There are seven varieties. Seven times thirty-seven is a lot!