Achievement...and a setback?

The good weather fairy has waved her magic want again, & considering how much rain there was on Friday night it was wonderful to see the sun shining on Saturday morning & I went with a spring in my step to the allotment. Again – oddly – I had the whole of the allotments to myself, with the exception of the teacher’s sister who seems to be fighting for every inch on her half plot.

The Big News is that I finished the initial dig of the plot by forking over the last metre by the roadway at the front of the plot – hurrah! I do wonder exactly how we are going to grow things here as it is SO built up that I think that we will have to terrace it so that all the rain doesn’t run right off.

Big sister Helen suggests that we have flowers across the front which sounds completely wet & a waste of good growing area, but on reflection, we are hardly short of space, & looking at all the other plots it does seem to be the thing to do. Aren’t marigolds supposed to be good companion plants? They are foolproof to grow, & do look pretty too.

The incentive to finish the Big Dig was to actually get planting! We have the row of garlic sprouting at the front of the plot, & the plan was to dig up & replant further up (in plot B).

I prepared this area first carefully & with a sense of satisfaction took a clump of garlic, split it & planted it into three rows. As I separated tiny sprouting clove from tiny sprouting clove, & carefully popped them into the little trenches 9” apart & covered them over my spirit faltered – surely the garlic cloves that you plant should be bigger than these? My little cloves are going to have to have a great deal of ambition to get to the size that you can actually eat!

I faltered further when I looked at how many I’d planted compared to how many are left. I bet there are 1000 of these little cloves & I wish that I’d planted my three rows with the biggest of those available rather than just going for first come first served.

In fact, I am so concerned of impending disaster that I’m going to get a proper garlic bulb to split into cloves & plant in a forth row to supplement what I’ve done. We’ll at least have some garlic plants that way.

Mind you, if the teeny garlic does come up trumps, we’ll have to invent new uses for it – as eating it all won’t be an option.

Garlic shampoo, anyone?