Finally Back Outside!

After some discussion with Val, I decided that the internet could burn down but I was determined to get some fresh air. No point in having a gardening web site if you never get to garden! So if you’ve emailed me but not had a reply – sorry, you won’t be getting one! Try asking in the chat forums if you need advice, I really can’t cope with everything at the moment. That’s why it’s been so long since my last post and the lotty has been ignored in the rush.

For some time the website has been suffering – my hosting company are pretty good but we’ve been keeping a quart in a pint pot. So we moved it to a new private server. I thought (haha) it would be a fairly simple and easy operation but nothing goes to plan. I’d contracted a technical team to help me, but it still took a lot of time sorting out bits and ‘unexpected results’, which is techy speak for weird error messages.

Then my copies of the new book, The Essential Allotment Guide, arrived so I emailed those who had bought Vegetable Growing Month by Month and the newsletter list with a special offer on the new book. I thought we might get a couple of hundred orders but we got over 500!

That’s an awful lot of packing and posting. We ran out of envelopes so bought more of those, back and forth to the post office for stamps

The plan was to get round to the plot and Val to tackle the garden. Our garden ‘waste’ or valuable compost material as I call it, usually goes to the plot so I felt obliged to help a bit first. The lawn got its first mowing on the highest setting, which added some to the compost bag and then onto trimming some of the bushes.

Val feels that if I was a hairdresser, everyone would look like Britney Spears in her shiny pate phase. I reckon the purpose of bushes is to produce compost material! Then I started on the Russian Vine. Long story short, by the time I’d got the vine trimmed back it was well into the afternoon. Long story below.

Growing Russian Vine

Russian vine is great for quickly covering a fence or wall and adding greenery. It’s very easy to grow. Go to garden centre and buy plant. Stick plant into soil, any old soil will do – wet or dry, clay or sand. Have cup of tea and admire your new green fence.

Back to fence and snip a few leaders with secateurs. Return to house, another cup of tea and then admire the vine, which is now covering the fence and starting to cover the cherry tree on one side, the shed on the other and moving into next door’s garden.

Run back up the garden, forget secateurs but grab electric hedge trimmer. Connect wire etc and realise the vine is now covering the shed, has swallowed the cherry tree and is heading for the garden beyond next door’s garden.

Back to shed, search around and find chain saw, realise door to shed is now blocked and cut way out using chain saw. House is now covered in vine, entire neighbourhood is mass of vine…

Back to reality

Dumped much of the compost material around at the plot and commenced clearing beds that should have been done ages ago. Of course, I had to stop to sort out the global financial crisis with Larry first. I think we’ve decided that the bankers and politicians are to be sent to a re-education camp based on an inner-city allotment for a dose of reality.

More tomorrow!