20 May 2005

What’s in a name?

A good session yesterday as the rain held off. We’re definitely making some attempt to stick to the ‘little and often’ philosophy. My comfrey is now all planted in a bed at the edge of the plot. The grass paths have been strimmed so look much tidier. Onions and spuds were watered, and we even spotted more of the maincrop pots coming up in their sheet mulched beds - very encouraging. Though, of course, no potatoes ever do as well as the ones that have been left in the ground and are springing up in unexpected (and unwelcome) places. In a couple of weeks when I can be more confident that the last of the frosts has passed I will plant out my sweetcorn seedlings. They’re just about bursting out of their toilet roll tubes.

We now need to get hold of a lot more cardboard. The plan is that the remaining beds will be marked out, green manure cut down and then covered in a cardboard mulch into which holes will be cut for pumpkins and squashes. We have a huge amount of seedlings in paper pots in the garden that are raring to go (golden apple, jack be little, butternut, turks’ turban, a mystery donated by Ben), plus more that should germinate soon (sucrine du berry, acorn & harlequin). I’m hopeful that we will harvest unseemly amounts of pumpkins. This should also help to clear the ground and buy us more time before we get around to cultivating it properly. A cunning plan.

You might think that given the name of this blog it makes perfect sense that we should want to grow so very many pumpkins. Actually I’d never really been that interested in them (aside from wanting to know how to magically turn one into a beautiful carriage to take me to all the balls I frequent) and only tasted my first ever butternut squash in September last year.

There’s none so evangelical as a convert.

Filed under: Hard labour — Clare @ 10:53 am