1 August 2005

A very down to earth award ceremony

I am absolutely delighted to welcome you to the first Annual Pumpkin Soup Awards.

It is now a year since we first agreed to take on our allotment and under the circumstances I felt it fitting to celebrate the triumphs and disasters of our work. No red carpets, no posh frocks (well, OK it’s true I’m sitting here in a rather elegant purple silk number with spaghetti straps), no celebrities and no paps. But the upside is that there will also be no ludicrous, tearful acceptance speeches thanking everyone down to the sperm and egg that so thoughtfully joined together to create me.

First up is the Mother Nature is in charge here and don’t you forget it award for most cruel disappointment of the year. This was a close run thing. Having successfully germinated many many different squash and pumpkin seeds, every time I planted any of them out they were completely munched by the slugs. I have one sole survivor in my garden. Gutting. But, death by gastropod is only to be expected around here so while that is extremely disappointing, it was just pipped to the post by a truly heartbreakingly cruel and unusual event. Having come close to losing my entire potato crop to a viscious frost in May, I was ever so careful about when to put the sweetcorn seedlings out and left it as late as I could - sometime in the second week of June. Five days later a bitter frost wiped all but one or two of them out so no sweetcorn for us this year. I know I often put things out far too early but fierce frost in mid-June? Come on - play fair!

The Did I do that? award for the most unexpected success of the year goes to my wonderful broad beans. Truly a triumph of hope over reason and they tasted absolutely cracking. And no, they were not the cause of the recent Kings Heath tornado.

The Well it seemed like a good idea at the time award for labour-saving ideas that backfired has proved to be a particularly tough category with many strong nominees. Of particular note was the plan to grow my pumpkins with a cardboard mulch around them in order to keep the weeds down. The pumpkins rather let the side down there by being decimated (see earlier) so that was the end of that plan. There is a clear winner, however - the green manure. Last September we hired a rotovator and spent an enjoyable day turning over the entire plot into which I sowed this, the idea being that it would both keep the weeds down and increase soil fertility until we could gradually cultivate more and more of the plot. If only I’d known then what I know now, because it’s been a totally backbreaking nightmare. As the plaited one says in the book I got only recently for my birthday, “Unless you want a lot of work for little return, avoid Hungarian grazing rye, winter tares and vetches, fodder radish, most clovers and trefoils as green manures. In fact, you’re better off with weeds.” Now you tell me.

The Bloody hell, that really paid off award for labour-saving ideas that actually worked has to go to the sheet mulching that is going to keep us in potatoes for many months to come! Who’d have thought that newspapers would be just as good at growing spuds as they are for wrapping chips?

The Please send me to a 12-step programme for seed-buying addiction award for seed packets that have not even been opened this year is shared between (in no particular order) ‘Early Purple’ Sprouting Broccoli; ‘San Marzano’ Broccoli raab; Parsnip ‘Half Long Guernsey’ and ‘Gladiator’; Carrot ‘Amsterdam Forcing’ and Nantes 2′; and sweetcorn ‘Minipop’. Plus who knows how many others that I’ve ferreted away and forgotten about.

And finally, the Better late than never award goes to me (and my valiant under-gardener) for finally posting some photos. Yes, they’re way out of date (taken at the end of May - sorry, nothing more recent at present), but they should give you some idea of the mess we’ve got ourselves in!

That concludes the awards ceremony here at P’Soup. But what about you guys? What prizes do you deserve? Let me know while I’m still in my gladrags.

Filed under: Review & plan — Clare @ 10:13 pm