Gardening Blog
Allotment Diary
Feb 12, 2008: I don't believe it!
This unseasonably spring-like February sees Terry Walton and his seedlings sunning themselves
My diary entry for February 8th 2008 reads: Returned from allotments at 1.00pm, made a sandwich and cup of coffee and took them out to the patio. Put two cushions on the patio chair and sat in the warm sunshine eating my lunch.
Studying the beautiful winter pansies, filling my patio pots with their vibrant deep purples, sunny yellows and rich pink colours, I was amazed by the next sight I was to observe. Yes, there were two honey bees flitting amongst these pansies collecting pollen. I closed my eyes and with the warmth of that early afternoon sun, my mind raced ahead and you could believe that your life had shot forwards by several months to June.
Reality check: I went in and looked at the calendar and it was indeed still only the 8th of February. Too much watching Torchwood on the ‘telly’.
I walked around the rest of my garden and everything is progressing well ahead of its time. The lawn is well over grown and in need of a trim. Too early I thought.
The wallflowers have their flower buds tightly packed in their crowns waiting to burst into their gaudy iridescent blooms of many colours. It will not be long before the garden shows its bright colours and the air around it will be filled with the beautiful scent of wallflowers.
The several days of unbroken sunshine has lifted the temperature in the greenhouse into the mid thirties degrees Centigrade. This has produced near tropical conditions during the early afternoons. The seedlings housed in there are responding too quickly to these unusual conditions and leaping ahead in their growth schedule.
The broad beans are bouncing out of their pots and are followed closely by the sweet peas. The early lettuce and cabbage were up in days and have already been planted on in large compartmental seed trays to grow on into sturdy plants ready for planting out under cloches in March.
The allotment has also benefited from this dry spell and the ground is in perfect condition for preparing the various beds.
The first crop of 2008 has been planted. Yes, the shallots have gone into the onion bed and are carefully hidden away from the eyes of preying birds. It don’t know what it is about shallot bulbs but the birds just love to pull them up and make extra work for the gardener. It must be the little brown neck part that they mistake for a juicy worm and swoop down to feed.
All this rate of growth activated by this unusual state of weather for early February.
Then again the thought filled my mind, how lucky we are as gardeners to be able to experience at first hand the height of our senses. We are able to look around at the beauty the garden brings and savour the scents the various plants release, from the highly perfumed to the more down-to-earth smell of damp soil.
We are able to feel the firmness of swelling vegetables and there is in my mind, nothing more satisfying than popping those first pea pods and satisfying our sense of taste when putting those instantly fresh peas into your mouth.
So the beauty of gardening is it accentuates all our sensory abilities to their highest level.
More from Terry Walton
More on allotments
- Cleve West on the joys of allotmenteering
- The window box allotment: how to grow vegetables when you don't have a garden
- How to start a vegetable garden
Terry Walton is a regular contributor to The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 and has written a book called, My Life on a Hillside Allotment, published by Bantam Press at £12.99. The book is available from Amazon.
