Terry Walton
Goodbye January and hello February. This is the month of love with Valentine’s Day usually stuck right in the middle, not this year though as with the leap year we have an extra day to spend in the garden. I love February for many reasons. To me it signals the end of winter as bulbs start pushing through the soil to brighten the most dreary of days. This brings hopes of longer days and warmer times which we will all be enjoying soon enough. There can be frosty starts to the day but the sun rises a little bit earlier to wash away the icy crystals and bring a touch of warmth to the crisp air. Yes, it is a month to be loved as well as the month of love.
Out on the plot there are more areas of green showing as those winter onions and garlic seem to shrug off the earliness of the season and are growing taller and stronger with each passing day. The supply of seed potatoes has arrived and these are stored in their egg trays in my frost free shed to start their new life before being buried in the soil. Not for several weeks yet will these disappear beneath the ground but a selected few of my early varieties will be placed in my large pots beneath my greenhouse staging to bring forth those tasty new potatoes in May. Is it my imagination or are the hedgerows around my allotment reverberating with bird song? I am sure it is not usually this early in the year that birds are singing to find a mate. This warmer than normal winter has fooled these feathered friends into believing that April has arrived and mating time is here. This is a dangerous time of year and I hope they understand more than we do that the calendar has been skewed by the unseasonable weather.
One of the first things I do when I arrive at my allotments is to unlock and open my shed door. I look into this sanctuary which is packed to the gunnels with many objects that to the untrained eye would appear as ‘tat’ and useless. At this time of year it is difficult to put a foot inside this Aladdin’s cave of goodies as everything that is to be used throughout the season is stored in there. The vast space on one side is full of seed trays, inserts and pots that will soon be called into action to house my new sowings and will diminish at a rapid rate as the spring progresses. Many might wonder why I need so many but it is amazing as my greenhouse fills with progressive seed sowing there will be thousands of transplants to be done and there will be a desperate use of some which have passed their useful life still called into action to fill my needs. There will then be a vast expanse of space in the shed before the wheel of life turns and as the plants find their home on my plot the empty containers will return to their origin.
This wooden structure also houses my large array of tools. Besides the normal tools of a spade, couple of forks, some hoes, two rakes and several handtools there is also a large scythe. I have a well kept allotment and grow no grain crops of any description. There is no high grass surrounding the plot so I glance at this tool and wonder why and where did this come into my life? But there it sits in all its splendour on a couple of hooks in my shed, never called upon to act in anger. There is also a machete on a shelf high up and covered in cobwebs. What is this for? I have no need to hack my way through a jungle and there is no crop on my plot that needs its services to assist in its harvesting, another mystery in my life. There is, of course, my crowbar but this has a regular use on my plot for planting parsnips and making those holes into which to drop my leek plants.
So there they will remain forever until the reason they came into my possession is rekindled in my mind and they may prove useful.
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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. Buy this book at a discount from the Saga Bookshop.