Pig Sty Avenue

This last week I've been mostly re-filling the bastard trench. The earth was stacked up high at the end, so there's also been quite a lot of raking to level it. I've been infilling it with earth I got from the "old greenhouse area", also riddled, (a lot of it hand riddled, really fine). It's, technically, I know, not true bastard trenching, and I could use a stronger adverbial, given how much work it's been. 16sq yards or so of ground - less than a 10th of the plot's growing space. I've given over almost an entire bloody growing season to it. Which, objectively, is excessive, and has meant other jobs have been left to one side. All that time has produced those spit-deep 16 yards, and I must say, it looks and feels beautiful as I rake it: lovely clay loam, where before there was a rotten auld shed standing on a bed of clinker, stones and glass, with compacted ground and weeds. Maybe I didn't need to dig down and riddle to a whole spit's ...

Yesterday afternoon was really pleasant, something about the air in autumn casts me back 30-odd years to the start of the new University year, youth blooming through regardless of the season. I wound up the hosepipe and put it on top of the arbour. Collated and rolled up the inherited bird nets, (including the fish nets: would a dunnock get through that gauge?). All bits of rope collected up and stashed. So: safe for dogs, nothing to play tug-o-war with? Hmm. There's a plastic sheet over the heap of riddled earth... And then I realised: the wasps' nest is between another plastic sheet and the dunghill. It's quite clear that the dogs would love to drag the sheet away, and thereby get into an unlooked-for show-down with the wasps. Professor Google suggests that the wasp queen will have, winged her way to find a hibernation spot. (I found one last winter when I demolished the old shed - thought, 'that's a bloody big wasp!'). But the rest of them will hang aroun...

That's the corner of 5th Bed, just by the gate. The pallets I got from the old railway cutting, where rubbish is dumped; (though why anyone in Glasgow dumps rubbish is a mystery: just leave it outside the house, and the council pick it up). The blue one is bloody heavy, I had to go back with the barrow to get it. To the back there's a living privet shrub on the right, the others you can see are all dead. I'm hoping a compost heap next to decomposing wood will be good for invertebrates. To the right will go the woodpile. I thought at first it would be ok to leave this area unriddled, but after having a look have decided to move the pallets temporarily and riddle the ground here because, like everywhere else, there's plenty of broken glass, and I don't want that through the compost. So I'll start the process of riddling the beds here, and work my way through the 5th bed. I said I couldn't give any time estimates for the riddling, but mid-March would...

Actually, it hasn't rained that much in the last couple of weeks. The main brake on allotment attendance is all the glass, which debars the dogs. Sorry to whinge about it . But I have to share my free time, such as it is, between the allotment and the dog-walking. When all of the pigging glass has gone, I can combine dog-walks with allotment visits. So it's an almost Catch 22 situation. I will get the glass riddled out, but it's taking much longer than I would like.

Both of the dogs are a bit off-colour, which you'd expect. They were in conditions, (you don't get told the details), which necessitated their rescue by the Scottish SPCA. They spent a month in kennels during which time they both had hysterectomies. And five days ago they came to live with us. So the poor wee pooches have been having quite a time of it. We all know that dogs eat grass, and its said to be a medicine for them. But here's something I learned today, they also eat comfrey. Here's the most mature plants after the dogs' visit this morning. They also had one of their play-fights in it. But it's comfrey, and will recover quickly enough. I was for cutting down this stand of it anyway.  And my decision to edge all of the paths with it is further validated.

This year, sans potting shed and/or a poly-tunnel, it has, of course, been all direct sowing. Today, the dogs discovered that they could run around the plot at will, and of course it was great fun to chase each other over the almost bare earth of the seed beds. Hmm. Two thoughts occurred. First, Sparky is, surely, half whippet. She can run almost twice as fast as her somewhat less crossbred staffordshire mother. Second, plants which germinated a few weeks ago, like the peas, don't take much hurt from being run over by dogs. Seeds which have not yet, or have only just, germinated, I'm not so sure. After moving some plants around the plot (see here , and here ), I weeded the currants and berries at the NE boundary, pulling up three big old currant bush stumps which had given up the ghost, and replacing them with bramble volunteers which had been growing by the pond/cherry tree area. I also replanted half a dozen comfrey volunteers along the main path edge.  And then I ha...

Thanks to Shhexy for this.