I feel rather like Rip Van Winkle emerging after a long winter’s sleep as I enter the allotment gates. As it should, March has come roaring in like a lion with its icy winds and freezing rain, but today the air is merely bracing and relatively springlike with a few weak rays of sun - maybe the lamb is following around the corner… It’s not as though I haven’t visited the patch throughout the winter but it was only really to pull a reluctant leek or two from the frozen ground and eye it all with a certain air of detachment. But now I approach it with renewed vigour and a certain degree of trepidation.
It’s been a long cold winter and, I’ve had a certain degree of frustration in not being able to just get out there, but we contented ourselves in the dark evenings by huddling in front of the fire and drawing up plans for this year’s allotment - we devised schemes of rotational planting like feudal landlords, noted down last year’s successes and failures. But most excitingly we pored over seed catalogues and were beguiled by such names as ‘Red Fire’ Cima di Rape, Bambino, Hannibal and a tomato intriguingly named Big Boy…. And so beguiled were we that caution was thrown to the winds, as well as a large cheque, and I’m now in possession of lots of those little packets of promise. …
Today I plan to rip into one of those packets because I am going to sow some wild rocket directly in the ground. Traditionally this is the first thing we sow in the year as these seeds don’t seem to mind the coldness – of course traditionally they sometimes come up and sometimes they don’t! I have to say the soil does feel icy cold still with the early morning frosts we’ve been having and I’m wondering if this is the triumph of hope over experience. Apparently, at this time of year farmers of yore used to down their breeches and lower their bare bottoms on the soil – gingerly I presume. If the earth felt cosy enough on their backsides it was time to plant. Well do I follow this tradition? I don’t think so! What I do tend to do though is dip my elbow on the soil rather like testing a baby’s bathwater. Well I’m not sure if this bathwater is ready for its seed babies yet . I’ll risk the rocket but nothing else.
I’m hoping that the recent cold winter has vanquished the slug and snail population, so I’m going to do some sleuthing and check out their usual hiding places. Ah hah you can slither but you can’t hide – actually not much detective work was involved. I stupidly left a plastic sack at the back of the allotment and boy do they like a bit of smooth, synthetic material….. Maybe their numbers are reduced slightly but hard to say …. Well they are looking fairly innocent at the moment – I think if they could they’d be blinking in the daylight saying ‘who us’? We wouldn’t dream of locking our jaws around your seedlings, your cabbages, your lettuces – we’re innocent. Hah well you’re nicked. because I do know that slugs and snails are gastropods which literally means stomach/foot – and I think that says it all about their goal in life. Actually although I do feel murderous when I see a crop decimated a lone snail does have a certain lugubrious charm, as it slowly perambulates amidst the greenery , antenna alert rather like an elderly scholar in search of a rare manuscript. In fact, Patricia Highsmith, the American crime writer, was so enamoured of these beasties that she kept snails as pets and carried them around in her handbag on a head of lettuce – I also heard that she used to smuggle them across borders by hiding them in her bra – all I can say is that she had a high tolerance of slime and very capacious bras! I see myself as an organic gardener but I can never be bothered with slug pubs or hotels (I love the mental image that conjures – do they play darts, get a bit lary after a few)? I can’t face crushing egg shells to scatter around the place to deter them. I just prefer, rather like Patricia Highsmith, good old fashioned murder.
