So what did you get?

I didn’t find a shredder in my Christmas stocking, sadly. Nor did I get a tree house. But I did get:

A heritage seed collection with twelve varieties including purple and yellow climbing beans, sweet peppers, tomatoes, carrots and what they call tatsoi but I call rosette bok choy and which I ate when I was in china – very tasty. The pack came from www.realseeds.co.uk whom I’ve never purchased from myself, so I hope they’re as good as my usual heritage seed suppliers, Chiltern seeds at www.chilternseeds.co.uk/

Some plasticised sweet pea rings, so there’s no excuse for me not growing sweet peas as good as Ron’s!

And I’ve got some wonderful sweet pea seeds on order: Queen of the Isles, which is red and white striped and has a very good fragrance and Black Knight, which is solid maroon and has a gorgeous scent too.

And my sympathies go out to gardeners on plots near Jubilee Road and Dunraven Business Park, Bridgend, Wales, who are unable to eat their Christmas Brussels Sprouts and parsnips as a “precautionary measure” while the soil on their allotment site undergoes tests for contamination, following the discovery, way back in August that two plots, relocated from the ASDA store site on Coychurch Road, contained polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Allotment holders were told a report was due before Christmas with a risk assessment to be completed in January – but it seems it hasn’t turned up so far.

Labels: allotment-christmas, allotment-gifts, allotment-news, allotment-sweet-peas

What not to get me (or any allotment holder) for Christmas

I suspect that a lot of allotmenteers, like me, cringe a bit as Christmas comes around. We know we’re going to get loads of totally useless and inappropriate stuff from our well-meaning friends and family and then we’re going to have to cart it all down to the allotment and store it in the back of the shed, where the accumulated years of Christmas presents that we didn’t want and won’t use soon threaten to take over all the space.

I have weird little devices that never worked but were supposed to remove perennial weeds easily and permanently. I have broken trowels and forks with tines that are too close together, or too short, or both, I even have a fork with sloping shoulders - why? There are packets of seeds that I never even managed to give away because they were either naff or not suitable for our local terrain. And there are even a few gift vouchers from garden stores and catalogues which - try as I might - I never managed to find a single thing that I wanted to buy from. I do wish that those lovely people who buy this rubbish for me would either ask me what I want, or look at the catalogues and shops I do buy from, and get me a gift token from there!

What I'd really like, but I'm not going to get, is one of these - shredder - isn't that gorgeous? The thing is, much as I want a shredder of my own, I can actually use one that belongs to a neighbour, for a tiny fee, and that makes me feel that buying my own piece of kit would be a wild extravagance. Just for once though, I'd like to run wild.

Labels: allotment-equipment, allotment-gifts, christmas-allotment