French allotments encore!

Okay, so what do the French think of British allotments? They think we are very poor gardeners! Seriously, my afternoon talking to the veg growers of the Aude region produced the information that the British not only can’t cook, they can’t grow either. The elderly ladies and gents who told me this had three pieces of evidence for their beliefs:

• The British who live in France buy their seeds in supermarkets instead of saving them from the previous year’s crop
• They dig up small family vineyards and lay grass for their children and dogs to play on
• They turn root cellars into games rooms, under-house garages or bathrooms.

I found it very difficult to argue with any of this! I’ve no doubt that most Brits in France don’t buy ALL their seeds in supermarkets but do a lot of purchasing by mail order (as I had a packet of pepper seeds from the Carrefour supermarket in my bag at that very moment I felt rather guilty, but hey, they were half the price of the same seed in England!), and I’m absolutely certain that most of us, presented with a vineyard the size of a tablecloth and a complex set of rules for cooperative wine production, would prefer a bit of lawn. Equally, unless you know what a root cellar is, you probably do think it’s a dark bit of wasted space in your newly purchased home.

But I don’t think we’re as bad as we’re painted. I argued that everybody I could see in the jardins ouvriers was at least seventy, while on my allotment site we had vegetable growers in their early twenties, their thirties, forties and fifties too, not just retired folk. I explained that perhaps French allotment holders would find our system complicated to understand and opt for growing what they were used to at home, rather than parsnips and other British favourites. I don’t think I convinced anyone, but it was a fascinating discussion, the outcome of which was to persuade me that this year, to keep faith with the French, I must harvest my own seed for next year …

Labels: allotment-abroad, allotment-france, allotment-seed-bed, allotment-vineyard

Making an allotment seed bed

So far we haven’t had one of these, because, as you may have realised by now, we are sort of ‘squatters’ helping out on various allotments as we wait and hope for one of our own … which could be a long wait indeed, given that there are twice as many people on the waiting list as there are actual allotment plots on our site. Still, we’re happy being allotment-jobbing-gardeners, and it does mean we learn a huge amount from other people and get to experience many different styles of allotment.

So as well as contributing to Maurice’s pond (only by providing plants, he has a co-worker already who did the heavy digging) and helping Sally with a bit of trellis building, this weekend has been devoted to helping build a seed bed.

Seed beds are small areas of an allotment or garden used to germinate seedlings that can be moved to permanent sites later – the soil has to be very thoroughly dug over, with stones and other debris removed and we’ve been doing that, standing on a nice wide plank so that we don’t compress the soil behind us as we work. Now, with a few days of glorious fine weather, we are going up to rake the top surface to form a fine tilth – a soil top which is fine and crumbly and will allow plants to take root easily.

Then we’ll use the same plank to make a v-shaped drill in which to plant the seeds: the plank means the line of seedlings will be nice and straight without having to fiddle with sticks and strings. And then we wait for them to come up …

Labels: allotment-seed-bed, allotment-seedlings, allotment-seeds