GARLIC Presents...

And while we're talking about Garlic, and are simultaneously in a panic about presents, try this Garlic Peeler + Brush + Grater all for £10...

www.rigas-enterprises.co.uk/garlic-grater-sets.htm

SCH decrees it's a winner.

If you don't fancy that, visit The Allotment Shop www.theallotmentshop.co.uk/

I swear their garden string (not just in any old colour) is the best money (not very much) can buy.

Photograph (c) Edwina Sassoon

www.fotolibra.com/gallery/collection/31568/allotments-autumn-and-winter/

www.fotolibra.com/gallery/collection/31149/vegetables-and-tools-portraits/

www.fotolibra.com/gallery/collection/29344/allotments-spring-and-summer/

PotLuck: Garlic

Allotments spread...in my case to my window ledges and tiny balcony. Hence, alongside AllotmentPickings will occasionally come PotLuck.

A friend brings me a beautiful, bulging Provencal garlic, sweet and strong. Why have one when you can have several, I think. But I'm behind with things at the plot which is still cluttered with last summer's remains while the skies are speckled with peckish birds well able to sniff out a buried garlic clove from their dizzy heights. Where's the problem? Garlic likes sandy, well drained soil and will grow well in pots. I have the remains of a bag of John Innes No 3, a big pot, a small balcony. It's the time to plant. A no brainer; the investment will grow 300% by harvest time in 10 months and I have two-thirds of the garlic to use now. Oh, and the pot has been covered with protective wirenetting.

Parakeet

A couple of weeks ago, a parakeet arrived in the street where I live, screeching with the frustration of someone who’s taken a wrong turning and noticed too late. Perhaps it had. It looked even more out of place than they do swooping noisily over our allotments.
It prompted me to pop down to the plot. Fiddling with the gate lock, I was struck by a waft of horse manure. Looked up to see a load had been dumped for us, warm and steaming. Another sniff and I was back in my childhood days, saddling up Muffin, a Thelwell style pony. Mentally jogging along west country lanes, I walked to my plot. The cosmos were beginning to feel the cold nights, but despite this, at the beginning of November, I came away with a last generous pink and white bunch and another mix of Rudbekias, Sunflowers, Dahlias and Marigolds all grown from seed. Global warming or autumn delight?

Free bulbs

Eureka! The cardoons/artichokes are NOT French soldiers. They have perked up and are all sprightly.
Sat on my bench with a bowl of soup before picking definitively the last of the runner beans, 2 courgettes and a big bunch of curly kale. Last spring, I scavenged hundreds of bulbs being chucked out by florists and friends and stored them over the summer in a wooden crate smothered with leaf mould. Started planting them round the edges of my plot they don't infringe on vegetable space.

I find some huge shiny red circular bulbs anonymously tossed on to my plot. They have long, stiff dried leaves, sharp as swords. A friend suggests they are Crocosmia. Who left them? This community-type gardening means visits are punctuated with surprises. Some more welcome than others. Bicycled, wobbling, all the way home with bounty which by now included a huge bunch of cosmos and another autumnal mix. The curly cale kept springing out of my basket. A precarious and scary journey, but worth it.

Moving Plants

The cardoons/artichokes violetta di Chioggia are looking limp and wretched. I am reminded of a friend’s thesis on 18th century French soldiers who died of the then medically accepted condition, nostalgia. The strain of being up-rooted, homesick and in a strange place to which they couldn't adapt, became too much. They withered and died. More recently, our cricketers have had to come home from tours due to bouts of homesickness. I can't move my plants back to their original spots so find myself cheering them on, willing them to settle and root.

?Cardoons

Decided to move my cardoons which spent the summer leaning over a main path, scratching innocent passers by. For plotholders are well-armed and shoot from the hip, or in this case, chopped off my exquisite cardoons' purple heads. Became clear getting to the root of the probem was a tough job, but undeterred my spade and I heaved and dug and suddenly up one came, then another. Roots torn and broken, but with cans of water and beds of mixed compost, manure and leaf mould they are now rehoused. One new shoot broke right off. A, who knows his plants, told me to cut the outside leaf down to the tip of the heart of the new leaves and pop it in since it had a hint of root. Followed instruction and left it looking perky. Strange to think these prickly giants began as seeds on my window ledge. I call them cardoons because my usually knowledgeable plotmates do, but I thought the seed packet (now lost) was entitled more glamorously, artichoke "violetta di Chioggia". What is the identifiable difference?

The Big Bulb Plant

When I first got my allotment I went wild about Allium Purple Sensation as a way of giving the plot focus, colour, height. The following year there was no stopping me. Unfortunately once they had finally died down, there was no stopping both my fork and the squirrels digging up dormant bulbs. But it turns out to have been fortuitous. Rather than dig them back in, I stored them. Now I see The Eden Project and Netherlands Flower Bulb Information Centre have joined forces to encourage us to brighten up public spaces in the spring. The chosen bulb for this year is Allium Purple Sensation and I can strongly recommend it to cheer the dullest corner. It’s late to track down popular bulbs but Peter Nyssen Ltd (excellent value for money) can still offer the decorative and long-lasting Allium Christophii and Allium Aflatunense. The Garden Centre Group, whose Chief Executive, Nicholas Marshall, supports the current allotment movement to the extent of suggesting universities should put aside land for them, has Purple Sensation still in stock in most of its garden centres. Do you have a communal space in your allotments which needs jollying up… are you a dead-of-night guerrilla gardener... is there an abandoned raised bed at the end of your street, as there is in mine? It would make all the difference if you popped a few in.

www.peternyssen.com

www.thegardencentregroup.co.uk

www.thebigbulbplant.com

Mushrooms

Two field mushrooms popped up beside my plot. I wish I was definitively clear about which are the poisonous ones but I've read too many dramas about the consequences of eating the wrong ones. So I 'generously' offered them to a less squeamish friend who, all organs still functioning, reports back that they were delicious. I vow to eat the next one. Is there a key way to identify killers?

Launching my blog: The Good Life

What better way to launch my AllotmentPickings blog than with a note about The Good Life exhibition running until March 2010 at London’s hidden treasure, The Garden Museum. This small show is a “must see” for anyone who values their plot, for anyone interested in social history, for anyone concerned about our planet, for anyone. Starting with a chilling reminder of the vulnerability of allotments - illustrations of the demise of the Manor Gardens allotments in favour of space for the 2012 Olympics - it covers the three major Grow Your Own movements of the past 100 years. The pattern is clear; at times of crisis we become sudden Good Life Tom and Barbaras only to revert to Instant Luxury Life Jerry and Margots at the hint of the return to prosperity. Just one result? Developers move in, allotment space disappears.

Can we break this mould? Will the current must-have-a-plot/must-grow-our-veg hype survive a receding recession and a winter or two of digging and chilblains or will we, too, emulate history? What are we doing to spread the word that rooting ourselves and our veg should be normal everyday life for each generation, on our window ledges, in pots outside our back doors, in our plots or our gardens; that a bunch of mixed in season flowers beats 10 perfectly formed, cellophane-wrapped, carbon footprint stamped matching stems any day? Landowner Sir Julian Rose certainly seems to be supporting the movement by offering 5 acres of his agricultural land in Oxfordshire for allotment rental.

If you are near The Garden Museum, pop in. If not, make an outing of it and enjoy their café, shop and garden.

The Good Life exhibition, until March 7, 2010. www.gardenmuseum.org.uk