THIS WEEK, I HAVE MOSTLY BEEN MAKING COMPOST!

Rich finally managed to finish making our new wooden compost bin. It’s HUGE! I have no idea what the capacity is, but it’s around 120cm in width and length, and 120cm tall at the back. I’m rubbish at maths, so I’m sure that there’s someone out there that can work it out for me.

My new compost bin is yet to have a lid (we were thinking a wooden lid on hinges eventually), but it does have a gate at the front, the idea being that I could easily access the heap to turn it and fill it, and eventually empty it. It doesn’t really matter about the lid - there are both aerobic bacteria (need oxygen/air) and anaerobic bacteria  (don’t need oxygen/air) that work on breaking down the soil, and do just as good a job as each other.

Monty Don says it’s best to have two or three open compost bins, but because we bought the wood from a DIY centre, it did end up costing a fair amount. So for now I’ve just got the one. I’d previously advertised on Freecycle for wood odds and ends without success, and the compost scenario was getting a bit desperate.

What I’d called my compost heap beforehand was basically a 20ft pile of rotting matter that was never turned or tended to. It was just too big to handle. For really good compost, you need to keep turning it and there was no way I could access it properly. So I’ve taken the top layer off with the least rotted matter and put it in the new wooden bin. The stuff underneath, although in places full of sticks, is gorgeous. It smells divine - so earthy and rich, one of my favourite smells.

I still have to finish transferring part of the old heap into the bin, inbetween the really laborious task of sieving the good stuff through my garden riddle into the barrow. I’ve been filling some of my vacant (currently, not for too long) veg plots with the home-made compost in a bid to boost the nutrition and structure of our free-draining sandy soil. There’s PLENTY to go around, and the idea is that eventually it’ll all be used on all the veg plots and borders at the Smallest Smallholding, as well as on the allotment. A big job, but someone (i.e. me) has got to do it…

Either way, I’m sure that the amount of compost I’m going to have available will save me a tonne of money, even recouping the cost of making the wooden bin.

My mother informs me that this year the price of onions is set to increase a fair amount. I think this is in part due to last year’s soggy summer, which proved a blight for onion growers. My Hercules onions that I grew last year were utterly fantastic - bursting with flavour and so sweet when cooked in soups and stews. I use onions almost every day in my cooking, and so it just made sense to grow as many as I could. However, last year I didn’t grow enough to store - only 50 sets or so that were each pulled, peeled, chopped and cooked and eaten within the hour.

Mum visited an onion growing farm last year - they had crates and crates bursting with literally tonnes of onions that had been rejected by Tesco, and were going to be binned. So the farmer threw Mum and her friend a few sacks and they filled them up. Crazy. I had a few of these onions, and they were perfectly fine.

I think I blogged (or possibly posted on my forum) last year on the fact that red onions in particular were going to be hit the hardest by the price increase. So earlier this year - safe in the knowledge that thanks to my allotment and new veg plots at the Smallest Smallholding, I now had ample space - I put some money aside for loads of onion sets. I tried growing onions from seed, but they failed miserably, probably due to the fact that I put them in far too late and didn’t nourish the soil enough beforehand. But from my reading and other people experiences, I have come to the conclusion that the general consensus is that sets mean bigger, faster-growing delicious onions.

I think if you’re going to grow from seed you could generally expect a smaller onion - or possibly have to extend your growing season considerably. If space is an issue - and last year, for me it was - then having sets means that you can pull them earlier and use the space for somethig else over the winter. Smaller onions can still obviously be used in cooking, but as with shallots and pickling onions you can preserve them, or do scrumptious things like roast them whole.

Did you know that your average British pickling onion does a few thousand miles? A typical journey might go something like this - grown here in the UK, picked and sent off to places like Poland, where they are peeled, sent back to Britain to be pickled, sent back to Poland to be bottled up and then finally brought back to be put on our supermarket shelves - and sometimes labelled as British. Food miles? Well, for me, about 40ft.

Anyhow, this year I have the following either growing, or going in the ground very soon:

• Stuttgarter Giant
• Red Baron
• Radar (super early, should be ready around May)
• Hercules (my absolute favourite)

The weather forecast looks more promising, so I will be heading down to my veg plots at the Smallest Smallholding, as well as down to the allotment to get them all in. Still got a packet of Bedfordshire Champion onion seeds from last year that remain unopened. I won’t be growing them and will happily swap them for something else if anyone is interested?

Thursday was too good an opportunity to miss. Weatherwise I mean. I had a mountain of work to get through before this weekend, yet despite my looming deadline, I found myself loading my tools into the car boot and trundling down to the allotment.

I don’t understand why I put it off. Well, I do actually, it’s the weather. There’s no protecting down at the allotment so I avoid  going on days where it’s windy or drizzling. And there’s been a lot of those recently. But as I sat furiously typing away in the conservatory on Thurs, I looked up at the clear blue skies and thought “sod it!”. And so I did, for a couple of hours.

I resumed the digging, and after about ten minutes my back started hurting and I was horribly bored. I threw down my spade and trudged up to the other as yet untouched end of my plot, armed with my secateurs and hand fork. I was delighted to find what few raspberries are left had started to bud. They’re a bit straggly as I didn’t get a chance to prune them in time, but I’ll leave them be and see what happens. I should have enough at least for some sort of raspberry pudding come summer - maybe a rhubarb (also springing up on my plot) and raspberry crumble, or apple and raspberry pie? We’ll see, definitely something to look forward to.

I managed to clear out some of the top section, taking care not to disturb the shallow roots of the irises that still remain at the end. I think it used to be some sort of flower section. Although I did manage to dig up the mind-boggling selection of gladioli bulbs (or are they corms?) alongside great clumps of jerusalem artichoke tubery things (what an interesting display that must have made!). At least, that’s what I think they are. I’m all too aware of how prolific jerusalem artichokes can be, so I might have a go at planting them in a big tub at home. My aunt has volunteered to take a few off my hands too. I don’t like to see anything go to waste, and I’m always up for growing new things.

I also found a half-sunken pot of Pinks that I’ve brought back home along with the gladi bulbs. We have quite sandy free-draining soil here, so I think the Pinks should do very well here.

In my absence, the Christmas tree that was on the border between mine and my neighbour’s plot has also been cut down, which I’m actually quite sad about. I don’t know why, it just seemed quite happy, growing away there, being a bit rebellious.

Anyhow, as the sun was going down, Mum appeared to have a look at my findings, and what work I’d done. We measured out a path and cut in some borders, and I finished digging over (light and easy work) the top half of the allotment inbetween the border of irises down to the raspberry twigs (I’m at pains to call them bushes, because they’re clearly not that robust).  It doesn’t look like much work, but it’s a start at least. I just couldn’t face anymore bloody digging down the other end.

But by the time I left it started raining again. I don’t think it’s really stopped since. The water butts are full to overflowing and the hens aren’t venturing out from the greenhouse much. And being the wimp I am, looking at the weather forecast I think sadly it’ll be a few days before I get down to my allotment again.

I don’t really understand what’s going on. Everything seems to be going in slow motion. Plodding along. Sleeping.

Maybe I’m just thrown off because Easter was so early this year (got another 150 years before it comes around this early again, I think it’s safe to assume that I won’t be around), but I can’t help feeling that everything is growing at a snail’s pace this year. No, scrub that, nothing is growing. Nothing is even *germinating* yet.

I’m hideously behind schedule with all my planting and sowing - good grief, I still haven’t got the broadbeans in yet! But I just figured that with all the wind, rain and snow we’ve had recently there was no point. As I’ve said before, I’m propagator-less and the greenhouse is not heated (and currently a dayroom to 4 little brown hens) and without staging (next week though… mark my words!). So I’ve only done a tiny amount of sowing. I’ve either left the seed trays outside with the hardy stuff in them, or just got them out in our (unheated) conservatory. I keep willing the little seedling heads to pop up through the soil, but alas, nothing as yet.

Got loads of work to finish for Fri, then I’ll be down at the allotment, around the Smallest Smallholding, and tackling my other website projects for a while. Perhaps then I’ll have something actually interesting to blog about, rather than filling my posts with my plans, instead of documenting actions.

So in the meantime, I’ve provided you all with a fab pic that Rich, my other half, took recently of some lichen. Amazing when you actually look at it - no camera or photoshop trickery here!