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| Inspire - Spring at the Allotment |
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Page 1 of 5 With an all-year-round mild climate, Cornwall is a perfect place to ‘grow your own’. Spring often arrives early and there is generally very little frost and lots of sunshine to help your produce along. Here, DS Myles gives Inspire a helpful peek into an allotment-keeper’s diary Spring 2009 As spring finally arrives we can once again appreciate the miracles worked by winter. Far from being a dead season on the allotment, magic has been taking place in all sorts of unseen places. Underneath old carpets, all the seaweed we collected from the beach has completely rotted down to nourish the soil. At the same time, weeds have been suppressed and hours of backbreaking ground clearing avoided. Small curls of pink rhubarb are unfurling and beans are showing above the surface. Potatoes and garlic are buried beneath their mounds and will appear very soon; or so it would be in an ideal world. .gif) Image (c) John Byer. We had one summer where we had to wheelbarrow water, in containers, across to the allotment on a daily basis because every water barrel had dried up. Then we had last summer that was unbelievably wet, followed by an incredible autumn when we were still picking caterpillars off the cabbages well into November. Finally there was the winter of 2008...the coldest winter for over 20 years. Sheets of ice, over an inch thick, formed on all the rain barrels and the chicken drinkers froze solid. Plants that have survived happily in the past are now black and shrivelled wrecks. Early seedlings in the greenhouse have perished but chillies and peppers are thriving on the windowsill at home. |
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