A Busy Week — Tillers, Tunnels, Bread and Potatoes
Engines Out, Onions Hoed, and a Greenhouse on Its Way
Well. What a week it has been.
Not up the allotment as much as I would have liked — the ground has just not been ready for it, if I'm honest. Sun was out and a little wind perfect but not dry enoughfor the soil to not to stick to your boots. You can want the season to arrive as much as you like, and believe me I do, but the ground does not care about your plans. It makes its own mind up. So this week has been a bit of everything — workshop, greenhouse, kitchen, and then finally, finally, back out on the plot. Let me take you through it all.
Tuesday — Back Up the Allotment for a Very Different Reason
Now. Tuesday was allotment day — but not for planting, not for digging, not for any of the usual reasons you'd make the trip up there. No. Tuesday was about getting the old Merry Tiller home.
Or at least the engine off it.
We've had this machine a good while now and it's served us brilliantly up on the plots, but it had got to the point where it needed some proper workshop attention. A carburettor clean, a new diaphragm, a new needle valve. The sort of job you can do on a bench with a good light and a cup of tea on the go — but not the sort of job you want to be doing crouched on a cold allotment in March with your knees protesting and your fingers going numb.
So off we went. Me, Sam, Iris and the wheelbarrow.
I'll be honest with you — I thought it would be a straightforward enough job getting the engine off. I've done it before. But this time around something had gone and bent the mounting bolts and I genuinely cannot tell you how or why. God knows what had happened to them. It added a good chunk of time onto the job and required a certain amount of patience that I had to dig quite deep to find. But after an hour, we had the engine off and sitting in the wheelbarrow, ready to come home.
We decided in the end to bring the whole tiller back with us rather than just the engine. Seemed the sensible thing. Get it all in the workshop, fix it properly, and then take everything back up together once it's running right. That's the plan anyway.
While we were up there we also had a good sort through all our 15mm water pipe — the stuff we use for the mini net tunnels over the beds. We go through a fair bit of it over a season and some of it had split. Now I will never understand how that pipe manages to split the way it does. It baffles me every time. It's just pipe. It sits there. And yet somehow it cracks and splits like it's had a hard life. Out it went. The good stuff we kept. Everything sorted and ready for when the tunnels go back up.
I should say — and this is entirely my own fault — I had forgotten my phone again. So there are no photos from Tuesday. Not a single one. I know. I know. I do this regularly and I am reliably disappointed in myself every time. One day I will remember it. Probably when there is nothing worth photographing at all.
The Workshop — Carburetor, Diaphragm and a Needle Valve
The Merry Tiller is now on the bench in the workshop and I've had a proper look at it. The carburettor needed a good clean which I expected — these small engines always do after a period of sitting. The diaphragm has had it, which again is not unusual on a machine this age, and the needle valve needed replacing too. All very fixable. All very satisfying to sort through properly on a bench rather than fighting with it on a cold plot in poor light.
There is something I genuinely love about this kind of work. The stripping back, the cleaning, the understanding exactly why something has stopped working. I've brought a lot of machines back to life on that bench over the years — lawnmowers, strimmers, generators, hedge trimmers — and every one of them has taught me something. The Merry Tiller will be no different. She'll be running properly before long and back where she belongs.
The Greenhouse — Off to a Cracking Start
Now. The seedlings.
I am pleased to report that things in the greenhouse are looking very encouraging indeed. The first batch are off to a genuinely good start and I will be sowing the second batch next week if everything keeps going the way it is. There is always something deeply satisfying about seeing those little trays filling out — tiny green shoots pushing up through the compost, each one a promise of something to come.
The onions, though, have had to move on already. They are romping away and needed more air and a bit of hardening off, so out they have gone into the portable cold frames. I made those frames myself from pallet sleeves — the wooden collars that come around pallet loads — and a sloped roof of polycarbonate that I've had for years, actually bought originally to replace some that the wind took off the greenhouse one particularly memorable night. The sleeves themselves I get from a friend at the allotments for two pound each, which is honestly a bargain. Once they've had a coat of paint or fence treatment on them they look the part and do the job brilliantly. A proper bit of allotment ingenuity if I do say so myself.
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Saturday — Back in the Kitchen
Saturday is baking day in this house. Has been for a good while now and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
The cobs came out beautifully this week. I am always relieved when they do because there is nothing worse than a week where something has gone slightly wrong and the whole batch is just not quite right. But no — lovely, this time. Thirty six of them, which sounds like a lot until you consider there are five of us and three of us working and taking packed lunches, at which point thirty six suddenly starts to look about right.
I also did a sandwich loaf in the Pullman tin. Now that tin took a bit of getting used to when I first started using it, I won't pretend otherwise. Getting the dough to fill out to the corners properly, getting the rise right, getting the lid to sit flush and not blow off — it was a bit of a learning curve and there were a few loaves early on that were, shall we say, character building. But I think I've got the measure of it now. The loaf this week filled out nicely and the crumb was good and even all the way through. Very pleased with that.
Back on the Plot — Potatoes In at Last
And then this morning — a proper allotment morning at last.
Me and Iris went up first thing. Sam was absent on this occasion — his car was in for its MOT, which obviously takes priority over allotment duties, though I did note that the car seemed to develop this need on a potato planting morning. Purely coincidental I'm sure.
But me and Iris got on with it. And the main crop potatoes went in. Two good rows of them, nicely spaced, the soil doing us a favour for once. It has dried out quite a bit over the last few days and there is a little warmth coming back into it at last — you can feel it when you're working it, that slight change in the texture. The medium rotovator did a fine job of it and we managed to get a quarter of the plot turned over and ready, with more potatoes to go in tomorrow once Sam is back and the car has passed its MOT and he has run out of other excuses.
The winter onions also got a good hoe over this morning. They are looking really well now, growing away strongly and filling out nicely. You look at them and you think — yes. That's what you want. That's a winter onion bed that knows what it's doing.
A New Greenhouse — Friday Is the Day
I have also had some news that I have genuinely been waiting quite a while for. Halls Greenhouses have been in touch — the new greenhouse is coming on Friday.
I know. It feels like I ordered it an age ago. These things always take longer than you expect and I have been patiently — and sometimes slightly less than patiently — waiting for that delivery date to arrive. But Friday is the day. It is actually happening.
Once the greenhouse is up, we can start moving properly on the back garden project, which has been on hold while we waited. There is a lot to do back there and I've had the plans in my head for months. Having the new greenhouse in place will make a real difference to how we use the space and what we can do with the growing.
Friday cannot come soon enough.
So that's the week. Engine off. water Pipe sorted. Seedlings thriving. Onions hardening. Bread baked. Potatoes in. And a greenhouse arriving on Friday.
Not bad at all for a week where I wasn't up the allotment as much as I'd have liked.
More soon. Get your wellies on.
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