Wellies On — The Season Is Calling
Clear Skies, Chilly Air, and Two Rows of Earlies Going In
There are mornings — not many of them, mind you, not at this time of year — where you pull the curtain back and what you see just stops you in your tracks.
This was one of those mornings.
Clear sky. Proper clear. Not that thin winter sort of clear where it looks blue but you know full well there's no warmth behind it. This was a good one. The kind where you can already see what the day might become if you get yourself organised and get out into it quickly enough.
Chilly? Yes. Absolutely. No one is pretending it's spring just yet.
But clear skies are clear skies and that is more than enough for me.
Now. When I say make sure the helpers are up early — I mean it. Because a morning like this one does not wait around. The light is there, the ground is workable, and there is a list of things I have been carrying in my head for the last three weeks just waiting for a day exactly like this one. So yes. Wellies on. No arguments. No lingering over a second cup of tea. We go.
And off we went.
Two Rows of Early Potatoes — In They Go
I'll be honest with you. There are very few feelings in allotment life that beat the feeling of setting your first potatoes of the year.
It just means something, doesn't it?
You can rotovate, you can rake, you can tidy and plan and prepare all you like — and all of it is good and satisfying in its own way — but the moment you start actually putting things in the ground, the season becomes real. It stops being something you're getting ready for and starts being something that is actually happening.
Today we set two rows of early potatoes.
There is a particular little ritual to it that I always enjoy. The drills going in, the spacing, the satisfying feeling of each tuber going in at just the right depth, the soil going back over the top. Sam was doing the heavy end of it and I was following along. We work well together like that. He doesn't need telling twice. Never has. He just reads the job and gets on with it.
Two rows. Done.
And standing back and looking at those two freshly covered rows on a clear March morning with the soil still dark and the air still sharp — well. That's a good feeling. That's a very good feeling indeed.
The Strawberry Bed Gets Some Attention
Now the strawberry bed.
The strawberry bed had been quietly accumulating a winter's worth of dead leaves. It does this every year. It sits there being a bit of a mess and looking at you reproachfully every time you walk past and haven't dealt with it yet.
Today was the day we dealt with it.
Me and Iris got in there with the rakes and we went through the whole bed, lifting out the dead and brown leaves that had built up over the months and piling them up. It's one of those jobs that looks a bit thankless at the start but once you get going you can see the progress very quickly, which is always encouraging.
Iris is brilliant at this sort of thing, I have to say. No fuss. Just gets her head down and works through it steadily. I love watching her up the allotment. She's taken to it brilliantly and she works with a quiet, calm focus that honestly puts me to shame sometimes. I'm the one who tends to get distracted — oh there's something that needs sorting over there — and she just carries on.
We raked off the whole bed. Got it all cleared back. And underneath all those dead leaves the strawberry plants themselves are looking rather good. There's life under there. New growth just starting to show.
Good sign.
Always a good sign.
Me and Sam Back on the Rotovator
Now. You may remember from the last post that we rotovated both plots.
And here's the thing about rotovating.
Sometimes you need to do it again.
The ground had dried out just enough on the surface after all that rain and the fresh air had done its job — and when you get a dry morning like this one the rotovator is crying out to be used. Me and Sam went over the whole allotment again. Top to bottom. Every pass making the soil that bit finer, that bit more workable, that bit more like the sort of ground you actually want to be planting into.
By the time we'd finished, both plots were looking tremendous.
Dark. Fine. Ready.
Me and Sam stood back and looked at it and neither of us said much because neither of us needed to. Sometimes the work just speaks for itself.
A Word About Getting Carried Away
Now look. I know.
When the sun is out and the sky is clear and you're standing in the middle of a well-rotovated allotment that is looking better than it has done for months — the temptation is enormous. The seed packets start calling to you from the shed. You start thinking, well it's not that cold, is it really? Surely I could just…
No.
The soil here is still far too cold and far too damp for outdoor seed sowing. I know that. I've been doing this long enough to know that. The temperature needs to be reliably above about seven degrees to get seeds going in the ground and we are not there yet. Not even close.
But — and here's where it gets interesting — on Tuesday there were new faces on the gardens.
Busy as anything they were.
Setting seeds away in the open ground.
Now. I'm not going to be unkind because goodness knows we all had to learn somehow and life truly is all about learning as you go. That is not just something you say — it's the absolute truth of allotment gardening. You make mistakes. You have setbacks. You put things in too early or too late or in the wrong place or in the wrong conditions. And every single one of those moments teaches you something that no book can quite replicate.
Will their seeds make it to maturity?
Honestly? I'm doubtful. The soil is just not ready for it yet.
But fingers crossed for them. I mean that genuinely. And if I'm wrong and they get a beautiful crop, well — good on them. That's gardening too. Sometimes things work in spite of all the odds and you file that away and think about it for years afterwards.
The very best of luck to them. Every allotment needs enthusiastic new faces and every enthusiastic new face eventually becomes a knowledgeable old face. That's just how it works.
Wednesday — Into the Old Greenhouse
Now Wednesday was a completely different kind of day and I have to say I love it just as much as the outdoor work, just in a different way entirely.
I was in the old greenhouse.
The heated bench.
If you've not got a heated bench and you're serious about growing from seed — I can not recommend it highly enough. It is, at this time of year, an absolute god send. No other word for it. That gentle bottom heat makes all the difference between seeds that sit there doing nothing in cold compost and seeds that actually get going and produce the little green shoots that make everything feel worthwhile.
I had a proper session in there on Wednesday. And when I say proper — I mean it.
From seeds I'd saved myself last year, I set nicotiana, lobelia, zinnia, and petunia. Now there is a particular satisfaction to sowing seeds you've collected yourself. You put a lot of work in at the end of last season — choosing the best plants, letting the seed heads dry properly, collecting them carefully, storing them right through the winter — and on a Wednesday morning in March you sit down at the bench with your little packets and your compost and your trays and the whole cycle starts again. It's a beautiful thing when you think about it.
I also set dahlias. And cabbages. And beetroot. And dwarf aster.
That's a good range, that is. A proper mix of the useful and the beautiful. Which is exactly how I think an allotment should be. You don't want it to be nothing but rows of vegetables — you want some colour in there, some life, some things that make you smile when you look at them. The nicotiana and lobelia and zinnia and petunia will do that job beautifully come summer.
And the cabbages and beetroot will keep Sara happy. She knows exactly what to do with them. Bottled, frozen, used up properly. Nothing wasted. Never is.
What a Start to the Season
Three clear days. A list that is shorter than it was. A season that feels like it has genuinely, properly begun.
Early potatoes in the ground. Strawberry bed cleared and tidy. Two plots rotovated again and looking magnificent. A full session on the heated bench with a good range of seeds set away.
There is a momentum now that I love. You can feel it building. Every job that gets done opens up the next one. The plans in your head start to look like they might actually happen. The seed trays on the heated bench start to feel like promises.
It still feels early. Because it is early. And we are not in any rush. The rush comes later — when everything suddenly wants doing at once and you can't keep up and you wouldn't have it any other way.
For now, we are taking it steadily. Doing the right things at the right time. Keeping the enthusiasm controlled — mostly — and trusting the process.
The season is here.
We are ready for it.
Simon, Sam and Iris — down on the allotment, right where we belong.
If you enjoy the blog — do leave a comment below, it means the world. And if Sara's preserving and bottling is your sort of thing, go and have a look at her blog Frugal in the Corner. She's very good.
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