Hosses, hosses, hosses, hosses. Coming down in all directions...















Piccies from Hull fair. No news from the plot front.

Still waiting for action from the council. Good thing is i've got half term coming up so hopefully i'll wet my wellies in nature for a few afternoon's. Anyhow some people have started actually reading this which is both heartening and bizarre.

Have been trying to track down a greenhouse this week but am still unsure about securing it to the ground. I can't imagine being allowed (or arsed for that matter) to drop a foundation in there so it'll have to be some kinda tent peg! I just worry it'll all end up a bit Wizard of Oz, last seen floating over Immingham. Anyone with any ideas - suggest away.

Also decided on buying 2 apple trees (katy and russet) and 2 pear trees (concorde and conference) that will hopefully go in the ground before November and get a good rest before spring. Wasn't expecting any fruit in the first year but some of the literature i've seen says a small crop is possible. Here's hoping!

First actual plot pics available next week! Woooooo.

Week 3: Post-limbo limbo!

Still waiting, patiently, on Hull City Council (Democracy? Never heard of it, love (TM)) to get back to me with the final contract, keys and £24.75 invoice for my first years rent.
Interestingly after last weeks blog I sat down and, for the first time in my life, actually read the small print in the contract - and what a bizarre and antiquated document it actually is!

The first clause to confuse me concerned not planting fruit trees, fruit bushes, asparagus, strawberry plants or anything that could potentially live more than one season. This seemed a bit barmy although I can see how after many years fruit trees could intrude on the plots usage; I put a star in the margin.
The second clause (not the sanity clause!) contradicted this completely and explained that if the land was removed from use as an allotment I could take any trees, bushes etc that I had planted! Another star went in the margin.
Then it all got a bit Monty Python... I am not allowed to introduce night soil (!) or offensive manure (?) for that matter. I have no idea what night soil is, but now I want some! It sounds like something Shelley would have had a little of - probably to fondle casually before seducing another young waif. Offensive manure I can do without.

I rang the council (now on speed dial) once again. They explained that the contract was very old, had no idea what night soil was (but agreed that it did sound a bit naughty), didn't object to fruit trees as long as it didn't become an orchard and promised to despatch my keys forthwith.

Aside from all that I secured the loan of a fearsomely vicious petrol strimmer (to clear the longer grass) and priced up hiring a rotavator (to help with the first dig).
I've also begun planning my crops - i'm especially keen to get my fruit trees in the bottom end before the ground hardens.
I'm starting to look into greenhouses (as in 'to purchase', not like a paedo at a primary school window) to grow my tomatoes and chillis and how I should anchor my crystal palace to the ground.

Any advice from this point on is very welcome - although I write in jest, the plan is still to run a successful plot and avoid buying peruvian sprouts from Tesc(unt)o.

Anyway here is a picture of our little plot I took yesterday. May it bring us many years of joy and vegetables. Okay! I forgot to take a picture and this is Hull Kingston Rover creaming Widnes Vikings last weekend. Come on you reds!!!


Shouldn't have watched: Silent Hill (shit!) More4's 'Death of a President' (spooky!)

Shouldn't have listened to: The Band, The Pupini Sister's

Shouldn't have read: Kitchen Gardener's Monthly (no really!)

Week 2: I am no longer in Limbo (the crowd cheers and the pretty lady near the front swoons); the application form for our plot has arrived!

As autumn sun slowly began to descend, like a fried egg thrown against a wall and allowed to slide to the floor, we entered the site for the first time and approached our future plot with anticipation. No wait, that’s factually incorrect. To be honest we wandered around for bloody ages looking for it because half of the people there weren’t clearly displaying plot numbers, a la council regulations!
This was not all wasted time though, as looking at other peoples allotments can be very informative. I saw various ways of frightening off birds. The shiny CD method seems especially pretty – blindingly so at sunset. I saw much larger crops of tomatoes, including some almighty beefsteaks, than I had on the Newland site (although much looked like it would go to waste if it were not harvested.) I also saw the biggest crop of sweet corn I’d seen outside of a Kevin Costner film. I was just trying to figure out if it was large enough to hide a preacher boy named Isaac in when the wind rustled and I ran away. The gentleman in 44NH, it must be noted had some wonderful romano peppers and an insatiable predilection for classic smut.

Being such a nice evening it didn't take long before we bumped into a few of our future fellow allotmenteers, who seemed very pleasant and warned us about kids throwing stones from the railway tracks. (luckily, there had been no instances of mid-west American children killing all the adults and forming a cult that worships a malevolent force in the corn field). Think we made a good first impression there and started a long time friendship.

We finally found our plot. It is certainly overgrown but I dug down and the soil was deep, dark and tasted kinda muddy and less like chocolate than I had been expecting. The good news is there is hardly any bindweed, which has a habit of ruining some of the plots further down, and relatively few weeds. Basically we’ve got a small meadow. I’m debating leaving the last 10ft or so as grass and just putting in a few fruit trees so the wild life has got somewhere to live.
The plot is nearer the train tracks than i'd like so we’ll have to set up some anti-teenager measures (an online friend of mine from Kickapoo, Califor-ni-a, is posting me some anti-personnel mines.) but aside from that I feel rather protective of our little plot. It’s not the biggest or the best looking but, goddamn it, we love it and that’s all that matters!

So….
the forms have arrived from Hull City council – Anything you think we could f*#k up, we already have! (c) - and I sat down with a nice cup of tea to fill them out.

1. Name (easy so far, only one spelling mistake which is good for a teacher)

2. Age (don’t be nosey)

3. Address (just send all correspondence to The Wellington Inn, Russell St)

4. Have you or anyone in your family ever been a part of, or had knowledge of, or even sneaked a peak at Nazi german or Russian allotment secrets gained between the years 1938 and 1945!

Bugger, found out again!
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Shouldn’t have watched: Field of Dreams, Children of the Corn, Y Tu Mamma Tambien.

Shouldn’t have listened to: A friend made me a compilation of Fall Out Boy P.A.T.D and Evanescence – better than it should be.

Shouldn't have read: The Lovely Bones.

Week 1: Limbo

As I sit here at my hopelessly cluttered desk with the sun sliding through the blinds, there is no place I would rather be than on my allotment. That is, if I had one…

Don’t get confused. I’m not crazy, or one of those people who create a second, better, allotment-filled fantasy life (pity those poor fools); I’m just in limbo. Council-limbo to be precise.

I live I Hull and have long harboured a deep, rose-tinted desire to grow my own crops, feed my kin and delight the youngers round an open fire with tales of the storm of ’07 that tore the cloches from my beets (I should probably admit to having little kin, no youngers and no real idea whether beets need cloches but it sounded rather dirty).

I’m not sure where this desire for land came from; I wonder if it is a fear of what the supermarkets do to their food. I have a Pulp Fictionesque vision of a lettuce, pool ball in mouth, being bent over and buggered by some randy Morrison’s employee. As i'm 30 this year it may also be my inner-organic coming out – like being metrosexual but with vegetables.

Ans so, back to my council-limbo… at first when I rang them I was told there were 4 free plots on the Newland Avenue site in Hull and I set off on my bike faster than the Irish to America. The plots in question were tired, overgrown and in need of a lot of cultivation – but I wasn’t to be put off. I rang back next day.
‘34 Southside, I’ll take it!’
'Are you on the waiting list?' the shameless wench asks me, before continuing to depress me further.
There were 11 names before me on the waiting list. I was annoyed, but hid it well. With those 4 plots i had seen available, surely that meant only 7 more plotters to go and then me! And with the price of fuel as it is, surely 7 old-folks would die this winter. Go axis of evil! Go!
I rang back a week later and I was 34th on a list of 39! How the f@*k had that happened! Just when I thought all protestations were falling on deaf ears, the tone changed.
'There are however,' he paused and hoarsley whispered, '5 plots on Perth Street, if you're our kind of person.'
I froze. Did he want to know if I was a mason? A quaker? A mormon? Maybe a scientologist? Not a f*#king vegetarian I hoped. No! Scientology was the hot topic. I climbed onto the sofa ready to declare my undying love him when I realised that i'd made most of that last bit up and hadn't answered him in close to 30 seconds.

'Yeah, I'll go along and check them out then.' I agreed and rang off.
My limbo continues.
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Shouldn't have watched: Pulp Fiction, Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, Brick

Shouldn't have listened to: Alligator - The National, The Best of Nick Cave, For Him and The Girls - Hawksly Workman

Shouldn't have read: The Medici; Godfathers of the Renaissance by Paul Strathern