Soilman

Well, it is if you live within the M25. Exceptionally dry.

I spent 80 minutes watering my allotment tonight. Barely reached the roots of anything. Like trying to heat St Paul’s cathedral with a cigarette lighter.

I have no further news.

I stumbled on this photo from last year and breathed a heavy sigh.

I did get a harvest of peas last week, but only enough to feed two concentration camp internees. Or perhaps one anorexic… on a diet.

Mind, I don’t feel so bad about the peas as I do about, say, the lousy onions. Peas are always a bugger to grow well, even in ‘good’ seasons. You’ve got the disgusting pea moth, whatever you do. And in my area, pigeons target pea plants with single-minded ruthlessness.

As I’m fond of saying (this year, at any rate): there’s always next year.

Ladies and gentlemen, you may be looking at my most successful crop in 2010.

Yes, these humble beetroots are about the only things I’ve grown that I can be proud of this year. And I’m not that proud, frankly.

It’s all OK, though, because I’ve rationalised everything. It’s just a one-off lousy year. Shit happens. Next year, I’ll be drowning in veg again.

Everything’s going to be just fine.

Right?

Well it’s a funny old year when your best crop is parsnips. For me, this is a first.

Parsnips are always OK – you know, forgettably acceptable. I have germination issues most years, but that’s about the limit of the grief parsnips give. They grow, to a pretty standard size, and I eat them with barely a moment’s thought or gratitude.

All that’s changed in 2010, as the rest of my vegetable plot dies around me. Gone is my blithe indifference, replaced by quivering gratitude for the parsnips’ ploddy, undemanding, stolid performance.

They are the new love of my gardening life.

You know what? I feel like giving up.

Didn’t think I’d ever type that, but there it is. I’m like these poor fuschias, wilting and drooping in this sizzling heat.

Even with an hour or more’s watering every evening, I’m barely keeping the allotment alive. Some things – the brassicas, for one – are doomed now, whatever I do: the cauliflowers are already producing those crinkly inner leaves that presage the formation of a useless, tiny, button-headed floret.

It’s all deeply disheartening, and it’s ruining what should – for any average, normal Brit – be a thrilling time: proper summers are rare as rocking horse shit hereabouts.

Instead of lolling about soaking up the rays, though, I’m busting my arse carrying cans of water. And when I’m not actually doing it, I’m dreading it.

So I can see a time in the near future, if this carries on, when I’ll be saying: “Enough already. Fuck it. Que sera, sera.”

I’ll essentially be writing off the plot for 2010. But then, since the asparagus I’ve not harvested so much as a rat’s arse anyway. So what have I lost?

Downy mildew is a bugger. “A disease of cool, damp seasons,” opines Dr Hessayon, my usual consultant on these matters.

Utter bollocks, sadly (though Hessayon’s rarely wrong). We’re having one of the hottest, driest summers ever – and I’ve still got mildew.

Last year we had one of the wettest summers ever, and I had the best onions I’ve ever grown. Row upon row of flawless whoppers… which stored perfectly. In fact, we’re still eating them.

My theory is that mildew is caused not by damp and cold in summer, but in early Spring. We had dream Spring weather last year, and I reaped the rewards.

Not so 2010, which is turning out to be pretty dire for vegetable growers – at least, round my way. I’ve never had such a lousy crop of almost everything.

How are you doing?

I just liked this picture. It has absolutely no advisory merit whatsoever, but it came out nicely (by mistake, naturally).

So there.

I did promise you some hot weed action. So, in keeping with this blog’s tradition of ruthless honesty – even (especially?) when it’s all going tits up – here’s a picture of the Dark Side of Soilman’s allotment.

Yes, my friends, I am human (“very fucking human” – Mrs Soilman). There is bindweed on my plot. There is couch. There are nettles, and thistles, and brambles, and Fat Hen, and a thousand others besides.

But you know what? I don’t give the tiniest shit. It’s not a beauty contest. It’s just about one thing: the veg. Provided I get enough to feed us from time to time (regularly would be a bonus), I’m a happy bunny.

Here endeth the lesson.

Gardening’s a bit like corporate advertising: You know that 50% of it will be ineffective. You just don’t know which 50%.

Every year I try to grow and plant out the broadest range of vegetables I can, in the full and certain knowledge that some (many?) won’t ultimately produce much, if any, food. Some will be an utter write-off.

Why waste so much time and effort?

Because in the UK, the weather is so fucking unpredictable. It can be freezing cold and wet, freezing cold and dry, hot and wet, hot and dry, hot/cold/wet/windy/dry and Christ alone knows what else.

Result: there is no such thing as a season that suits every vegetable. So some thrive, and some die – you just don’t know, in April, which will be which.

Come June, though, the clues are mounting up. And I reckon these cauliflowers are doomed. I got them in late, they struggled to get going, and now we’re getting some seriously hot and dry weather – the conditions they loathe most.

RIP Soilman cauliflower crop 2010.

Oh God. It’s here already.

I’m not prepared for the courgette glut. I never am. Within weeks, I’ll be chewing on the question all allotmenteers have to ponder come July and August:

At what point will the neighbours start refusing gifts of courgettes? The fifth time? The sixth?

Could I push it to a seventh or eighth??