A Guernsey Gardener in 2025

Weekend work

15/3/2025

15 March 2025 (Saturday)

Another frosty start to the day, though with the sun out it looks warmer than it feels.

It was a busy morning as we had a work social at the allotment. As you may remember, I'm still organising these work events and therefore when I was at the plot yesterday I collected the large flask and filled it this morning before I went down so that we had boiling water for teas and coffees and biscuits at the end of the morning's work.

Today's work social was pushed from last weekend, as a skip was delivered on the scheduled work social day to get rid of tenants' waste. This week, there was to be a drop-off of manure from the Ealing Riding School; various people were participating in the load which was free apart from the £50 delivery charge. The manure that arrived was rotted down though still relatively green inside, and there was quite a bit of straw as well. It was very different from the manure that I collected just before the pandemic and closures of 2020. Then, it was really well rotted, dark and had quite a few large chippings of stone in it. The one that arrived today was really light brown in color, somewhat powdery yet certainly rotted down a bit, though far fresher than that I picked up years ago. I mentioned to some of the participants that I thought they’d be better putting it into compost bins and letting it rot down for a few months. Obviously, whether they decide to do that themselves or use it straight away is up to them.

There was still a big pile of really bad woodchip that was delivered by an unknown tree surgeon a couple of weeks ago. One of the tenants thought, as the tree surgeon had a key, that they were approved to drop off. I have two approved tree surgeons who can drop off, and we've told them both to not drop off at the moment because we have had plenty over the winter. The load that arrived a couple of weeks ago was really green; it had lots of leaf of bay and ivy and very little hardwood woodchip. Consequently, it hasn't really been used by many people apart from for putting into compost bins.

In the orchard area there are several troughs where old water pipes used to run that have left the ground rather uneven. I decided that the best use of this chip would be filling in these holes and troughs, and over the coming years building up the level so that it sits at the same level as the rest of the orchard area. To this end, the tenants who did turn up today, which sadly weren't many, barrowed the poor quality woodchip down to the orchard to lay in the divots and troughs. Once this had been done, the other job that was needed was cutting all the small side branches off the large prunings that we took off the cider apple trees a week ago so ago. These then being added to the dead hedge. There were four of us doing this, and two of us are experienced dead hedgers so after a couple of hours, with all of the prunings being inserted into the line of prunings and bramble and woven through, I was really pleased to stand back and see how the dead hedge is looking. It's basically a perfect dead hedge now, and I know that it's a haven for wildlife as I've already seen a hedgehog trundling through it.

Whilst I was at the allotment Richard was doing some trial cookery, so when I came home for lunch he’d made some vegan pasties - a first trial of a recipe and they were rather delicious. He was worried that the pastry would be a bit too thick and firm, though it was really rather crumbly and delicious, and the filling too. He's going to make some tweaks to the recipe and I think this will be one for a future Thursday YouTube upload.

As we had the work social this morning, the recording of Sunday Chat needed to take place after lunch, and as I type up this Richard’s upstairs having uploaded his second blog to YouTube and will now be editing Sunday Chat; when I say editing I mean putting together as very little if anything gets cut on a week by week basis, other than Alexa going off with her timers.

Whilst he's upstairs doing that, I'm downstairs writing up this blog, making a few notes of things I need to do, mulling future plans of one thing and another, and watching for the umpteenth time the first episode of Series 3 of Endeavour.

Happy days!

Weather: Cold, frosty yet sunny start to the day. 1° start and 9° high.

Breakfast: Bran sticks, yogurt, sultanas and sliced banana
Lunch: Richard's trial Vegan Cheez & Onion Pasties and Baked Beans (tin)
Supper: Leftovers of Richard's Stroganoff, Baked Potato and roast broccoli

2 Comments

Marina Kaplais

15/3/2025 21:22:41

That was naughty of the tree surgeon dumping the poor quality woodchip on the allotment. I often drive by a house where a tree surgeon lives and he has a sign saying free woodchip….i think they have a job getting shot of it. Shame only a few came for the work party. Richards certainly coming up with some crackers on the cooking front.

Paul Savident

16/3/2025 06:39:01

Allotments will very often take woodchip, as obviously it can be very useful. The good thing previously was that we had our own lock at the main allotment gate, which had its own specialist and expensive key. 👍 The issue now is that we have what is called a Fireman's Lock, of which there are various different versions, I think five or six, though the keys of each version are easily available to purchase as the whole point of this type of lock is that it's easily accessible by all emergency services who have a full set of keys. 👍 However, a lot of tree surgeons and general gardeners and growers have these locks too as they are often fitted to public and semi-public parks, so our site has become easily accessible since the new lock was installed. 🙄 As I say, I have a relationship with two really good local tree surgeons who drop off only high quality woodchip, and when I mean in this is the chip from hard thick branches and trunks, with very little leaf included. 😊 This delivery that appeared was about 50% leaf and 50% chipped twigs with hardly any hard wood. 🙄
It's sort of OK for filling in ditches and compost bins, but nothing else. 🙄