 Enviromesh and Mushroom Crates to discourage Brush from rummaging! 3 August 2025 (Sunday) It's Sunday afternoon, and I finally feel as though I've got a little bit of time to myself to sit down and put some words to paper or combat as I've said before, fingers to keys... though in reality much of what I write I actually dictate into my phone first, and then sit down at my keyboard at my desk and check through and amend, and hopefully make better. Some of you have said in your responses and comments to my writing that it feels as if we’re sitting in a room together and chatting away, and maybe this is why it feels that way because much of what I do right is either dictated or comes from my head in terms of how I usually talk. Anyway… The week has been another busy one, though it's also being productive in very many ways; when editing A Week at the Plot I was really surprised by just how much had gotten done at the plot, on top of all that happened elsewhere... Towards the end of the week, and particularly on Friday morning I was really feeling that my mojo for the plot was beginning to escape from me. I think it's down to the fact that our lives are actually rather busy, and also that a good chunk of my head space is elsewhere; 40 miles away in Surrey at For Earth’s Sake and the Great Green Barn. I might only visit once a week or once a fortnight, though my job is to ensure that things always go smoothly for both organisations, and there's an awful lot that falls on my shoulders which is absolutely fine because that is what I’m paid by Vanessa to do.
This week, having had a day on Monday of doing stuff at the plot, and particularly in harvesting Anya first early potatoes (albeit I was harvesting them rather late!), which I couldn't remember the name of, and Tuesday being very very much a desk day as Monday morning was for me, I was down at For Earth’s Sake and the Great Green Barn on Wednesday to do what I normally do. Any day down there is always full on, as there’s always a lot to get through, and this week, despite the rather relentless and never ending roadworks of the A3 and M25, turned out to be a pretty positive and productive day. A person who used to volunteer in the shop quite a few years ago has recently moved, with his wife, to the house next door to For Earth’s Sake and they’ve decided that they’d like to both volunteer time in the shop. It's been mutually agreed that they’ll do Wednesday, which is a particularly busy day in the shop, not necessarily because of customers but because it's the first day of the week the shop is open, and much stock arrives on Tuesday and Wednesday and that all needs to be checked and put out into the shop on Wednesday morning. Also, the organic fruit and veg, usually ordered on a Monday or Tuesday, will also arrive on Wednesday morning so that all needs to be checked, sorted and then put on display. With dispensable items, if stock’s been low and we have a delivery of 20Kg of this or 12.67Kg of that, then the big dispensers need to be checked, and topped up - and some of these bags can be quite heavy and not easily manhandled! Now the stock is basically controlled both visually and online, with me doing the online bit. We’ve only been keep stock levels electronically for the past six months… which I know sounds a bit odd, but time did not allow previously. As we get deliveries, I check online to ensure that what’s arrived is what we’ve ordered, doing so from the supplier’s online docket for the delivery, and I add to the stock level accordingly. When we started doing this many dispensers already had the produce in them, so we had to guess the weight - as time’s gone by the online stock check is getting more and more accurate as if we run out of an item completely, and then by 20 kilos of it, we know that we have 20 kilos of stock. As things get scanned through the till, the weight of dispensable items is taken off the amount of stock that we have, so basically our online stock is pretty accurate now… which is a boon! Anyway, we now have two additional volunteers on a Wednesday, and that will help an awful lot. It was also lovely to meet the two of them, one of whom I had met once before… and I have to say that both were excellent and by the end of the day the shop was in an even better condition than it was at the beginning of sales at 9:30! In the afternoon, with the shop and its customers being taken care of, Vanessa and I were able to sit down and plan things for events happening at the Great Green Barn, particularly the theatre and shows and crafting that we are presenting ourselves, and we also talked to Nik about the work that’s planned to be done during the two-week break that For Earth’s Sake has coming up. The three of us then went over to look at the parking area outside of the shop - it acts as parking for both the shop and the barn, and it can often look rather untidy. Plans and timelines have now been set to determine better use of the space and more ‘hidden’ storage options, as we have a hope that by next year we’ll have a dedicated area next to the shop that will be a really lovely area to sit down and have coffee, tea and cake and possibly some hot snacks as well. The thing with For Earth’s Sake and the Great Green Barn is that there's always new ideas coming along, and that's fine and dandy by me. I do find that a day down at Vanessa is very tiring - early morning start, longish drive down, full on long day of working, longish drive back - and the following day I'm usually feeling a little exhausted and lacklustre. However, this week it also fed into me being a little down about the work that was needed at the plot… and when I went down on Thursday afternoon to do things, the humidity was so high that I just felt exhausted and came back home, determined to go down on Friday and really get my act together. However, on Friday morning I just didn't feel like doing anything, and when I say I didn't feel like doing anything I don't mean that there was nothing to do and I didn't do anything, what I mean is I didn't feel like doing the extra things that I needed to do at the plot… but down I went, and with a good bit of seed sowing and a few harvests under my belt, by the end of two or three hours down there I felt that I’d draw my mojo back in… Yay!! Saturday saw me down at the plot again, having recorded Sunday Chat in the morning. I was determined to sow two types of carrot in a raised bed where I’d harvested the potatoes earlier in the week. The bed had been well forked over in the proceeding days, and raked level, though Brush, our resident fox who I've only actually seen once this year, always likes a fresh made bed and he’d obviously decided to give it a little bit of a grubbing up - divots in two areas and paw prints all over - maybe he had been dancing with a lady friend under the moonlit sky?  Cinquefoil - or Potentilla reptans, though my common name 'Pain in the Arse' is more apt! So, this meant that my first job Saturday afternoon was to use my rake to level things off again before I could put in the drills and sow the seeds of the Amsterdam Forcing and Autumn King carrots. I knew that I'd have to tackle the Cinquefoil, the bain of my life on the plot, though with a storm on the way, Storm Floris, I thought I'd get on with this job next week rather than this weekend… though when I got down this morning, Sunday, I started on the Cinquefoil. It really is such a pernicious weed, and I would MUCH rather have bindweed or couch grass any day. It's a relation to the strawberry, being a Potentilla, and it sends out a significant number of runners which can root at every single node. Its botanical name is Potentilla reptans, and despite having a lovely flower the common name I have for it is ‘Pain in the Arse’. On my kneeler, with fork in hand and obviously gloves on, over a two-hour period I pulled out 16 kilograms of this pernicious weed; plant, deep roots and runners. All came home with me in a black sack and was emptied into our green waste bin which will be collected tomorrow morning by the council - and good riddance to that lot… only about another tonne to go! Back home and Richard was making lunch - our first home-grown (well, allotment grown!) Cheese & Tomato on toast… OMG… it was delicious!!! It will be a little segment in Richard’s vlog so please look out for that as the lusciouness was eaten rather swiftly, with no photo by me or Richard taken - though Richard did do a little video! It’s now mid-afternoon on Sunday, and I'm looking over the books that I've read over the past few weeks and the one that I've just started yesterday. I've just finished Felicity Cloake’s One More Croissant for the Road which the fabulous Vivi gave me well over a year ago. It's a book that is broken up into chapters of the different legs of Felicity’s cycling journey through France, tasting the gastronomy as she went village by village, town by town and city by city. Because of this, it's been a book which has been on my bedside for quite a while, and when I finish one of my thriller or murder mystery books, I then pick it up and read a few chapters before diving into a new book of my usual genre… and then picking it up again once I finish that book, and on and on… Now, with Felicity Cloake over the line and back in Paris, the book is finished. I have to say I’ve rather enjoyed reading it. I'm not a great fan of all travelogues, though I do like ones that grab me. Having read further investigations by The Observer I remember that The Salt Path did so when I started reading it, though after maybe 20, or 30, or 40 pages, maybe even 50 pages I began to feel that it was a bit too victim-based for me. In my life, when times have been tough, I've often found that people have been extremely helpful and welcoming and happy to give advice and assistance where needed or asked for… with Raynor and Moth, they seemed to have a very different journey… Anyway, I do highly recommend Felicity Cloake’s One More Croissant for the Road as it's informative, fun, and talks a lot about food, AND has recipes - what’s not to like!!! My new book’s by Lucy Foley, of which I've read three of her other books. This one’s called The Midnight Feast, and so far I'm only a few chapters in… and absolutely loving it!!
Weather: It feels as though summer’s come to an end… Today there are a few sunny spells though it’s largely overcast, a few light rainshowers, and quite a breeze. Storm Floris is on its way!! Breakfast: All Bran, Yogurt and a little oat milk Lunch: Cheese & Allotment Grown Tomatoes on Toast - YUM!!! Supper: Microwave Tomato Sauce with Penne & Salad - recipe to come!!!
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 Bulgur Salad with crisp Quinoa topping, hummus, and tomatoes. 4 July 2025 (Friday)
No walk this morning, so it was straight to my desk to do some work and some work work. The morning went swiftly, and soon it was time for lunch which I decided, with leftover bulgur wheat in the fridge, would be another Bulgur Salad; doing exactly the same as I did the other day though this time I left out the pesto and added in some liquid aminos and a little bit of lemon juice instead. As I said yes today, with the butterbean smash, this type of recipe is really all about what you have in the fridge and I could have added in some chopped celery, greater carrot, little leaves of baby spinach or even chopped up rubbed kale. Just think about how the flavours go together, obviously you wouldn't put in a tablespoon of honey, or a few handfuls of strawberries because neither really fit in this type of dish. This evening Richard's doing his usual live, and I'm waiting to hear from Vanessa as I'm going to the theatre with her again. I'm waiting to hear what time we're going to meet and while I waited I went to the plot and took out the brassicas I spoke of yesterday. Tomorrow, hopefully I'll be able to get our module trays of beetroot in. Getting back home, I have a wash reader chapter of my book and then see the message from Vanessa that we're going to have supper before the show, which is what she wanted to do on Wednesday though he was so late arriving that it made that impossible. We agreed to meet at six at a restaurant around the corner from the Jermyn Street Theatre. A walk to our local station and on to the Elizabeth Line then onto the Bakerloo Line and up at Piccadilly Circus and then along Piccadilly to the restaurant. I'm about 10 minutes early, which is fine as I think it's really good practice to be a little early rather than a little late. I waited for Vanessa, and at 6pm I joined Richard's Live briefly; I was hoping it would be brief because Vanessa would arrive pretty soon, though actually somebody that I knew from many years back was walking down the road and she and I had a little chat. At about 6.20, I got a message from Vanessa that traffic was terrible… again. It had been on Wednesday when we met and she was an hour late then. Today's message was that she wouldn't arrive until 6.50, almost an hour later than planned… and with the doors of the theatre opening at 7.10 and the show going up at 7:30 I messaged back to say I’d decided to go for a walk and see her at the theatre at 7.25. I felt a walk would be better than waiting on the pavement like a numpty. So, I put my phone in my pocket and walked… along Jermyn Street, up onto Piccadilly, in front of the Ritz, left into St James's Park and right at the fountain, passing behind the rows of green-and-white striped deckchairs and over towards Hyde Park, which I’d decided would be the extent of my walk so that I could get back in time to meet Vanessa for the show. When I got to the extent of my walk, and needed to turn around and wend my way back, I saw that Vanessa had messaged me about ordering her a pasta dish at the restaurant... “any pasta”. The thing is, if I’m meeting somebody for supper at a restaurant and they don't turn up or are going to be hugely late, I don't go into the restaurant myself. I'll wait to eat a snack when I get home. I’d also messaged to say I was going for a walk and would meet Vanessa at the theatre, so obviously I wasn't at the restaurant to order any pasta for Vanessa, so that wasn’t going to happen. Anyway, I turned around and walked back to meet Vanessa who was now waiting outside the restaurant; she was hungry and wanted to have something to eat, though because we literally had 15 minutes the last thing I wanted to do was throw a bowl of spaghetti down me as it would just completely mess with my digestion. So whilst Vanessa had a bowl of pasta and a glass of wine, I sipped on some tap water, we chatted, she ate, and then she paid up and we went to the theatre. Not a great start to the evening… Now the show that we went to see wasn't a show that I’d have chosen to see, though I could see how it might be a show for our audience at the Great Green Barn, or for the audience that we're building at the Great Green Barn. However, despite the musical side of the evening being really top-notch, with a brilliant pianist and fabulous tenor, the whole thing just didn't gel for either myself or Vanessa, and I doubt it’s something that we’ll have at the Great Green Barn in its current format. At the end of the show, after much rapturous applause from the audience, which I think was made up of many family members and friends, we were up the steps, and out of the theatre. Vanessa was driving on to Stratford-upon-Avon, so following a quick goodbye where I said to Vanessa to drive safely, I was on my way home… retracing my steps. Along Piccadilly, down at Piccadilly Circus, into the Bakerloo Line, then the Elizabeth Line, changing trains at Ealing Broadway as the first train did not stop at Hanwell, off at my home station and then ten or twelve minutes of walking, crossing the Uxbridge Road. I got home by 10.25 and then had a small bowl of All Bran and oat milk for a rather late supper, as I know this won't upset my Barrett's. Going to bed after about 45 minutes, I read my book for about 20 minutes and then it was time for lights out, Weather: Breezy, though a little bit warmer as the day went on. Around 26°. Breakfast: All Bran and oat milk Lunch: Bulgur Salad with crisp Quinoa topping, hummus, tomatoes and Ryvita rye crackers Supper: All Bran and oat milk  A cooling simple supper 20 June 2025 (Friday) We're up early again, in fact Richard was up about 4:30, opening windows to let the cooler air of the morning in. However, the cooler air is only cool compared to yesterday's daytime temperature and how the rest of the day will be, so it's still pretty warm. The good thing is, there’s a bit of a breeze today so that’s helping with the temperature feel at least. There's an amber warning for heat, which means that there's a threat to life, particularly for those with underlying health conditions. The reality is, human-induced climate warming is here to stay; it's not going to go away. As long as the world carries on burning fossil fuels at the rate that we are, we’ll continue missing all the revised targets that we’ve been missing since the Paris Treaty years and years ago (2015). Also, people will still keep on having more and more kids which is adding to the population, which in turn adds to the draws on the natural resources of this planet, which are all finite. Hey, ho… rant over… Richard’s trying another recipe for lunch today, and it's another salad, this time made with red quinoa - a seed rather than a grain, though still classed as a grain by many. Now quinoa is something that we both rather like, though in the past we’ve found that it tends to overcook pretty swiftly; one moment it's just under done and needs a little more time… the next second it's glooping at the base of the pan as a thick unwelcome slush. Anyway, Richard's got his way now of cooking it al dente, which gives the salad a nice crunch and texture. Of course, he's done a video of it and that will be up next Tuesday and I'll link to it here when it is. There's been work today and also work work, with various challenges on the work work front; it seems that as we get closer to Midsummer Revels on Sunday, the overwhelm for some is increasing. I have to say, I'll be glad when Sunday is over, as we then have a little respite over the next couple of months with only small Head, Heart & Health sessions going on at the Great Green Barn and gardens, and no major events or shows. Despite the overcast nature of the day, it’s again pretty hot and one of my fellow plotters is still away so I’m watering her plot. She's asked me to keep an eye on her beans and her tomatoes, and a cucumber, and a few other things, though in reality with the heat that we're having and the sun blazing down her whole plot needs a really good water, so I'm backwards and forwards with my watering can about 20 times… and then I need to water my own plot too! I have to say that with the heat, I'm not really feeling in the mood of getting on and doing work and would much rather just grab a pint at the pub and sit on the plot and enjoy the heat. However, if I don't actually get on and do things then things just don't get done, so I got on with tomatoes. We've got a bit of a busy weekend next weekend, so I decided to film this and then I'll refer back to it in next week's A Week at the Plot. Basically though, the first thing that I did was give the bed a little weed of any perennial weeds that are coming through, which in the case of this bed is always mainly bindweed, then cinquefoil. I then looked at any side shoots that were pretty large, and took them off and put them into a glass jar which had some water in it. I'll look at them more closely tomorrow, though with some beds empty and with the brassicas being mullered by pigeons at the moment I think it might be sensible to root some of the side shoots to put into a bed for a later crop of tomatoes. I then got on and took all of the remaining smaller side shoots off, using my fingers, though in doing that I noticed that a few of the plants had already split into two growing tips, and as both tips are pretty established I let them be.
I'm still pondering on how to stake the tomatoes this year. I'd love to do a frame and string them up; I think it’s the best way to stake tomatoes, though it seems quite a few of these tomatoes aren’t going to reach a great height so I pondered whether that’s just overkill. The other option is to put a bamboo cane next to each of the plants and then tie each tomato into the cane. As I was mulling this, a fellow plotter came along with a pint of Amstel from The Fox, and I looked at it lovingly. We had a chat and as we talked about our growing year and the heat of the moment, we also discussed staking of tomatoes, and I sort of made up my mind there and then that I'm going to initially put a bamboo cane in and tie them in. Also, with the heat that we have at the moment, I didn't fancy building a huge frame which would take me half a day under this glaring sun. If needs must at a later date, I’ll build the frame.
Once my fellow plotter had moved on to walk to his own plot, I got on with removing the lower leaves of the tomatoes - doing this with a knife as I find any wound heels more swiftly. Just with side shoots taking energy from the main growing stem, having too many lower leaves on a tomato means that that tomato needs to take up more water to feed that leaf. By taking the lower leaves off, and the unnecessary side shoots (if it's indeterminate, do NOT take too many off if it's a bushing variety), the plant can hopefully put all its energy into growing taller and producing fruit. With the sun beating down, I decided that staking of the tomatoes would wait for another day, though I was pleased that I’d at least got this tomato cares job started. Back at home, I found an old birthday card in the bowl on the coffee table of our middle room and wafted myself with it. Apart from also getting a big drink of Vimto, it was the only thing to do at that moment to cool myself down a little. Richard had had a nap whilst I'd been at the plot, and woke up to get ready to do his live at 6pm, which all went fine. Supper was made up of leftover salads, a quick homemade coleslaw and cottage cheese, and then it was time for some TV and bed. Weather: Hot at 30°, though more overcast and a breeze so feels JUST a little cooler than yesterday. Breakfast: Bran Sticks, yogurt, and banana Lunch: Quinoa & Cucumber Salad with Halloumi Supper: Leftover Bulgur Wheat Summer Salad & Quinoa & Cucumber Salad, homemade coleslaw, and cottage cheese with two Ryvita rye crispbreads |
Paul SavidentFollowing on from A Guernsey Gardener in London, I've decided to try and write a regular blog, and we'll see how it AND 2025 go! Archives
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