My hundred square metres

Before anything else, a big congratulations to sloum and his wife on

the birth of their daughter Orion[1]!!!

Regular readers might recall that about a year ago I wrote[2] about my

interest in trying to grow a non-trivial quantity of vegetables for

personal consumption, as a kind of "dipping the toe in the water"

experiment with a "downshifted" lifestyle with a strong

self-sufficiency component.

I'm not sure if I ever followed up on that year's experiment[3] with my

city's garden allotment system. I can't say that it was a total

failure, because some edible produce was obtained at the end (mostly

potatoes), but it was also far away from being a glowing success.

Almost immediately after our planned summer holiday, we then had to

travel away for a very unplanned month following a death in the

family[4]. This meant that we weren't actually at our garden for a

very substantial chunk of the best part of the growing season. We did

try to get friends or neighbours to water the thing occasionally, but

certainly it didn't receive close attention or tender, loving care.

As it transpired, we also planted a few things which it seemed weren't

well-suited to the clay-type soil that the allotments have - most of

our carrots turned out very small. We resolved to try again next

year, supposing that we couldn't possibly do worse.

So far, I would say we are well on track for that being true. I'll

admit I was reluctant to start the gardening this year. I remembered

very well how horribly difficult to work with the soil was at the

start of last year, and it's been quite a hot summer so far, so it

seemed much easier to stay cool inside. We eventually made a start,

though, and I'm so glad we did. For whatever reason, the plot we were

assigned this year is much easier to work with than last year. I

don't know if the whole patch of land the plots are on is highly

heterogeneous and we were just luckier this year, or if all the plots

are better off because of differences in the weather leading up to the

growing season. But it felt like easy work, and while it was a very

sunny day there was a lovely breeze the entire time so we stayed cool

even while digging.

The plots are 10x10 metre squares, which is quite generously sized for

a single household, especially for what they cost (which is so little

that I don't even bother remembering the amount, something like 10 or

20 Euro for the whole 3 or 4 months that we are allowed access). We

used a very small fraction of that last year. This year I would say

we have probably used just shy of half of it - it really is a lot of

room. We have peas, potatoes, onions, spinach, zucchinis (aka

courgettes, to the likes of the recently-returned jandal[5]!) and

squash in the ground. It's early days, but so far everything is

looking promising, except for the spinach (which our neighbours, who

have a plot of their own, have told us they've never had luck growing

here). They are planted in furrows, arranged so that crops in

neighbouring furrows are good "companion crops", i.e. they won't fight

one another the same kinds of nutrients, or attract the wrong kind of

insects etc.

I have come to really enjoy visiting our plot in the evenings to water

everything and check on progress. It stays light here now until very

late in the evenings, so there is no rush to squeeze this visit in

before dark. The weather has been glorious. The garden plots are

located in a beautiful area, alongside a river, surrounded by two or

three foot high grass. There are lots of wild hares and pheasants

which hang around the area - and they are pests to gardeners, to be

sure, but the pheasants, at least, are majestic pests. We fill up

watering buckets by hand from the river, which involves wandering down

the banks through narrow paths in high grass and reeds, flattened down

by the foot traffic of other gardeners. We get to and from the

allotments via a short bicycle trip. The whole thing is an entirely

low-tech, manual affair (although I try to avoid kidding myself too

much about this, e.g. we use store-bought fertiliser which no doubt

contains plenty of compounds synthesised using energy intensive

industrial processes) and feels very good for the soul - whatever that

means. Even if, somehow, nothing edible comes of it, I feel the

undertaking has given us enough happiness and sense of purpose and

achievement to be worth it.

[1] gopher://circumlunar.space:70/0/~sloum/phlog/20190609-16.txt

[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/hobby-farming.txt

[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/offline-life.txt

[4] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/ups-and-downs.txt

[5] gopher://grex.org:70/1/~jandal/phlog