Dig for Victory: Notes from the Hackney Green Party Allotment

Raised beds and strawberries

2011-05-23T12:20:00.005+01:00

The unusually warm spring has made the strawberries appear! First ripening ones of the season. Hopefully the slugs won't get there first.

Our modest veg bed is all planted.. just need some rain now

Next job - stopping the mint from rampaging over the entire garden! Next week armed with plant pots and loppers - and looking forward to some mojitos and tea with all those mint leaves!

What happens when you don't do the garden for 5 months....

2011-05-05T22:16:00.011+01:00

... the things that should grow don't and the things that shouldn't grow do. Or, everything just grows. and grows. and grows.

So, we have nettle battles again! Never mind - nettles are great - pretty easy to get rid of, and so many uses.. Looking up recipe for nettle soup/cordial/wine/tea/salad right now. And apparently where nettles grow, so do vegetables, so we should get a hearty crop this year!

There's a fair amount of clearing still to be done but the fruit bushes and strawberries are coming along just lovely. At least some of the garden is able to look after itself.

Ash gets ready for weeding....

... while I jump up and down on the compost heap.....

....and break it

Finally we're done - we've done a good amount of tidying, and seen to it that the nettles don't take over the whole place again. Mint is in abundance (mojitos, anyone?) and although the chard probably can't be eaten now, that garlic looks yummy!

Until next week.....

2010-09-27T17:05:00.012+01:00

Coggins checking in. Crikey Moses, it’s been a while since the blog was updated, but we’ll try to keep it ticking along with regular posts from now on.

I was only in the garden for an hour or so on Saturday, so I mostly focused on tidying up. The butternut squash plants, while not producing very much actual butternut squash, had snaked a good five metres away from where they were supposed to be and had started interfering with the herbs, so they got a taste of the clippers.

There were a few things to be harvested, so I got to take home a nice bag of stuff.

I was pretty amazed to find four garlic plants growing when the carpet was off! They’d been forgotten about and covered up for a good few months but had still managed to grow. They were looking a little anaemic but hopefully they’ll be alright when they’re left uncovered for a few weeks.

There was a massive amount of worms in the soil when we were turning it over, so that’s a good sign. I’m going to work out what should get planted this week and then get it in the ground next weekend.

Today involved a bit more effort. We lifted up the carpet that had been covering one of the unused beds and gave it a good forking over.

The stone and pebble harvest from the patch was bountiful.

The last thing we did was weed and rake over the area next to the path, and we discovered some comedically small potatoes. No idea if they’re edible, so if I never update this blog again, you can assume they weren’t.

Winter update

2010-02-04T00:29:00.020Z

Hi all

OddMod signing in.

Many apologies for the chronic lack of update on the Hackney Greens' allotment. But what with canvassing, leafletting, dancing, drinking, Copenhagen, Christmas... well, you know how it is.

We're pretty much waiting right now for Guru Ed to give us the nod to begin work again.

Now, this update is likely to be faily light on deep Green and permaculture philosophy, I'm afraid. I'll leave that for the Guru and Greenfinger. This isn't my area of expertise. I am merely but a foot soldier in all of this, albeit one who finds digging and planting stuff theraputic and fun.

But anyway, here's where we are right now...

The first plants went in before the Autumn was out. On the left handbed, after sterling de-nettling work from my goodself, we planted a dozen or so fruit bushes, all of a different variety. Or, rather, bare stems that the Guru assures us will grow into fruit bushes.

On the third middle bed we planted some thyme, garlic and rosemary herb roots.

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr's Hanley and Hulm - "the Morecombe and Wise of Hackney Green Party" (c. Cllr Mischa Borris).

See?

The main bed

When we first arrived, not only were we confronted with 6ft high nettles but also a floor thick with weeds. Dave the Scouser had often complained that he had twice attempted to tackle these, but they just came back the next year with greater ferocity. Dave had his doubts about whether our merry gang had the wherewithal to halt the ferocious campaign of the nettles, moving Trffids-like towards his back door.

However, this was before they met us.

Now, it's well worth us taking a minute here to make a before/after comparison:

We went from this, day 1 in mid August...

to this... mid November.

Here is Jon Shorts (left), Clissold candidate Peter Jones (centre), Guru Ed (right with green shirt) and our very own Caledonian lion Raymond.

We went through the main bed about 4 times with shovels and pitchforks, eeking out every last damn root and weed to make sure the little buggers didn't return come next spring. Fingers crossed.

After Ed was satisfied with the weed excavation, we turned the soil over once more and then dug in several sacks of donkey cack, fresh from our local, friendly Shoreditch farm. I'm sure I don't need to explain what the manure is for. But here's some 'fun with poo' pictures for your amusement.

The top bed

Now, this is the action bit of the allotment. We planted some green things and red onions down there. Apologies for the"things", but I never really did find out what they were. Cabbages, I think.

For these Ed constructed a wee protective coat out of a bit of old fencing and some twigs.

Plant-wise, that was as far as we managed before putting the allotment to bed for the winter. We collected hordes of old cardboard and lay it all down over the beds, and then covered that with old carpet and rugs. Apparently, it's to a)keep the frost out, b)let the manure do it's thing, c) allow the cardboard to eventually breakdown and disappear into the soil from whence it came.
Will endeavor to update this blog a bit more efficiently this year.

In the meantime, here's some more pictures to goggle at:

Here's me and new HGP recruit Mr. Ash, pointing at a wall.

The ever-busy Miss Hughes, planting her fruit bushes. I'm considerably looking forward to making one of my famous crumbles from the fruit off these bushes. Eventually. Could it ever match my awesome Dave's Pear and Blackberry crumble, though?

Speaking of the lovely Miss Hughes, here's a sort of romantic montage of the happy couple, digging for all they're worth. Well done, Greenfinger.

Haven't a clue what this is, although the picture is labelled 'Canker', so I'll go with that.

And finally, a trenchant buffoon in ill-matching clothes, looking particularly pleased with himself after finding this old cabinet on the road and recycling it as our new tool cupboard, striking a rather camp pose and grinning like a loon. Nice.

Over and out. OddMod.

Update (sorely) needed

2009-10-21T05:00:00.006+01:00

Uh oh, it's been ages, hasn't it? I've got the pictures, and I've got the knowledge, but just haven't had the time and energy to update for the last month or so. Suffice to say that there have been changes.

Watch this space, innit.

The Power of Slogans

2009-09-15T12:42:00.000+01:00

OK, before anyone accuses us of a lack of originality, we thought of the "Dig For Victory" slogan before this came along:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/sep/14/allotments-food-programme-private-land

Interesting to note that Chris Leslie, my mum's former New Labour MP, is the "Czar" behind all this. Here's what Bradford Green councillor Martin Love has to say about him:

Leslie is a hypocrite. He spent most of his time as Shipley MP campaigning to tarmac over 2 sites of scientific interest (the Bingley North and South bogs).

So, what's the subtext, then? "Tarmac for Victory!" ?????

Right, in case you're wondering why there hasn't been much up here recently about the garden, that's because:

Guru Ed's been away on a beekeeping course
The political season is back in swing, so we hacks have been getting back to street activism

There WILL, however, be another session soon. Maybe not this weekend. The weekend after??? Let's get on it, Kidz.

Atunement

2009-09-08T09:10:00.008+01:00

I've just been trawling around the internet, and hullo, Robocop's here already. If y'all don't start thinking about this now, this is what your bobby on the beat may look like in ten years from now:

I imagine that this gentleman probably isn't what you'd call a core Green voter. If I could get him to turn his swords into ploughshares (and his bodysuit into beercans?????) I think I'd have earned at least a PhD.

I prefer to see a picture like this:

Ah, how reassuring. The Green Party Autumn Conference, held this year in Hove (Brighton Conference Centre is a bit beyond our means). Obviously we were there because all our efforts for next year are focussed on at least getting Caroline Lucas (and preferably a couple more) elected to Westminster.

This was my fourth conference, but I guess you could say that it's the first one where I was feeling really involved, partly helped by the fact that so many people from Hackney were there.

I also learned about one Green concept which was very new to me: "Atunement". This refers to a one minute period of silence which we always have before a full plenary debate on any subject. The notion is that you're spending a moment to reflect and, errr, like, tune in to each other, Mother Earth, the Cosmos, and all that. It's pretty old-school hippie stuff for the wave of members like myself who have only joined the Green Party in the last few years, but I guess I can see why people want to hang on to a few of those traditions. It's certainly not my intention to steamroller over everything, but of course I do think we've got to atune ourselves a bit more to Jo Public, as well as each other.

I really don't know why I've only just learned about that. If I stumbled upon a moment of atunement at a previous conference I must just have assumed someone had died. Sorry.

Anyway, it was all a good laugh. We had cabaret from Mark Thomas and Attila the Stockbroker, and some decent weather. Back to London today, eh. Not sure if we're doing the garden tomorrow. Ed didn't seem too bothered about doing that.

September snuffles

2009-09-03T14:24:00.017+01:00

Ahhh, the last baking hot day in the garden before the September weather came upon us. Here's the state of play. House end:

Wall end. All quite a change since we started, innit:

Here's Miss Hughes, addressing the stereotype that we Green Party types are just a bunch of hippies.

and here's a pair of horticultural philosophers

One piece of very good news. Yesterday Ed and I met and talked to the upstairs neighbour. She was very friendly, though initially more than a little surprised to see what had been happening in the garden while she'd been away on holiday. We're very much hoping that we can work something out with her, so that we can really go for the full permaculture treatment.

I'll mix it a bit here, with a few pics from the Climate Camp Tar Sands demo on Tuesday. A shot of a couple of my in-house placards.

Thanks to Leonie the photographer for this one. Do you geddit?

OK, now to put some order to it all....

We started outside the National Portrait Gallery, which is sponsored by BP. Shame on them.

Then we stopped for a while outside the Canadian embassy, which is just off the other side of Trafalgar Square. Here's Clayton Thomas-Muller (see my previous entry), getting the crowd going. Unfortunately I kept missing out on getting a decent short video clip of him shouting "BP - Criminal!" and "Climate - Justice!" but fortunately someone with a better camera than me got that. The clip is below

Finally we headed up to BP headquarters, on St. James' Square, just off Regent Street, south of Piccadilly Circus.

Here's the clip of Clayton that I was talking about

And here's a clip from the mainstream media.

Tar No Ta.

2009-08-31T11:39:00.006+01:00

Watch that first. Tar, and see ya Tuesday morning, if you were there.

And then watch the interview with Clayton Thomas-Muller. This guy is an awesome speaker.

And more detail from this link. Here are Lionel Lepine and George Poitras, representatives of the Athabasca region First Nations, discussing yesterday the film and the actions which must follow.

Photo left: Hackney Green Party sends a delegation over to Climate Camp. General thoughts on the experience. Very chilled out and pretty chilly towards the end of my stay, with that healthy power generator that was blowing across the Heath. There were so many things to learn there, and not much time to make choices about that. The Tar Sands issue stood out front and centre for me at least, but I guess that it may not have been the same for everyone. I would have loved to learn a bit about building a pedal-powered sound system, but I think that I maybe possibly don't really have the time for that hobby right now. Shame.

Lewisham Green Party sent a creditably large contingent to greet the Camp, though I must confess I was a bit jealous that the Camp hadn't chosen Hackney Marshes. Another time, hopefully. All but one, I think, of Lewisham's six Green councillors were there (and apologies if the last one was and I didn't count him - I just don't know). Here are those five, plus Jean Lambert MEP

OK then, back to the allotment today, innit.

Tangential Post

2009-08-29T10:32:00.005+01:00

Just to show that there's a bit more to Green politics than allotments. These were taken on Critical Mass, on the way to Blackheath to visit the Climate Camp. The quality is low, granted (though the sound isn't too bad). The other thing is that I can't get my phone to record for more than 30 seconds at the moment.

All of which = v. annoying, so for that reason I've put two snippets. Yes, there is a bloke in the second video riding a penny farthing:

Ah, I keep forgetting to take my camera

2009-08-28T16:44:00.003+01:00

It would have very been nice to photo-document today's bit of fun in the car park down at the back of Café Oto in Dalston. Never mind, I'm sure that there will be a few more wombling sessions for me to document with the camera.

We stripped a few large packing crates with a hammer, a crowbar and my Streetfighter-style sideways jumping kick. Dangerous, bruv.

Thanks very much to Sally and Phillipa for bringing the pick-up truck. It's a community fing, innit (though we still do need a bigger van for this kind of thing - help somebody, please!) I'll take some photos of the stuff we brought over next time we're in the garden.

Ah, you might want to know what we're planning to do with that stuff we got today. Many's the thing we can do with it, I suppose. Tool shed, garden furniture, full size snooker table. You've just got to use your imagination.

Contemplation #1

2009-08-27T14:02:00.010+01:00

Just a small session yesterday. Periodic rain was spotting on us, and we were few in number. It was just Ed and myself, really, although Anna and Joe turned up at the end.

I forgot my camera, so there's nothing to show, I'm afraid. In any case, we didn't do much more than hack out some ivy and take down the rest of the tree which we had cut on Sunday. There's just the stump of it left now, and we'll have a bit of a back-breaking job digging up the roots. Other than that, Ed and I spent a fair bit of time discussing namby-pamby permaculture stuff, and since I don't have any photos, this is as good a moment as any to introduce this text, which I'll certainly be quoting from time to time.

As soon as Ed came out with the phrase "one straw" I jumped on it. The term was coined by Masanobu Fukuoka, a crazy Japanese guy (at least, everybody thought he was crazy) who dropped his promising academic career and went to live in the country, with the idea of developing a new, and yet ages-old technique of farming. A couple of decades later agricultualists were coming to visit him from far and wide to see how his super-organic farming method managed to produce amazing crop yields. His fundamental premise, as illustrated by the following quote in one of the early chapters of the book, is that the more we humans try to tinker with nature, the more complicated we make things for ourselves in the long run. Core Green values:

So, here's what Ed's thinking to do with Dave's garden. We can treat it as an experiement - do a completely hands-off Fukuoka-style patch in one area of the garden, and do a traditional "Dig For Victory" allotment-style patch elsewhere. The latter is what, for instance, Ray (see the previous entry, and this link) does every year, digging up all the ground to start all over again. The central notion in permaculture is that the closer you live to nature, the less you should need to make that kind of effort.

Let the battle of ideas commence.

Clear-up #4 - Sunday

2009-08-23T23:50:00.027+01:00

Aha, Manisha made it over, finally. We'd almost given up.

Interesting discussions today with Guru Ed and Joe's dad Ray, who came over all the way from Richmond to see how we're getting on, and to offer his advice. Ray's an old hand in the allotment movement (is there an allotment "movement" as such?), and you'll see a few of his thoughts on allotments and many other social issues in his blog, which you can check here. Ray's a bit sceptical about what permaculture actually means, and seems to think it's just a namby-pamby intellectual gloss on what is a fairly obvious thing that any of us can observe if we engage our brain for a few minutes, that as the world's population increases beyond six or seven billion humans, we are all going to have to think a lot harder about where the food we eat comes from, and start making a bit for ourselves. Ray's been putting that into practice for forty years, so fair play to him.

Ed's more "on it" as far as the permaculture side of things goes. His scepticism, by contrast, is about whether the immediate environment which we're working on in this project will allow us to put permaculture principles fully into practice. Three factors which we need to think about are:

How long is Dave going to be in the place? A proper permaculture project takes time to implement.
Dave is in the garden flat, which gives access to the whole of the garden. That's fine, but one of the things you need to be able to do in a permaculture garden is to collect rainwater from the roof. To do this, we'll need to talk to the people in the upstairs flat, or possibly to their landlord/landlady. Like that, it starts to look complicated.
And, ah, yes, we really do need to clean up Dave's kitchen :~}

Ed's wondering, then, if we ought to scale down our ambition for the time being, and just focus on growing a few veggies. It's not as if we won't learn a lot by doing that, in any case. There'll still be plenty to write on this blog. No doubt about that.

And so, what did we do today then? Joe enjoyed himself up a tree (aah, can someone please remind me what the name of this tree was). What, Green Party members cutting down trees? Well, it depends on the tree, doesn't it? If the tree can produce food for us to eat, that's fine, and nut trees can be a very sustainable and effective alternative to (GM) cereal crops; but the only really "useful" tree which Dave has in the garden is the pear tree near to the back door, and the other trees have only been serving to block out the sunlight which we're going to need if we're going to plant proper fruit and vegetable patches. So, down it went, and we spent pretty much the rest of the day lopping the branches, and separating what we had. The straightest of the branches will get used as stakes when we start planting, the leaves will get composted (although the leaves from this tree will take an awfully long time to decompose), and what we're thinking to do with the smaller branches and twigs is to get hold of a wood chipper which will break the wood down to the point where it can go into the composter. So, if you've got a wood chipper which you can loan us for free or just for a small fee, please get in touch.

It was a beautiful day for it. Here are two of the main carnage culprits enjoying the afternoon sun on a bed of leaves, and contemplating permaculture principles. In its own way, that's a pretty important part of the process, you know.

Clear-up #3 - Saturday

2009-08-22T21:23:00.010+01:00

This is how the garden looks after three sessions. There's already a radical change.

In attendance: 6 plus Dave, who did actually pick up a shovel for about 20 seconds, though we unfortunately don't have the photographic evidence :~}

Without Guru Ed (aka Mr Miyagi) we were a little bit rudderless for today's session. We started off doing a bit more clear-up, and then we got a bit bored and wanted to do something more radical, so we got stuck into some more of the nettles and took down a couple of bushes. We also got permission from Dave to take down a couple of trees which are blocking the light coming into the garden. So we've got a bit more carnage to look forward to over the next few sessions, before we settle down to applying the more gentle and harmonious principles of permaculture (or something close to that, anyway).

And here's the woodpile that we're going to have next to the pond. This is to encourage beetles to hang around the garden and do all the good work they can with breaking down nutrients. A very interesting picture, I realise.

Clear-up #2 - Midweek

2009-08-19T22:42:00.017+01:00

The second clear-up session in Dave's garden.

The pong, sorry the pond, which will eventually be the fulcrum of the self-sustaining ecosystem which we'll create. Looks promising, eh.

Unfortunately, someone subsequently took the executive decision to remove the football, which is a shame. I was thinking it would continue to play a crucial role. Ah well.

If anyone out there has seen a lovely French film called Une hirondelle a fait le printemps (literally "One Swallow has Made the Spring", but brilliantly translated for its UK release as "The Girl from Paris") you may well remember the scene where the old man's friend ties a bottle to one of the most promising looking blossoms on his pear tree, with the intention of making some kind of brandy. I haven't got the foggiest recollection of how he does it, but anyway I've got the notion in my head of doing something like that next year. And then the year after, I can repeat that simple but beautiful line - "Tiens, on va goûter ma poire!"

Clear-up #1 - Saturday

2009-08-16T04:00:00.017+01:00

OK, then, Day One in the HGP Allotment Project.

This, including the face behind the camera, is the first intrepid troupe who tackled Dave's five-foot-high nettles and brambles. Back row (from left to right): Wing Commander Douglas, HGP Admin, Guru Ed. Front row: Cruisy Hughesie, Joe-Local and Matty-La'.

Ah, and Ginger Joe came and joined us later.

I wasn't there at the beginning of the day's efforts, as Joe-Local will be happy to remind us all, so I think I kind of missed the Alice in Wonderland moment when the others reached the wall at the bottom of the garden.

The francophile in me can't help identifying this picture with picking grapes. Actually they're picking blackberries for the pear and blackberry crumble which we had the day after. Of course, you can actually make perfectly good wine out of blackberries, but crumble involves a bit less waiting time, eh.

Planning conference with Ed, soon after this moment to become known as Guru Ed, against his severe egalitarian objections. We'll give him a few more sessions to find his own personal horticultural banana skin, and then maybe we'll stop slavishly doing everything he says.

Watch out for that axeman.

It's possibly not the same individual wearing the hard hat in this photo. We actually need about five of those brown bins at the moment. Thanks very much to the friendly neighbours who have been letting us use theirs. Community - that's the whole point of this project.

And that concludes Day One. Soon after that last photo was taken, we were probably Dahn the Boozer, reporting back to Dave on how his garden was looking. I don't actually remember now, so yes, we probably did go to the pub.

Dave's Challenge: Preliminary article

2009-08-12T15:18:00.004+01:00

The scene - HGP Youth(ful) Section's favorite boozer - one average reasonably merry night following Liverpool's ups and downs, a couple of pints and the odd game of pool, but then a fateful moment... in a moment of temporary insanity Dave the Scouser sidles over and invites us to use his garden as we will, warning us of the pitfalls we face when we attempt to tackle his five-foot-high nettles.

It took a couple of months and a bit more discussion, but how could we resist this opportunity to put our Green principles into practice and show Stoke Newington and the world how we can work together in our communities to survive the shocks of climate change?

The purpose of this blog is to record over time what we hope will be an example of how all of us can find ways to deal with the threats of climate change by working cooperatively to change our way of life in a peaceful and sustainable manner. As we proceed with the project, we shall describe the problems that we encounter when trying to implement these ideas in the urban context, and the solutions that we (hopefully) come upon.