I SHOULD'VE DUG 'EM DEEPER I THINK

My daffodils are this big.

Everyone is ahead of me on our allotment. For the most part it's because they've had their plots for longer. But the new tenants of the one next to mine seem to have got it cleared up and dug over in one invisible burst. I suspect they had a truck to take the rubbish away and either a team of enthusiastic diggers or a rotivator. Perhaps my assiduity in getting out unwanted plants is paying its price in relation to how much time is available before seeds etc. will need to be sown. Perhaps I'm being excessive. On the other hand, it seems right to get rid of mares tail / horse tail or whatever it's called, along with the mile deep tap-roots of dandelions before putting in fruit bushes. Several weeks with several snowy days in them, interspersed with days when I was doing something else or having a bug or . . . The question is . .  am I being long term sensible or too slow for growing's good? For the moment I'll look long term and say this slow start will, in the end, be worth it.

Blackcurrant waiting for secateurs to prune it.
Some things are on the allotment . . . other things are at home.

But there are some things I've clearly done wrong. I woke in the night wondering about the difference between different kinds of currant bushes. I was sure some had to be planted one way and others another. I'd thought the difference was between redcurrants and whitecurrants but (exciting life this!) what if blackcurrants were somehow involved? Abandon sleep. Read lots of articles which just say plant them now with a load of the well rotted farmyard manure which I don't have and can't afford - but nothing about depth. Then I find it. The difference isn't between red and white but between black and red. (I don't have any white ones yet.) Blackcurrants should be planted deep enough that extra shoots come up while redcurrants need to have a single little trunk to branch out from. Guess which I've already planted? Blackcurrants. So, in the night, in my semi-awake semi-asleep-ness I dig them up in my dreams, dig bigger holes, plant them deeper. Over and over I go through the whole thing. It's not going to be a problem. The soil is lovely and even and weed free (hurray!) so my mind should have been able to give it a rest. But it wouldn't. Now all I have to do is to go and replant them for real and to free my mind from the guilt of not giving them the kind of food and texture they crave and asking them to make do with chicken pellets instead. I need a word for anthropomorphising plants.

I also need a special word of thanks to photographs - even if they do reveal mistakes. The instructions which came with the bare-rooted raspberry canes said to soak them in a bucket of water for an hour then plant them at the same soil level they had been planted at before. But after their allotted hour of soaking any vestiges of previous soil level had washed away. Resort to an internet video where Monty Don swishes his little roots around. But I didn't have shallow roots. I had what seemed to be the continuation of the stem with roots sticking out of it. His big roots go sideways. Mine head for Australia. So I stuck them in about twelve inches and hoped for the best. Or maybe it was a bit more.

It's not just the hairiness of the lower stem which becomes apparent in the photograph
but a difference in colour too.

And as for the use of photographs? I took this one for the sake of the leaves that are appearing beside the cane. "Should they be here or are they suckers to be removed?" I was going to ask. But while preparing the picture for the blog I see there are loads of fine roots above soil level; roots I didn't see when I planted the canes. So perhaps I should have dug the raspberries in even deeper after all - just as I should have made the blackcurrants go in further.

From now on I shall photograph everything in stages so the lens will capture what my eyes have missed.

As for other things:

Shallot.

The shallots I thought had rotted haven't. I could have photographed a much more impressive example but I was in a hurry so I just snapped the nearest one. (Bloggers are meant to be thoughtful, not hurried but . . . )

It's not a tulip, it's an onion. (Or garlic.)

And the ornamental onions or garlic or whatever they are (call them Alliums) that I thought were nearly all dug up by badgers but which fellow allotmenteers said must have been foxes . . . have come up in profusion as well.

In part, I planted them because I wanted to make something grow and all the seeds I sowed in the autumn got eaten almost as soon as they germinated and in part because the packet said they would attract butterflies. Why I would want to attract butterflies is beyond me as they will lead to caterpillars which will probably eat all my vegetables . .  but there we are. I bought them and put them in. And as for depth of planting? There were five varieties in the packet, all to be planted at different levels. But the bulbs were jumbled together in one bag and there was no way of knowing which were which. So the bigger the bulb, the deeper I planted it. Totally hit and miss but quite a variety of leaf shapes have come up so even if there are no blackcurrants or redcurrants until next year - or perhaps never - we should have some pretty onion flowers to look at!

Quite hefty. A bit more than an inch long.
(When measuring caterpillars, does one include the bristles?)

Speaking of caterpillars . . . I found this one wandering along one of my packed earth paths. Despite it being the boring colour of an old broom I think it might be a Ruby Tiger Moth - especially as a description on the Wildlife Insight site says 'They are often come across wandering about during the day prior to pupating'. It was wandering. Clinch. And wandering beside the patch which was a mono-culture of narrow-leaved plantain until I pulled it all out. Double clinch.

This caterpillar was a rich auburn in colour but I'm assuming
it's the same variety as the day before.
The difference may be an advert for sunshine - or suggest it's a different variety.

The next day (25th March) it was sunny. (Frosty but sunny.) And I found another at the opposite end of the allotment; again wandering along a path. For a bit of variety I moved it to a mossy stone so it could pose for its picture against a pretty (but irrelevant) background. It wasn't struck on this and curled up. I came and went for a bit, waiting for it to uncurl and walk along but it didn't . .  Until when I wasn't looking when it must have pottered off looking for some plantain or another path. Right. Here comes a decision. Don't get rid of all the plantain. Maybe I should have a dedicated ribwort patch? After all, the previous gardener seems to have had several. Moths which are, non-scientifically speaking, butterflies which can't stick their wings up straight to shut them higher than their heads (sort of) are undervalued. I've not seen any packs of seeds or bulbs specifically advertised as promising the arrival of moths.

And at the end of the day . . . In spring, in Dorset, (my constant contrast) the noise of blackbirds singing at dawn is almost overwhelming. But here, where a pigeon on a pavement is the height of avian excitement . . . here, in a town, I sat and listened to one, solitary bird, piping after the sun had gone down. (My camera dissobligingly decided to make it look lighter than it was.) To hear all the birds in a wide neighbourhood yelling their heads off fills one with awe. But this is the first time I've literally sat down and listened to one individual. See - there are gentle joys in urban living after all.

Links.
How to grow blackcurrants and redcurrants on the Quick Crop blog.

How to grow summer fruiting raspberries - video on Gardener's World site. (Incidentally, mine are supposed to grow two crops a year if you prune them right.)

Ruby Tiger Moth and Caterpillar (Phragmatobia fuliginosa) on the Wildlife Insight site.

Country Life's Guide to Hairy Caterpillars.

ADVICE AND CORRECTIONS SOUGHT AND WELCOME!
ESPECIALLY - it seems to me that this blackbird has a very monotonous song. Do birds in areas where there are more birds develop more complicated songs?

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