Lost and Found in E11

Saturday 28th September found me in the polytunnel weeding and digging over the raised beds in readiness for winter cultivation. Any task in the polytunnel involves enduring the attention of 'red ants' and, in particular, their painful bites. I'm not sure if the polytunnel is occupied by numerous different colonies or one or two super-colonies. It is difficult to find even a square foot of the place that does not team with ants - and the vibration of footsteps just serves to attract more of them to the 'square feet' of hapless polytunnelers. The interior has been cleared of the fading splendour of tomatoes, cucumbers, sweetcorn and beans; a minor deforestation which has displaced many creatures that relied on the various sorts of sustenance provided by the elaborate suspensions and canopies. The relatively massive population of ants is, I imagine, experiencing some unwelcome stress owing to the drastic, even catastrophic loss of habitat - unless, that is, you w...

Monday 23rd September found me in Barking, on a trichological field trip. The complexities of hair have absorbed me before and there were many sites around Barking which added to my bewilderment at the lengths people will go to adorn themselves in a particular manner and/or fashion. The vast array of extensions, wigs and other hairy devices got me quite perplexed. I could even say I was in a state of tricho-culture shock, unable to tell the natural from the artificial, the genuine from the fake, the honest from the dishonest. I scratched my balding head and wandered discombobulated around Barking town centre looking for something real because, briefly, just briefly, it seemed that everyone in Barking was wearing wigs. Even the bald heads appeared fake to me. This fabricated or fictitious delusion was amusing but for the fact I had work to do which involved my approaching people (with 'ha ha hair') with a straight face. I needed something solid and less ephemeral to ground me....

Potato Patch 22/9/13 The afternoon of Sunday 22nd September found Field Study's Man in E11 finishing off the 2013 potato harvest - sorting through the remaining potato tyre towers and 'baskets'. The yield from the tyre towers (or stacks) has been disappointing. We may have over watered the plants. The 'baskets' - a sort of open compost heap hobbled together with scraps of wire mesh, wood and metal posts - were equally unproductive and this may be because we did not earth up the potatoes enough. The baskets were soon smothered by bindweed and the shade and competition for nutrients from this prodigious weed probably hindered the potatoes.  The most disappointing 'basket' (above) yielded 4 large potatoes (from 3 seed potatoes) amounting to a weight of a couple of pounds.  Our total potato yield was 130-140Kg (286-308Ib) from an area of c. 26 sq metres (280 sq feet) - grown in a medium of compost and straw over a heavy clay sub soil. The rai...

tomato crop  Polytunnel 21st September The 21st September found us laying waste to the organic profusion of our polytunnel interior - a prodigious multicultural intertwining and layering of flora and fauna - a field we have referred to as 'the polytunnel of love supreme' .  Polytunnel 4th August On this, the Autumnal Equinox, the first day of fall, the sun will have risen over the polythene firmament of a very desolate landscape, haunted by traces of abundance and all that plenty brings. It was the sight of blight that instigated such a drastic clearance.    Blight afflicted tomatoes - 21/9/13? If not the devouring spread of a fungus, then there were still the faecal traces of the hordes of caterpillars to remind us of other voracious appetites for our crops. Caterpillar excrement - 21st September? I found this field observation to accompany our record of the garden of scatological delights .....   http://www.y...

30th March 2013 - the planting out of our main crop seed potatoes in Plot B. We grew Cara, Setanta and Hunter varieties this year. As part of our efforts to reclaim this neglected part of our allotment site we used a 'no- (or less) dig' technique for growing those potatoes. Essentially it involves growing potatoes in a heavy compost mulch - the depth of which is built up as the potatoes grow. The first stage of our planting out was a colourful and colour-field affair by dint of the use of a load of colour paper found discarded in a skip. The ground onto which the potatoes and paper were laid out was very hard - a heavy clay stratum. We used straw and compost, the latter sourced from North London Waste, as the growing medium, along with liquid feeds throughout the summer. Some rock-dust was added to the compost early on in the growing season. 14th September 2013 - in the 23 weeks since the planting the potatoes have put on a remarkable show of growth, the area ...

While I have been celebrating the last picks ("pics") of our assorted fruits and vegetables - particularly how the fruits of some plants wither and decay ('giving up the ghost' - not an apt phrase?) my attention has also been grabbed by the apparent novelty of some plant phenomena. My eyes widened with all sorts of smut and saucy innuendo when I found these plums (or this plum?) hanging in the wasp ridden shade of our plum tree. There I was, carrying on like an enthralled and be-togaed Frankie Howerd in a 'seventh heaven' of fruity pleasures. You might wonder at the formative and psychological effects of having grown up on a cultural diet of 1970s television (UK). For, as I tried to titter me not at the conjugal spectacle, my mind was the site of a strange orgy of camp comics. It might have been 'Larry Grayson' telling me to shut that door but, what door 'Larry' darling? In the course of researching this post I discovered that the imagi...

Nature Study Museum St Georges Gardens 12th September 2013