I’m back to plotting my gardening again, this time on an industrial scale. Jo has pointed out an allotment website. A good job too. The first thing I was planning on doing was rotorvating the whole plot. Apparently this is very bad. You chop up all the roots of the nasty bugger weeds and make a dozen of each. Less than great.
What one chap on the site advised was to spray the whole area with ‘Roundup’ (a weedkiller that kills the roots so it can’t grow back) wait up to 28 days for the plants to fully wither and die, then rotorvate.
Blank slate to start with then.
Monty Don was back on Gardeners World last night, a synchronicity that bodes well for my endeavour. I’ve rushed out today and got the weedkiller, also a set of first and second early potatoes and a bag each of red and white onions. They are tichy, but I’ve popped them in trays like Monty said, and hopefully they will have rooted and be ready to plant out in a month when I’ve rotorvated.
I’ve also ordered a bunch of seeds online (lettuce, blight resistant tomatoes, leeks, mange tout, cauliflower, broccoli, more onions – bugger, forgot I’d ordered them- cabbage, carrot, rocket, and two kinds of beans). With the seeds I have from last year that should be enough to be getting on with.
Plus I have 3 different blueberry bushes, 2 types of apple trees, 2 pear trees, a cherry tree, strawberries, a blackberry and a redberry already growing in the garden that could do with transplanting.
I might keep the cherry at the very least, depending on whether it puts on a good bloom this year. I bought the Warrington Guardian this week, to take advantage of all those people who say ‘shed, free, if you take it down and take it away’. Ha! Not one! Tight bastards. Still, I’m in no rush, cant even garden for a month.
Also when I produced my gym membership card (to get the discount for the allotment) it turns out they worded the letter wrong. If you are entitled to discounted gym membership (as you are on a qualifying benefit) then you are entitled to discount. ie, not me.
That’s one thing. Gardening, but large.
As work have screwed me over royally and nobody will give me a sniff at a driving job without experience, I’ve had to contact the army again.
I am set for a one day refresher on the 2nd of April and if I can get the time off work, the last part of my basic training will be from the 28th of May.
Ho-fecking-hum.
Get that done and dusted then it’s the trade training section (conversion to army driving) and I should be ready to play.
I’m thinking now that if I just get to my unit and put some hours driving in I will be able to blag the rest in civvy street.
“Of course I’ve done 180 days driving, I’ve been in the T.A. for 18 months, just ask them. If you contact my boss; HRH the Queen, I’m sure she’ll give you a sterling reference. Tell her Buck sent you, she owes me one from the first Gulf war.”
Maybe I’ll get back into it when I get to play soldiers again, but at the minute I’m not looking at a tour of duty. I’m too firmly entrenched in civvy mode. Constantly having someone on your back organizing every minute of your day just doesn’t appeal at the minute. OK, so there’s the fun of getting shot at and bombed, but still…
Some thing I have learned in the last week that have amused me are;
‘Backpfeifengeseicht’, a German word (pronounced Back-fife-an-gez- eekt) that translates as ‘face in need of a slap’. (Though some say ‘face in need of a fist! Either way, Germans are cool.)
There are no words to express the awesomeness of that! Someone posted it on Twitter as ‘Words we need in the English language’. I have committed it to memory.
Another I learnt off one of the lads at work; ‘koo-eh-re-vah bra-tah’ which is Polish for ‘fucking job!’
You can tell he works where I do!
Then there’s the training. My knee is still not right and my job doesn’t afford it much rest. I really don’t want to run and make it worse again until it’s fully recovered. I’ll just have to swim everyday and make sure I do lots of long rides to make up for it. Now I’ve had to add press-up and sit-ups to my daily exercise to get fit for the army. Plus I could do with putting in lots of tabbing (speed marching) with a heavy pack on. The last certainly won’t be happening until my knee is good again.
Never a minute, is there?
Later,
Buck.