The plot is up, now it’s just a question of keeping it running
Our early summer sowing is done for now. The baby herbs are happy. The spring salads are taking wing. The rampant orache is being rehomed in purple patches.
Last year’s mustards and kales flowered for the bees. Their skeletons removed to the compost bays. The remains of the chervil beds, too.
The plot is late-May tidy. Just an occasional coriander bush left for beauty, late leaf and flower. Plus, of course, a few dozen tall poppy plants in fat, fuzzy bud.
The tear peas are just starting to wrap around the hazel poles. The baby French beans are freed – for now – from predator slugs and snails.
There are spares in the seed-training tray. Paired with painted mountain corn, Italian pumpkins: marina di Chioggia and tonda Padana, and courgettes. They’ll all find a home – I hope – on the summer plot soon enough.
The resident fennel is shooting. The Jane Scotter sweetpeas arrive any day. The plot will climb and grow tall in the switch to summer’s deeper 3D.
The seed packets will (largely) stay in tins for now. My summer job is mostly to water, to lightly weed and feed. To thrill to the song thrush in the morning, the blackbirds at dusk. To catch the quick orange flash of fox.
My task is simply to keep the plot planting company. Exercise a duty of care. To pay attention, almost like parenting. It is not, I know, that the baby plants always need me. I am aware our roles are sometimes reversed. But I’m there to help give them the best chance I can.
I’ll wake wondering will the poppies bloom today? Will I need to sow more sunflowers? What will happen when I am away?
Perhaps I am not grownup enough to be a proper gardener. I am sure my father didn’t think like this. But for now the sun is shining, our young plants are happy, and so am I.
Allan Jenkins’s Plot 29 (4th Estate, £9.99) is out now. Order it for £8.49 from guardianbookshop.com
