I know I stunk when I came home from the allotment this afternoon. All due to the generosity of the pigeon keeper on the plot next door who has been donating his spare pigeon poo to my compost heaps.

You do all know how to make compost don't you? Well the link will give you a good grounding if not the experience.

Due to the introduction of charges for the collection of garden waste in the brown bins once a fortnight, I have been receiving plenty of ingredients and a nice variety of greens rather than just grass clippings into the bargain. Yes of course I will take your garden waste I have said to the neighbours in the houses over the road. And generous they have been so far this summer. 

There has also been plenty of cardboard that people have been going to take to the tip – not when I have my say on the matter. I like people who install their own kitchens, clear out their sheds and buy flat pack furniture. Cardboard has been the staple brown ingredient to balance up the greens along with the local newspaper (well it must have a use as there seems to be little local news – it’s the sort of paper that runs headlines like “Forest fire damages trees”). The pigeon poo is the hotter rotter that has been speeding things along.

Now I don’t have compost bins as such because I’ve neither bought nor built them but use the old stack it right in layers of green and brown, damp it down and tuck it under the black plastic which I was given free. And every so often I turn the piles over to speed up the process of composting by introducing air and ensuring that the heap is still damp enough.

Today has been the day of turning. Anyone who knows anything of pigeon keeping will appreciate that the droppings have an aroma that is not welcome in nice society. Of course the newer heaps have new pigeon poo which still has that fresh smell. Hey ho, it’s either turn the heaps or buy the compost.

Honest – I was clean when I went out of the door at 08.30 this morning and not so clean at all by 09.30. But it can’t have been too bad as the bus driver let me get onto the bus to come up the hill home. And there are two lovely compost heaps rotting down ready for the marrows and courgettes next year. Only after that will they be used as soil improver! At that point it will be really properly rotted without a doubt.

It must be that time of the year again. Coming home on the bus from the local market town yesterday afternoon, there were more tractors towing agricultural machinery than I’ve seen for a long time.

And looking out of the back window this evening, there are signs that the combine harvesters are back at work. At least one field has been cleared already – that would be the oilseed rape cut then.

The year is certainly rolling on and the summer is running into autumn when the hay bales appear in the fields, the silage is already moved and there is a start made on crops that need to be combined.

We shall hear the normal cries from the farming community locally though as there has been heavy rain and strong winds to lay some of the crops (oats are given to being flattened) which makes it so much harder for grain to ripen and for it to be gathered in. Again, quite visible out of the back window over to the hills.

Having see a  revised August weather forecast from the Met Office which says it will be an average August, neither hot and dry nor miserable and wet, the farmers of course will be mumbling about the unreliability of the British weather – as will the tourist industry that was hoping for a bumper year from stay at home holidaymakers.

Oh well – there’s always next year then when it might be a glorious summer. Hey ho and what will we moan about then? Drought? Heat?

If this is what it takes to be the queen of clean then I’m some way off the mark. And if I left the oven to be cleaned every 6 to 12 months, I wouldn’t dare to cook at home regularly. But that’s just the keeping the home clean side of being a domestic goddess!

Of course the other side of the coin is the fabulous looking hostess who cooks so well and I’m a long way off the mark there too!

I’m sure that the media is great for giving out new ideas on how to manage the household budget, cook and clean, bring up the children and sew on a button but just as unrealistic about what it takes to run an everyday family. There’s no news in that is there?

For heavens sake, there are plenty of us down my street who can cook, clean, mend, take the children to school, grow our own vegetables and balance the household budget because that’s the way life is and there’s no staff of servants to do the work and no money to be had for extravagant food dishes that require out of season organic fruit, a pint of cream and half a bottle of spirits.

And funnily enough many of us have survived a not quite squeaky clean house as well as a pizza in the case of an emergency rather than not eat at all.

Of course being a domestic goddess is all a fantasy when there is no staff of servants to take care of the dirty washing, the drawings on the new wallpaper and the spilt food, the washing up after supper and all that.

But I’ll still chunter on growing my own vegetables, doing my own cleaning with simple cleaning things such as soda bicarbonate, washing soda and vinegar with plenty of  cleaning treats from Faith in Nature bought in bulk to make them affordable, cooking most of my own food from scratch (never mind making ice cream though!!). Sure I’ll never make a domestic goddess as the cakes usually sink but they are just fine for eating when no-one is looking!

Never mind Delia and Nigella, if it makes a living for you. The rest of us will just watch and laugh at our failures.

It seems that everyone has grown too many cabbages locally and are trying to find friends and enemies who want another one.

Right then – I’m off to freeze another one down as I have too many as well. The local family doesn’t like cabbage so it’s no use trying to give them any.

This year I planned the allotment more carefully in the hopes that there would not be gluts that needed eating all at once, pickling or giving away. It seems that the plan has worked fairly well despite the peas and the carrots which are now safely frozen. But of course this leaves space in  the new freezer despite the ice cream and bread.

So what to do to fill up the space? Oh I know there are all sorts of methods for filling up the freezer – newspaper, bottles of water and other unproductive things. But you can’t eat newspaper now can you?

Luckily the local supermarket has had some vegetable and fruit lines which have not sold and have been reduced to half price. So there are now portions of frozen pears which will go towards fruit crumbles in the future and there are also some portions of fennel and cauliflower where, again, the price was reduced to well below the normal shop price.

There is rather more cabbage available on the plot than I can eat at the moment so this morning I am going to blanch and freeze down some so that I have it ready for use as and when I want some.  Of course I shall keep some fresh for use this week. Yes I actually do like cabbage! It’s a shame that the rest of the family is not at all keen. But that’s life for you.

Yes I know that I could go along and buy frozen goods to fill up the space but that is not really the point of the exercise.  Basically the freezer is here to be filled with produce from the allotment. There will be more goodies to come but in the meantime there needs to be some further filling up of the space. I know that come March or April it will be running on empty but at that point I can do a major defrost and if needs be, leave it switched off until I’m ready to fill it up again.

Next year I will be able to over produce on the allotment in the knowledge that I can fill up the freezer for the winter months and that the family will not be inconvenienced by having too many runner beans filling up their space like last year!

Prudhoe has been doing it best to get an award from the  Northumbria in Bloom competition as it usually does.

However there has been a certain lack of service from the local council (Northumberland County Council) as we are now sharing our local grounds maintenance team with a far wider area than last year.

The town flower beds have contained red salvia, blue lobelia and white chickweed for many weeks due to lack of men with hoes to do the weeding. The teams were in town last week murmuring that if they were paid by the weed they would make an excellent wage.

Of course the weather on Friday took a day out of the week. The planting up leaves something to be desired as well – it is not up to the usual standard.

Which is a great shame as the pavements have all been renewed, whole lengths renovated in the town centre and new planters provided. So much work and investment let down by lack of maintenance and decent planting – mostly due to the changes in our local authority structure.

It does not the slightest bit of good for community spirit to be let down by the council services.

Summer always seems to bring with it one period of ferocious rain to wreck the best endeavours of the gardener.

Friday was that day.  It seems that most of the usual areas were hit again although there were also some new ones. More than a month’s worth of rain in one day? Yesterday the sun came out but my goodness me the showers that came along were fearsome.

No wonder that the red lettuce seedlings that I pricked out on Thursday have drowned – well one seems to be still there but whether it recovers and grows is another matter. The cabbage and cauliflower seedlings that I pricked out do seem to have survived the worst – probably because they went into large tubs which had been emptied of carrots.

There were certainly puddles in some areas of the allotment and signs of receding puddles in other places yesterday evening when I ventured out into the wet. However the soil was fairly dry and seems to have soaked up a fair amount of the downpour without too much damage.

Over on the local hills you can see that some of the crops have been flattened by the wind and rain over Friday and Saturday. When I ventured out to the Metro Centre for some cheap tinfoil containers for use in the freezer yesterday there were also any number of blocked street drains where leaves and debris had been swept along the roadside gulleys by the weather. The buses were definitely travelling carefully to avoid drowning other traffic and pedestrians.

Certainly miserable weather like this makes it hard for the allotment holders who only have evenings and weekends to make their plots productive.

I’m sure summers like the last three were not so frequent when I was a kid or perhaps I just have a selective memory.

I’ve done without a freezer for many years. At least since 1993. And suddenly it has become obvious that it has been costing me money.

Having been generous with giving away peas because the family freezer up the road was full, it came to mind that with a small chest freezer of my own I could blanch and store so much more would be a good bargain.

A little research on the internet and it came to mind that a visit to the local shopping street could be in order. So down the street I went yesterday afternoon and bought a cheap, small freezer which was delivered free because it was very local. The very same evening indeed too.

Last night I froze peas and garlic. Tonight I have filled up some space with reduced bread that is still in date – partly to fill up the space in order to make the freezer run more efficiently but also to ensure that I don’t have a sudden lack of bread at an inconvenient moment as has been happening periodically when I have come home from the allotment after all the local shops have shut.

I knew that the carrot fly had visited the allotment. You can only eat so many carrots at once. So I’ve cleared all the tubs where the carrots are fully grown and these will be frozen down this evening. That will cure the carrot fly problem. Yes I’ve had to cut off portions of some of the carrots but that’s better than losing the entire crop.

Carrot fly? What is that you ask? The Royal Horticultural Society describes the matter in a nutshell with a few simple suggested cures. Crop rotation is the one piece of their advice that I always manage to follow.

So now I shall be able to freeze down all the produce that we can’t eat immediately. I can also now make up rhubarb crumbles and store them when there is far too much rhubarb in the future. Or anything else that will use up a glut of cheap produce. But there are still items like beetroot and marrow that are better pickled. Some things simply do not freeze well. Cabbage, onions and raw potato also come to mind in that category.

What happens if you give up the allotment I hear you cry? Well I shall be haunting the reduced fruit and vegetable shelves and freezing down anything that seems to be useful. Along with keeping up with the reduced bread. Not to mention batch cooking and freezing down so that I always have meals in hand. Yes there is a lot of things that can be done with a freezer. I should have bought one last year!

There comes a time when the glut requires that you do something with the vegetables off the allotment. There’s the garlic all ready to preserve - freezing seems to be the easiest way so we will do that.

Peas should be picked and preserved within as short a period of time as possible. Shell and wash peas. Blanch in boiling water for 1½ minutes. Submerge in ice-cold water immediately and drain. Pack peas into freezer containers. Seal and freeze.

Runner beans can just have the string around the edge removed, be sliced and then bagged up and placed in the freezer.

If you decide to freeze leeks, cut into slices or whole lengths. Seal in airtight bags, freeze, and use within three months. To preserve flavour, do not thaw before cooking further. Use frozen cooked leftovers for soup within three months.

You can either store carrots in sand for the winter or you can freeze them if you have space in your freezer.

Now the parsnip is quite happy to stay in the soil through the winter frosts and tastes better for doing so.

Red cabbage is best pickled but does not last long even so. 

There are many recipes such as this one for preserving the dreaded glut of marrows and you can just pick one to suit yourself.

Yes it is coming to the time of year when I shall be busy in the kitchen preserving produce from the allotment.

Fresh peas are a lovely vegetable but like runner beans they do all come at one time. Unlike beans which you just pick, string slice and freeze at time of glut, peas require a lot more work.

First of all there is the picking of pea pods. The pea plant is a fragile plant. You need to pick carefully to avoid breaking stems or uprooting the plant. Using snips or scissors makes the job a lot easier. You also have to search the foliage to find all the pea pods as these can be well hidden. A handy and easily portable container is essential so that you can drop the gathered pods into it.  The pea will also produce a glut rather than a steady crop unless you are very careful and sow at regular intervals for a continuing crop.  I put out 160 pea plants in one go - of which 150 survived - knowing that I would have a glut that would have to be frozen. But I also knew that the space would be free for later winter crops to take over.

During the last four days on the allotment I have filled the large black bucket that lives in the shed for just such jobs four times. Now as you know, the pea pod is not a large item so that is an awful lot of picking. I have then spent many hours sitting in the sun opening the pods and taking out the peas. That requires two other containers – one for the peas and one for the pods. But of course there are not so many peas once you have taken them out of the pods – almost a crop that seems to be a waste of space but it does have a lot of other good sides to it.

The empty pods have gone onto the compost heap and the peas have been shared out between friends and family as well as frozen down for the future. The humble pea is a nitrogen fixer in the soil and a willing grower so long as the soil is well drained, rich in humus  and you keep the plant well watered in dry periods. The amount of food is well balanced out by the amount of growth which is added to the compost heap – and every gardener needs a good compost heap for the future improvement of the garden soil.

Salad crops, carrots and many root crops are food which take from the soil but give nothing back. The pea is a much more generous plant in the pay back of compost and soil care. The picking of peas is one of those summer job which consume time but probably the only one which involves sitting down in the sun for part of the process.

All the charity shops locally are appealing for stock and have been doing so for months. On Monday two charity bags for different national charities came through the letter box within an hour of each other. Both are due to be collected today.

You would think that there would be better co-ordination between the big charities wouldn’t you? It’s not going to do either of them any good with this sort of stupidity.

Hey ho but what do I know about marketing and charitable giving. Not many bags for either outside on our street today – in fact I saw exactly none.

Having come across an article in praise of privet hedging, I feel that the person who wrote it could well come along to my allotment and take charge of the hedges. Her idea of clipping privet two or three times a year will not resonate with most of the gardeners who own one.

I am about to embark on the third clipping of the privet parts of the hedge this year and the growing season will continue for another two or three months before we can consider it the close season for the pruning of the privet.

Unfortunately the privet hedge that divides my allotment from the gentleman with the pigeon loft next door runs parallel to a lot of the fruit and herb beds. So Pushy the Hedge protrudes into a lot of the work that needs to be done regularly. Therefore Pushy is clipped regularly.

The prickly hawthorn that marks the boundary on two and a half sides of the plot is far less bother in that it needs clipping maybe twice a year at the most in order to keep the committee happy and passers by from being scratched.

So all you allotment holders who merely have fences or paths to divide you from your neighbouring gardeners do have one advantage in your labours. You don’t have to prune the hedges amongst the myriad other jobs that need to be done to keep an allotment productive. On the other hand, you do not have the shelter provided in wet and windy weather or the privacy. Neither do you loose productive ground to said hedge.

In my dreams the past gardeners on the plot would have planted nice beech hedges that really do only need to be clipped in August. But of course as the soil locally is clay, beech is not suitable. Which is probably why privet and hawthorn rule the roost.

It’s a case of the snail and lettuce at the moment. I’ve lots of lettuce sitting round in pots as I ran out of ground space at one point (seems to be a regular problem in a large allotment). Yesterday I had a discussion with a full legion of snails who were given their marching orders.

Mind you the warm weather along with the damp is encouraging the lettuce to bolt. There has been a really good crop so far even if not with the best of hearts with plenty more seeds left in the packet. The 20 red lettuces are shaping up nicely but there could be a break in supply if the green ones all run to seed before the red ones develop hearts. I’ve red lettuces in a tub by the front door and the thinnings will be taken down to the allotment to fill in the spaces.

The warm weather has done nothing at all for my red onions (grown from sets). They all bolted so I pulled them up. There will be something usable off them but they won't keep for any length of time. But better something than nothing. Experience of others is that this is quite normal and that maybe it is as cheap to buy onions from the supermarket in order to devote the space to a more expensive crop. Now there’s a thought – upgrade the diet without breaking the bank.

Meanwhile the strawberries, raspberries and tayberries are loving the damp and warm with sunny spells and the crop is good despite the thieving slugs and snails. And we are about to have a glut of peas. Oh well – time for blanching and freezing required.

I think that the allotment will cover its costs this year! She says with a smile as there are plenty of parsnips to come this winter, carrots for months to come, garlic, shallots and white onions, leeks, swede and salad looking good and possibly even calabrese and broccoli! And that is before we get into the depths of beans (assorted) and cabbages not yet planted out. And a variety of other goodies to long to list.

I certainly was not singing in the rain on the allotment yesterday afternoon. Yes it was forecast, yes it was meant to be that heavy and no I didn’t take a waterproof coat. Because it was far too warm for any such sensible item of clothing!

It certainly cleared the allotment site of everyone but the pigeon men working inside their “constructions” and myself.

Sure - I could have gone home without getting so wet but when it’s raining it’s a good time to plant out and to sow seeds.

However it did nothing for the shallots and garlic laid out to dry on top of the cold frame. Today is going to be a day of building some sort of frame with canes in order to be able to hang them up to dry. I’ve no idea how it’s going to be done but done it must be.

Perhaps the garden seat will have to be pressed into service! Oh but where will the idle gardener sit then? In the chair from the shed of course!

At the moment that seems to be the most likely solution but watch this space as the bench in question is possibly not as big as the crop that was ready for picking yesterday just before the rains came.

So that’s how the electrician felt when he had an outbreak of complaints that due to the humid weekend, many kitchen ventilators in the local council houses wouldn’t stop working. The residents couldn’t switch the darned things off.

No Sir we don’t carry spares for that model any more – the last time we were asked for any was pretty soon after Noah built his ark. Eventually a call to the manufacturer called forth an explanation as to how to fix the problem so that the ventilator could be turned on and off as required. Nice one when you have a list as long as your arm to sort out, the weather is hot and the electrician is working up a sweat.

Luckily I was first on the the list and he’d collected a whole new ventilator for my kitchen she says with a big smile. Rather than let his boss go through all the fuss of returning it and getting a credit note, I accepted his nice offer of him installing the new one.

I now have a clean, shiny kitchen fan that works on demand and isn’t covered in many a shade of paint from over the years. However it’s smaller than the one it replaced so there’s an area of wall that needs repainting. Some day, she says, some day. There’s wall paper showing – a shade of wallpaper that hasn’t been seen in the room even after the many discoveries from when the decorator stripped the sitting room area. Oh the excitement!

Hmm – do I really care about a potted history of all the wallpaper that has ever been used here? Nope – I’m not into doing a social history of popular cheap brands of wall decorations that have been used here since the 1930s since you ask. Even if I have seen quite a few of them.