Know Your Enemy!

What a fabulous Easter weekend. Sun shine and heat! Although Matron does not do flowers, I like to leave some of my veggies to set flowers and go to seed in order to encourage bees and other pollinating insects. Here you can see my brussels sprouts and leeks just about to flower.

Elsewhere on the battlefield I have been straining my back for hours to weed my plot and get this hard London clay soil into shape for planting. This bindweed is just relentless.

This nasty stuff is everywhere, it always is, every year despite taking every single piece out of the soil.. it returns. When you try to dig it up or pick it out it is so brittle that even if a tiny piece remains it sprouts and continues. This is not just Matron's patch, but everywhere gardeners battle with the enemy be it dandelion, dock or couch grass.

So it made me annoyed last week when my favourite TV Gardener - my telly-welly-totty Monty Don, demonstrated how to grow vegetables. He just put his hands into perfect, friable compost, made a little hole and popped in a seed. Simple! No digging, no sweating, no broken fingernails, no bags, no weeds... just perfect conditions. Grrr! Matron had to sweat for hours on this claggy London clay to make even this much progress.