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Switch Grass. It’s no laughing matter. It’s the kind of stuff that potatoes have nightmares about. Horror stories abound. Rumour has it (if you’re squeamish, move on to the next paragraph this minute) that it’s roots can grow right through a potato, skewering them as indiscriminately as you like, growing into them and growing right out the other side. The poor little spuds don’t stand a chance against the Switch’s lightening-quick tentacles of death.
This Switch character is not only a ruthless tater assassin, but also a master of disguise. You might know it as Couch, Cooch, Quick, Quitch or even Quack Grass. Sneaky.
‘The land’ is riddled with the stuff. All over the place it is, looking like butter wouldn’t melt above ground, pretending to be harmless blades of Grass while all the time it’s conducting stealth missions underground in a bid to increase its stranglehold over our soil. We’re ready for it though, armed with spades, forks and spray stuff which James has reassured me is biodegradeable. Failing that, he has unsurprisingly, informed me that we may have to resort to setting fire to the lot.
In some ways though, it’s been something of an achievement to actually identify the Switch Grass as being a particular problem. When we first set foot on the land in November, we could barely see down to the bottom of the undergrowth, what with all the weeds, rubbish, corrugated iron, barrels, glass and generally grim detritus that covered our patch. There’s a whopping great big boiler still in one corner, which the most helpful scrap metal man from a neighbouring allotment has got his eye on.
Since November, we’ve essentially been clearing the land of all the aforementioned unsightly tat. The weeds were over waist high in many places and it was with quite some satisfaction and a certain degree of pathological intent that we took it in turns to scythe the weeds down to size like wellied-up, swinging grim reapers. Personally, I found it to be quite a cathartic exercise. In fact, the scythe is now broken.
The scrap metal has all been chucked down to one end of the land and that is slowly being taken away by our ally, the scrap metal man, who is schlepping it away bit by bit. We think a greenhouse must have come to something of a violent end on the allotment at some point, because shards and remnants of glass are just scattered and hidden everywhere. We’ve picked up a lot, enough to fill two bathtubs, but you know what it’s like when you drop a glass on the kitchen floor, you just keep finding more painful little bits stuck to your socks…
It was actually pretty enjoyable, slowly but surely ridding the view of the top layer of rubble, rubbish and ruin to see what we really had to work with. There are a few blackberry bushes at the back of the land and whilst the brambles can be a bit tricksy, I think we can all feel some fruits of the forest desserts coming on. There’s an elderflower tree that’s still alive, a grapevine that’s most definitely dead and right now as I type, I can see some daffodils out the corner of my eye that are freshly cut from the plot sitting in a vase (well, a pint glass) on the side. Twee, but true.
That’s not to say that it’s not hard work. I think we’ve done pretty well so far, but its taken nearly 4 months to get the plot clear enough to start digging over so that we can start to think about planting our first potatoes later in April. I’ve lost count of the times we walked onto the land and panicked about how much there is to do. We had piles of brambles and weeds heaped all over the shop and carcasses of old carpets lying about that had previously been laid to kill off all the Switch. They were all either heaved over into the ditch at the side or if dry enough, piled up and put on a bonfire (small and controlled).
It is something of a haven up there and we know each other well enough to be able to work together in companiable silence, punctuated with a few seasonal outdoorsy sniffs. A colleague on a nearby allotment keeps doves, so we watch them circle and swoop above us in formation from time to time and James was delighted to find a brown hen strutting her stuff across the land the other day. Each allotment is enclosed with hedges and fencing, so it feels quite snug and almost private as you amiably potter around and about.
I would be lying if I said it was entirely peaceful. The unmistakeable sound of sirens sometimes cuts through our little urban oasis, but lest we forget, St Anns Allotments is pretty close to the city centre. Before Christmas, a spate of devastating break-ins at the site brought home how easily years of hard work can be undone in a single night.
We’ve got a long way to go before anyone might want to steal our veg though, we don’t leave our tools there, and if the Switch wins, we won’t have any eatable produce anyway. So, for now, we’ll keep sieving the roots out with our forks and rakes and killing it off the best we can, but something tells me this isn’t the last you’ll hear from us about the evil Switch.
This Switch character is not only a ruthless tater assassin, but also a master of disguise. You might know it as Couch, Cooch, Quick, Quitch or even Quack Grass. Sneaky.
‘The land’ is riddled with the stuff. All over the place it is, looking like butter wouldn’t melt above ground, pretending to be harmless blades of Grass while all the time it’s conducting stealth missions underground in a bid to increase its stranglehold over our soil. We’re ready for it though, armed with spades, forks and spray stuff which James has reassured me is biodegradeable. Failing that, he has unsurprisingly, informed me that we may have to resort to setting fire to the lot.
In some ways though, it’s been something of an achievement to actually identify the Switch Grass as being a particular problem. When we first set foot on the land in November, we could barely see down to the bottom of the undergrowth, what with all the weeds, rubbish, corrugated iron, barrels, glass and generally grim detritus that covered our patch. There’s a whopping great big boiler still in one corner, which the most helpful scrap metal man from a neighbouring allotment has got his eye on.
Since November, we’ve essentially been clearing the land of all the aforementioned unsightly tat. The weeds were over waist high in many places and it was with quite some satisfaction and a certain degree of pathological intent that we took it in turns to scythe the weeds down to size like wellied-up, swinging grim reapers. Personally, I found it to be quite a cathartic exercise. In fact, the scythe is now broken.
The scrap metal has all been chucked down to one end of the land and that is slowly being taken away by our ally, the scrap metal man, who is schlepping it away bit by bit. We think a greenhouse must have come to something of a violent end on the allotment at some point, because shards and remnants of glass are just scattered and hidden everywhere. We’ve picked up a lot, enough to fill two bathtubs, but you know what it’s like when you drop a glass on the kitchen floor, you just keep finding more painful little bits stuck to your socks…
It was actually pretty enjoyable, slowly but surely ridding the view of the top layer of rubble, rubbish and ruin to see what we really had to work with. There are a few blackberry bushes at the back of the land and whilst the brambles can be a bit tricksy, I think we can all feel some fruits of the forest desserts coming on. There’s an elderflower tree that’s still alive, a grapevine that’s most definitely dead and right now as I type, I can see some daffodils out the corner of my eye that are freshly cut from the plot sitting in a vase (well, a pint glass) on the side. Twee, but true.
That’s not to say that it’s not hard work. I think we’ve done pretty well so far, but its taken nearly 4 months to get the plot clear enough to start digging over so that we can start to think about planting our first potatoes later in April. I’ve lost count of the times we walked onto the land and panicked about how much there is to do. We had piles of brambles and weeds heaped all over the shop and carcasses of old carpets lying about that had previously been laid to kill off all the Switch. They were all either heaved over into the ditch at the side or if dry enough, piled up and put on a bonfire (small and controlled).
It is something of a haven up there and we know each other well enough to be able to work together in companiable silence, punctuated with a few seasonal outdoorsy sniffs. A colleague on a nearby allotment keeps doves, so we watch them circle and swoop above us in formation from time to time and James was delighted to find a brown hen strutting her stuff across the land the other day. Each allotment is enclosed with hedges and fencing, so it feels quite snug and almost private as you amiably potter around and about.
I would be lying if I said it was entirely peaceful. The unmistakeable sound of sirens sometimes cuts through our little urban oasis, but lest we forget, St Anns Allotments is pretty close to the city centre. Before Christmas, a spate of devastating break-ins at the site brought home how easily years of hard work can be undone in a single night.
We’ve got a long way to go before anyone might want to steal our veg though, we don’t leave our tools there, and if the Switch wins, we won’t have any eatable produce anyway. So, for now, we’ll keep sieving the roots out with our forks and rakes and killing it off the best we can, but something tells me this isn’t the last you’ll hear from us about the evil Switch.
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