I’d like to begin this post with two apologies to my readers. The first apology is to the thousands (perhaps millions) of readers who have tried to access my website over the past couple of weeks and were greeted with a blank page. I know it must have been truly shocking to find my website had disappeared. I did hear rumours of widespread panic and reactionary riots and looting but at the time of writing, those reports have been unsubstantiated. In truth, I simply had some server issues that took some time to resolve. So you can all calm the tits guys, Fiona Grows Food is going nowhere. Crisis averted.

The second apology is far more pressing. I would like to issue a heartfelt apology to you all for using such a horrendously bad pun in the title of this post, that will most likely result in you singing Shania Twain to yourself for the rest of the day. But you see, it had to be done. I had a list of other options for a blog post about mulch but none of the others seemed to do the job.

Other options included (but were not limited to): Mulch ado about nothing (it’s been done before sadly), Too mulch, too soon (the second highest contender), I hate you so mulch right now, and Too mulch to handle. 

However, none had quite the same sassy pizazz or gravitas as Shania, because lets face it, not mulch much does.

Actual footage of me stroking the fence posts on my plot.

Anyway. I have been incredibly busy on the plot in recent weeks. The last time I shared a blog post, it was a pretty emotional one about using gardening as a tool to help you get through the tough patches in life, and I felt it would be hypocritical not to put my own words into action. So, because I was having a bit of a tough patch myself, I decided to take a break from pretty much everything so I could focus on my garden. I mean, what use would I be as a garden blogger if I had no gardening to blog about?

So, I took a step back from everything else in my life, apart from work obviously, and you know, washing myself and stuff. I took a step back from social media because it was having a shite effect on me and I eased off on my mad party lifestyle (who even am I?) because I realised I kind of hated people and needed to not be around them for a while. So, I took some time to simply be on my own and dig. And plant. And weed. And water. And sit in the garden. And dig again. 

I tore the whole damn plot apart. Because if I didn’t do it now, I’d simply never do it, and I was tired of feeling like my garden was a mess. And I only had myself to blame for the mess and only I could fix it.

But despite ripping up the raised beds, the decking outside my polytunnel and establishing a whole new-look allotment, there was one thing that was really pissing me off and it had been for a long time. My paths.

Decent pathways are vital on an allotment, not only do you need to have proper paths to let you access every vegetable bed, but they need to be the right width for you to be able to fit a wheelbarrow and  – obviously – yourself. Now, you’d imagine that there would be little to no upkeep on a garden path but you’d be wrong. Very fucking wrong. You have a few options, you can pave them (which to me has always seemed too permanent and I have mild to crippling commitment issues), you can leave them as they are and they’ll be full of weeds and grass (nope), you can put down gravel (too, eh, crunchy) or you can put down some bark mulch.

When I first began tending my allotment, I never fully considered just how much work the paths would be. Because, well, I was more concerned thinking about things like: “how the fuck do I grow potatoes?”, “what the fuck is soil pH?” and “I wonder if anywhere sells stiletto heeled wellies?”.

But over the years, my paths have turned out to be just as much work, if not more, than my actual vegetable beds. Many, many moons ago, I decided to use bark mulch on my allotment pathways.

A) because it smells absolutely amazing B) because I liked the idea of a natural mulch over gravel or paving and C) Because the word ‘mulch’ is only gas.

The only problem is, bark mulch, much like most organic substances, rots down over time and needs to be replaced.

The plot when I began ripping it apart. Hack of the place.

Added to that, there’s also the little issue of mypex (weed suppressing fabric for all my non-gardening connoisseur pals), which generally needs to be put down on the paths before the mulch so weeds don’t take over and grow through your mulch.

So, what’s the problem then?

Well, pull up a stool there, pour yourself a drink and let me fucking tell you what the problem is. After years of the poxy Irish weather, the constant rain, the snow storms and well, more poxy rain; this winter, my paths had all turned into weed-riddled, mushy, waterlogged disasters. Every time I walked onto my plot, I was pretty much going flying on my snot on my paths and no matter how much work I did on the new beds etc, the place just looked like a warzone.

And that don’t impress me mulch.

Fucking yesssss, that punchline took a while didn’t it?

Seriously. The state of it.

And so, I realised that the job I’d been putting off for about a year finally had to be tackled. I had to completely redo my pathways. In my naive brain, I thought it might take a couple of days. How wrong I was. I quickly realised that in order to re-do all my paths, I first had to undo what was already there. So, I had to take up all the old bark, which at this stage, was just compacted mud. On top of that, there were mountains of weeds growing through the weed suppressant (because life is a cruel joke). So that all had to go too.

Imagine this, you decide to re-carpet your house and in order to do it, you have to pull up your carpet. Pretty straightforward right? Well, imagine that carpet was absolutely soaking wet and had the roots of a thousand dandelions embedded in it. Then to top it off, it was also covered in a thick layer of compacted mud which was teeming with insects and worms.

Well, first of all, you would probably move house or set it on fire for insurance purposes because it would be easier than dealing with the nightmare ahead of you, and secondly, you would have to seriously call into question how the hell you’ve been putting up with it for so long. Also, you would probably consider giving it an auld go-over with the hoover or something.

Sadly, none of these were options available to me in the garden so I had to just bloody do it all by hand. Cue Fiona spending days attempting to pull up huge swathes of heavy, wet, fabric covered in mud and worms and slug goo. I’m not going to lie, there were quite a few instances of Fiona falling on her arse, mud all over her face and arse, dignity long gone. And not only did I have to rip it all up, but then all the crap had to go somewhere, so I spent a whole day just carrying piles of literal mud around the allotments like a crazed lunatic trying to find a bin or skip for it. All I was short of doing was walking up to people and fucking flinging it at them in desperation and legging it in the other direction.

But I eventually got rid of every last bit of old bark and mypex. And just when I thought the hard work was behind me and all the crap was gone, the realisation hit me that I now faced the joyous prospect of somehow getting tonnes of fresh bark mulch back onto my plot.

And that was the moment I decided to give up gardening and go take up a nice, relaxing hobby like air traffic controlling or something.

Goodbye old decking, hello hard work

Nah, not really, but you have no idea how tempted I was to throw my hat at it, because the hard work was just beginning. What I was left with after the great mypex disaster of 2018, was a garden that had horrible muddy paths that within two days were already beginning to sprout weeds (how? why?).

So, I had to begin getting some bark mulch for my paths and was beginning to worry, because the stuff costs more than a fucking car to buy. But, that’s when something magic happened Truly magic. Like, I don’t believe in angels or karma or anything of the sort, but I went to the plot last week to discover that the lads who run the allotments had ordered in absolutely LOADS of bark mulch and that it was…wait for it…free. Piles and piles of the stuff.

Hallelujah.

Only problem was, it wasn’t exactly near my own plot, and so began the great wheelbarrow relay of the year (beginning to understand just how much hard work an allotment is?). So, I spent hours yesterday, wheeling a wheelbarrow approximately 9,000 miles to the pile of bark, filling it and wheeling it back 14,000 miles. The extra five thousand miles were created by the sheer bloody weight of the thing combined with my dwindling will to live. I bashed my legs to pieces with the barrow and had a very close call with a pothole, but me tell you guys, it was the best work out I’ve ever had. My arms are killing me, my back is killing me, my legs are killing me and my arse feels like I’ve done about 200 squats.

I think. I’ve never actually done a squat in my life because I’m allergic to the gym.

But the result is that I now have the majority of the allotment redesigned, re-dug and have gorgeous new paths full of delicious bark mulch. No more slip sliding my way around the garden.

Plus I now have a tan that rivals the entire cast of Made in Chelsea and am probably more toned than all the cross-fit obsessed lads on Tinder combined.

Of course, I’ll have to redo all of this again in about two years but hopefully by then I’ll have won the lotto and can pay some handsome, topless lads to do it for me while their equally handsome mates hand-feed me grapes and fan me with palm leaves while I whip the workers with bamboo canes, laughing maniacally.

If not, I’ll just set the place on fire.

Oh and if you think that was all enough work for one week, I haven’t even bloody started on what I planted, but I’ll keep that one for another day because I have to go lather some lotion on my thighs.

Because they are bruised. From the wheelbarrow. Get your mind out of the gutter lads.