First earlies in the ground at last!

We finally got to plant out our first earlies on Monday, or at least the first batch – we got two rows in the ground, running North to South, where the peas were planted last year. Our crop rotation, given that we’re still bringing areas of the plot into cultivation, is that the potatoes and the peas/beans have essentially swapped places from where they were last year, our brassicas will be going into the area of the plot which was rotovated in November and nearly everything else is going into raised beds.

I’m happy to have made a start on the spuds, although I can tell that Himself and I will fall out over the rest of the planting because I want to make sure we have enough room in the best soil for our maincrops, which were a dismal failure last year through running out of room and having to plant them in relatively unimproved soil that hadn’t been used for several years as far as we can tell.

Himself, on the other hand, has confidence that we’ll get all the potatoes: first earlies, second earlies and maincrops into well prepared soil in good time. As earlies don’t keep as well as maincrops, I’m willing to throw away a row of first earlies that are ready to be planted, in favour of getting a row of maincrops into that spot in a few weeks. He isn’t.

My argument is a good one, I think. It’s that we actually only got 8lb of maincrop potatoes for our 5lb sowing – which is a truly pathetic result by anybody’s measure! His argument is that we’re better organised this year, which is year 2 on plot 201; the soil is in better nick; and we won’t be co-working on another plot so our energies won’t be divided.

I wonder who will win?

Labels: allotment-first-earlies, allotment-potatoes

Purple-sprouting broccoli update

So here’s a picture that I really don’t understand. Pigeons eat our broccoli – that I understand. They denude the entire leaves of the plant right down to the ribs, like feathery caterpillars – that I understand. But not eating the glorious purple florets – that I simply do not understand at all!

But there it is – having eaten the leaves, the pigeons appear to have buggered off and left the broccoli itself to us. This is the unprotected broccoli which I genuinely thought would not produce a crop at all – the broccoli in the cage is about five to seven days behind this stuff, and has all its leaves. Anyway, I’m grateful to the pigeons for leaving us this delicious feast.

And I was also wrong about the parsnips – we hadn’t eaten them all, we had two monsters lurking in the raised bed, so we lifted them yesterday and today we’re having them as part of a lamb stew cooked in the slow cooker – what a bonanza! And so, we're harvesting the last of the parsnips in the same week that I'm digging manure into the bed in which I'll be planting this year's parsnip seed - isn't that wonderful?

The ground is frozen though, so I don’t think we’ll get our spuds in until the weekend.

Labels: allotment-broccoli, allotment-crops, allotment-harvest-march, allotment-parsnips

Heavy winters make for a hectic allotment spring

I’m so very panicked and depressed when I look at this photograph from a year ago – the peas were almost ready to hit the ground running, the rhubarb was bursting from its pots, we had wallflowers ready to be planted, trays and trays of leeks that were already a couple of inches tall …

And so far, this year, we have absolutely nothing in the cold frame at all. Even the greenhouse isn’t quite entirely full yet (90% full maybe – which is okay, perhaps, although it feels like some kind of moral failure) and all we have in the ground is some shallots.

This weekend I must get some garlic planted, as well as rest of the manure into the soil for the potatoes which are now showing lovely dark shoots. I just hope that the weather cooperates!

Labels: allotment-cold-frame, allotment-crops, allotment-seedlings

March allotment greenhouse

Here are the Big Red tomato seedlings, which I have, since this photo was taken, transplanted into individual three and a half inch pots. There were fourteen seeds in the packet and ten of them germinated, which I think is a pretty good rate of return – I shall keep three seedlings for myself, and once the others are four inches tall I’ll take them down to the allotment shop to be sold to raise funds.

The leeks are springing out of their compost, but I still think I’m not going to have enough of them – I probably need to start another tray of seeds. The Nantes carrots are showing pretty well now, and I’ve got some more nasturtium seeds on the go. The peas have almost all germinated – about thirty have appeared between 8am and midday!

I need to be starting other tomatoes, and deciding if I’m going to grow peppers from seed or wait until I can get plants from either another allotment holder or a nursery – we’ve not grown them from seed ourselves before, not having had a greenhouse. And the cucumbers should go in next week too … it’s all getting rather hectic!

And last night the frost was this heavy … I feel quite depressed when I think about it.

Labels: allotment-greenhouse, allotment-seedlings, march-allotment

Greenhouse growing in February

It’s all about germination right now. Looking back on last year, when we planted 50 pots of peas (that 150 pea seeds) and nearly all of them were in strong growth by the last week of February, I’m a bit shocked to realise that this year we’ve planted the same number of pots, but with only two seeds each, and several weeks later, so that today we only have a dozen pea seedlings, rather than the hundred plus that we had this time last year. And I’m trying not to panic about it, because actually, it got really difficult last spring to get all the pea seedlings in the ground in good order – the weather turned wet and nasty and so we ended up having mammoth planting sessions that were back-breaking and even then a few peas began to falter in their pots and had their growth checked. We said we’d start later this year and so we have … but it feels all wrong not to have vast acres (okay, vast square feet) of growth going on under glass!

The first of the leek seedlings have appeared – I always forget how miniscule they are for the first few days of life. We didn’t plant enough leeks last year, so I’m hoping that this year we can really get enough in the ground to carry us right through the winter.

Last year’s saved nasturtium seed has rotted off – very strange. I’ve never had that happen before.

Three tiny Nantes carrot seedlings have poked their heads through the compost in their container. They’ll be grown in the greenhouse in the ten inch deep pot they’ve been sown into, to give us very early fingerling carrots.

The picture has been drawn in the window of a neighbour's shed - can't work out if it's graffiti or bored half-term grandchildren getting creative!

Labels: allotment -leeks allotment-seeds, allotment-greenhouse

Growing sweet potatoes in England

Margaret emailed allotmentblogger@gmail.com to ask what I knew about growing sweet potatoes. The answer is virtually nothing! But I do know a man who grows them, so I wandered along to talk to Andy, whose allotment work is supervised by a seagull called Henry who shares Andy’s lunch and will eat from a fork (I kid you not!)

Apparently the key thing here is to get some organic sweet potatoes if you’re using supermarket stock – because most of the other ones they sell have been treated in some way to stop them sprouting. It’s not that easy to get seed tubers of sweet potatoes in the UK, but Andy doesn’t even bother, he just grows supermarket tubers.

He lays them lengthways, half-covered only, in damp sand over a heated base tray to promote sprouting in early March and this causes ‘slips’ to grow and when they are four or five inches long he breaks them off and pots them into 1 litre pots. Other people grow the slips by setting the lower half (generally more pointy) of the tuber in a jar of water on a windowsill apparently.

Then in late May or early June, once all risk of frost has passed, he sets them out into a sunny trench. Where they go insane! It takes at least 110 days for them to mature and because they are Ipomeas (morning glories) they spread out like jungle plants and tend to take over nearby areas. Keep them warm, keep them watered but don’t worry about pests, it appears they don’t really have any – a bit of wire worm in late tubers is about all he’s seen, he says.

Dig them up as late in September as the good weather permits, then put them in a greenhouse for a week to let the skins cure and the tubers sweeten and Bob’s your uncle, apparently!

Now this is all based on growing in the South East of England, and shouldn't be taken as a guide to anywhere else, but if you treat sweet potatoes as a semi-tropical plant, I think you'll do okay

Labels: allotment-greenhouse, allotment-sweet-potatoes

First early potatoes and February weather

I can’t believe that some of our allotment-holders have already put their earliest spuds in, but they have!

I won’t be planting mine until at least mid-March, but this allotment-holder appears to know something I don’t – I fully expected to find some containerised potatoes had been planted on site over the weekend, as I know a lot of our plot-holders are very keen to start off first earlies in tubs and sacks, but I was utterly gobsmacked to find these substantial rows of potatoes already well earthed up.

I shall track down the gardener and find out what variety he or she has planted and what aftercare they use, as my soil stills seems too cold and wet to make a good base for potato planting, but perhaps there’s something to be learnt from this grower? Or perhaps they are just wildly optimistic …

Labels: allotment-potatoes