Allotment tasks for October

It’s so hard to plan the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow 24th is White Night in Brighton and that means many cultural events with places staying open all night. And of course we all get an extra hour’s sleep on Sunday, to make up for staying up all night – but should we go to the allotment on Saturday, and risk not making it to White Night, or leave it until Sunday and risk not making it to the allotment if we did many to party the night through?

Then the teen wants to have a barbecue at the allotment on Hallowe’en. Should we view this as a good idea, and perhaps a sign of his impending interest in things horticultural, or should we fear the arrival of a dozen teenagers who might trample our beds and squash our squashes?

Whatever, the top part of the allotment (the bed of shame, as I call it) has been strimmed and looks a lot better, once it’s rotovated it should be better still! I’m already planning which squashes to grow on it next year. Any recommendations?

And the picture shows what I hope to be doing next year. One of our allotment neighbours has been cutting the ferns on his asparagus bed – we have exactly six ferns to cut: you could fold them into a shoebox and still have room for shoes, but we dream of the day we’ll have a heap of ferns to cut, just like these!

And yes, that means the AGM went well and I have 'my' plot for another year!

Labels: allotment-asparagus, allotment-barbecue

Autumn Asparagus Care

We’ve just fed our asparagus with their autumn feed of bone-meal and hand-weeded the bed which was a chance to lightly trowel the meal into the soil. Their roots are very shallow, so you can’t hoe the plants without risking damage. Because we only planted the crowns last year, we haven’t harvested any asparagus yet, but in the next week or so we’ll cut the foliage down to about two inches above the ground – at the moment it’s still green, so it’s still taking in nutrients but once it turns golden it won’t be feeding so it can be removed to avoid any winter wind damage.

We hope that next year we’ll be able to harvest our first stalks – which we’ll do when they are about six inches tall, and although we won’t get much from them in their first harvestable year, they do grow quickly so we’ll be cutting every third or fourth day.

We don’t have Asparagus Beetle, but because it has been seen on the site, we planted our crowns in a raised bed – we hope that we won’t get them either, although if we hand-pick the beetles off as soon as we see them, we should be okay. The important thing if you do get them is to cut down and burn any foliage in winter because the grubs overwinter either in the soil or in debris left around the base of the plant. We also have bottle waterers next to each crown so that we can water the roots of the plant without having to make the soil surface damp: this means that weed seeds that land on the surface get no extra encouragement to germinate because we never water the soil as a whole.

Labels: allotment-asparagus

Allotment Gardening: Raised Beds

We’ve been having a good old ding-dong on our site about raised beds, amongst other things. We’ve put a quarter of 201 into a raised bed system, with chipping paths in between, and so far we’re pleased with the results.

The benefits of raised beds include:

1. Being able to grow a wider range of plants on difficult soils or where a plant requires a specific pH as you can change the soil mix inside the box.
2. Reducing the need to bend down to work on the soil at ground level
3. Improved drainage (assuming you’ve improved the soil in the bed, that is) which allows the soil to warm quicker in spring and bringing forward the vegetable growing season
4. Pest control – carrot fly is defeated by a foot tall bed, slugs and snails do not like crawling across chipping or grit paths to get to plants and selective treatments like garlic sprays or seaweed mulches can be more easily applied
5. Watering is often reduced because you’re not watering the space between plants as they are closer packed in a bed, and retention is usually better too, because the sides of the bed reduce wind-induced evaporation slightly.

Anybody else got any benefits from raised beds to share?

There are downsides, of course. Raised beds are not suitable for all crops – you can’t really grow spuds in them, for example, because of earthing up. If you get a pest or infestation in a raised bed, you’ve got to tear out the bed and dig out the soil to get rid of it. If you are the kind of gardener who grows large amounts of crops for a big family, it may be better to stick to the long row system rather than fiddling around with raised beds, and – of course – the capital cost in setting up beds is considerably higher than just digging and planting. Also, until you get used to them, you are inclined to trip over them and bruise your ankles – or perhaps that’s just me.

But in general, we’re happy with our raised beds. I planted out our asparagus at the weekend, in what will be there permanent home (the grey bed) and I am fondly imagining the years of asparagus luxury ahead …

Labels: allotment-asparagus, allotment-raised-beds

Allotment Asparagus – first make your asparagus bed …

So we’ve got some asparagus and now it needs a home. It’s a long term business, is asparagus. Forget your cut and come again crops, your sow and forget ‘em beans and carrots, asparagus are prima donna types, but to be fair, they produce for 10-20 years once established and are a wonderfully healthy crop, high in B vitamins, vitamin C, calcium, and iron as well as being as tasty as it is possible for anything to be and still be legal.

Asparagus thrives in full sun and prefers a light, well-drained soil. It will not tolerate competition; so prepare the planting area carefully and keep it mulched after planting. Asparagus is a heavy feeder so stonking great applications of compost will provide the necessary nutrients. A garden bed should be at least four feet wide and as long as necessary and you should dig the soil down for at least a foot. We’re planting up a three foot by four foot raised bed, which is not a huge space for asparagus, but I’m going to make a mini trench alongside the west facing fence to take the ‘overflow’ crowns, so they won’t be wasted, they just won’t get such perfect conditions.

We dug the surface last weekend, so this weekend I shall be forking in around three inches of a mixture of mushroom compost and well-rotted horse manure. The hope is that by the time we’re ready to plant out the seedlings – say around late April, the ‘ingredients’ will have blended nicely. Then, usually, you dig trenches of at least ten inches deep and ten wide, about two and a half feet apart. We shall be staggering our seedlings in the bed, rather than trenching them, as we’d only get about three plants if we used the traditional method!

Anyway, the whole trenching thing is just designed to help the plants grow, so we can do that in a raised bed by adding soil to the bed as a whole. The classic style is to add two inches compost to the bottom of the trench, then an inch of soil to stop the organic material scorching the asparagus.

Then you put the asparagus on this mound of goodness, and if you’re trench planting, you set them 15 to 18 inches apart. Put a couple of inches of soil over the plants, and water. When the first spears appear, fill in around them until the trench is level with the soil surface, without covering the asparagus foliage. Once you reach that level, you should mulch the plants with a good layer of compost or some other organic material and make sure you weed well, you don't want the kind of weed undergrowth you can see in this picture, for example!

Labels: allotment-asparagus, allotment-raised-beds

Celeriac, cold frames and peas

I’m very worried about our celeriac seedlings – they are, not to be too polite about it – scrawny. Soilman said on his blog that these were difficult creatures to grow, but really I think all ours are going to give up the ghost. The only thing to do is try and give them enough light (without too much heat) and see if they pull through, but I shall be starting off another tray of seeds this weekend, to see if we can’t get a later germinating bunch to still produce tubers by harvest time.

On the other hand, the peas are great – they’ve got to go in the ground this weekend because the second crop we set to germinate last week are already appearing. We can put peas on both 235 and 201 so we stand a good chance of getting a big harvest and as we and Dunk all like peas, I don’t think there will be complaints about overstocking! They freeze well too.

The cold frame on 201 looked ridiculously big when we took over the plot in October last year, this week it’s half full and starting to look worringly small …

You can see rhubarb potted up to share with other allotment holders, wallflowers, those sturdy peas I mentioned earlier, blackcurrant and redcurrant cuttings taking root, the asparagus seedlings I came back with last week and a globe artichoke that seems to be deceased but might still surprise us by putting out some growth. A good haul, I think.

And today's task, after committee meeting, will have to be planting out our first early potatoes - watch this space!

Labels: allotment-artichoke, allotment-asparagus, allotment-celeriac, allotment-cold-frame, allotment-currants, allotment-peas

Allotment crops – asparagus?

I’m starting to wonder if we’re grown up enough to grow asparagus. Okay, we’re in our forties, so if we’re not grown up enough now, we never will be, but it’s such a luxurious, complicated crop, isn’t it?

Well the Royal Horticultural Society begs to differ. Their website says:

Asparagus can be raised from seed or young dormant plants - crowns - can be purchased. Sow seeds of an all-male F1 hybrid singly into modules in February and transplant in early June. Most gardeners choose one-year-old crowns, planting in March or April.

Right, so we’re going to buy crowns, I’ve got enough seed trays on my hands as it is. Then what?

Fork over the prepared area and dig a trench 30cm (12in) wide and 20cm (8in) deep. Work in well-rotted manure in the bottom, cover with 5cm (2in) of the excavated soil and make a 10cm-high (4in) ridge down the centre of the trench. Place the crowns on top, spacing them 30-45cm (12-18in) apart (right). Leave 45cm (18in) between rows and stagger the plants. Spread the roots evenly and fill in the trench, leaving the bud tips just visible. Water in and mulch with 5cm (2in) of well-rotted manure.

Okay, we can do that – in fact we have a trench already dug to much these proportions.

Asparagus beds must be kept weed free - best done by hand as the shallow roots are easily damaged by hoeing. Mulching discourages weeds and retains moisture. Apply a general fertiliser in early spring and repeat once harvesting has finished.

Oh dear, I knew hand weeding would appear somewhere – and as the male of the species is six foot two, I know which of us will be deputised to stoop over the asparagus trench as being ‘closer to the ground’.

To avoid top-growth breaking off in wind and damaging the crown, use canes and twine either side of the row for support. Remove any female plants (those bearing orange-red berries) and any seedlings.

Hmm, that sounds a bit more complicated – I can spot the females but I’m never good at pulling up baby plants …

To harvest, cut individual spears with a sharp knife 2.5cm (1in) below the soil when they are no more than 18cm (7in) tall. In warm weather, harvest every two to three days for best quality spears. Do not harvest for the first two years. In the third year, pick from mid-April for six weeks, and in subsequent years for eight weeks.

Ah, so if we do it now, we don’t get to eat it until 2011? Better get cracking then ….

Labels: allotment-asparagus, allotment-crops, allotment-perennials, asparagus-bed