Still snow – still no work on the plot

We’ve been to the plot to harvest some parsnips from the raised bed which were only a bit frozen in, and to collect some of the leeks that had been heeled into a sheltered corner of the plot in expectation of the rotten weather, but we really hadn’t expected rottenness of this duration! Some of the purple-sprouting broccoli has flowered nicely, but as it’s also frozen solid, we left it in place, hoping to get up as soon as there is a thaw and harvest the lot.

It feels very strange not to be able to do anything vegetable-growing wise – we wandered around and I managed to take a few atmospheric photographs of the sun going down over the snowy site.

I peered at my broad beans which are poking through the snow and seem to be fine, but who knows? Snowdrops have a special enzyme in their cells that allows them to survive minus temperatures without damage, but I’m not sure that broad beans do and I’m bracing myself to discover that when the snow goes, so do the broad beans. It would be a tragedy if they do, but as snow acts as an insulator, removing it at this point would be more likely to damage the seedlings than help them.

The bed in which we should have been planting our shallots is under six inches of snow, as it turns out to be in an area where a drift has built up. The shallots themselves are in a cupboard under the stairs – who knows when they will eventually get into the soil?

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-leeks, allotment-parsnips, allotment-shallots, allotment-snow

Allotment – first frost

We had our first frost last night, and it had to happen after a full day of rain, didn’t it?

So I zoomed up to the plot today, to see what, if any, damage had been done. All our broad bean seedlings seem to have survived, but just to be on the safe side, I’ve covered as many as possible with bottle cloches. These are the same clear plastic bottles that we use in summer, narrow end down, as watering funnels to the roots of thirsty plants (so we don’t have to water the soil, meaning the weeds get no benefit) and are then inverted to cover tender plants, wide end down.

Rather wonderfully, several of the beans were too big to fit inside even a BIG bottle, so I just have to hope they will cope on their own. And un-wonderfully, I discovered that our brilliant broad bean supports have one major problem – we’ve put side supports in to strengthen the whole six row system and that means you can’t actually walk between the rows … so those side supports are going to have to come down when we harvest, if not before!

I’m glad that at the weekend I found time to cut down and mulch my globe artichokes, I know that not everybody does this and somebody asked for pictures last year, so here’s one.

Why do I do it? Well, partly because somebody who was a great gardener taught me to, years ago, and I’ve always carried on, and partly because there are two reasons that I think it could be useful – the first is that rain does fill up the gaps between the stems on globe artichoke leaves and that can cause them to rot in the winter, and the second is that their fleshy leaves do easily get damaged by frost, so cutting the outer leaves off and using them to cover the inner leaves and base of the plant, to keep out both rain and frost, seems sensible.

Now I’m worrying is that nobody else does this at all – although perhaps I shouldn’t worry as I do know that my artichokes are the envy of my neighbours.

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-frost, allotment-globe-artichokes

October allotment harvests

We got the last of our onions in during September, but you can still be harvesting them this month. Fortunately we’d already worked out where and how we were going to store them, as we didn’t have a single onion fail to come good this year – we’ve gone for placing them on mesh shelves in our dry and airy shed at home rather than hanging them in the one on the allotment which is still prone to springing new leaks in the roof. We’ve cut off all the foliage, just as the do in the supermarket, and they’ll be kept cool and dark. They are separated from each other so that there’s no chance one diseased onion will spread its problems to others.

We don’t have to worry about storing potatoes as our maincrops were so paltry, but we can see our neighbours lifting and storing their maincrops, sometimes in big paper sacks, sometimes in boxes of peat.

We’ve also stripped, blanched and frozen all our corn cobs to see us through the winter – although they take up a lot of room in the freezer, we think it’s worth it to have that delicious summer sweetcorn taste in the middle of winter.

We didn’t have outdoor tomatoes this year, but all the ones on the site have gone, after a very cold night this week, so the plants are being dug up and removed. If your tomatoes had blight, don’t compost them, as you risk overwintering the spores for next summer.

We've also been storing pears, taking them from the tree before they fall, checking them for blemishes, then setting them in paper nests (recycling old printing paper) in the shed. They will be delicious for several months.

And soon it will be time to plant the broad beans and start all over again!

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-onions, allotment-pears, allotment-sweetcorn

Seed Saving on Allotments

This is the first year we’re trying to save our own seed. And I’ll be honest – so far, we’ve been totally rubbish at it!

What we were going to save:

Peas
Broad beans
Runner beans
French beans
Borlotti beans
Rocket
Tomatoes

What we’ve actually managed to harvest seed from so far:

Runner beans
Rocket
Tomatoes

The runner beans are gorgeous as they dry and the rocket went to seed so fast that we only got two meals from it, so there was no problem harvesting seed from that crop! The tomato seed has already been tucked away in envelopes for next year – we are very happy with our greenhouse tomato crop which is still harvesting well.

The broad beans were a total seed-harvest fail. On 235 we planned to harvest, but the pods we were leaving got picked (that’s the risk of co-working) and on 201 the crop, which wasn’t overwintered, was destroyed by blackfly, so there was barely enough of a crop to eat a meal from, let alone leave to set pods for harvesting.

French beans – we’ve left some pods to get big – we’ll see if we are actually organised enough to do the harvesting bit in a week or so.

Borlotti beans – we’re leaving these to dry on the vine, so some will just be used for food and others for sowing next year … that’s the theory anyway!

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-broad-beans, allotment-crops, allotment-harvest, allotment-seed-saving, allotment-tomatoes

Mid-June Allotment Harvest

Okay, I’m bragging, but we’re thrilled with the haul we’re getting from 201, given that we only took it over in October 2008.

We can’t take credit for the strawberries, because they were in place before we got our plot, but the broad beans, peas, sweet peas, radishes and rhubarb are all products of our labour since last autumn!

The broad beans have been a bit of a disappointment – they aren’t cropping nearly as heavily as the overwintered beans that we planted on 235 because the spring-planted seedlings have been hideously attacked by blackfly. So we’ve learnt our lesson for next year: even if the mice do take a few seeds over the winter, it’s much better to plant them in situ because they don’t get the problem with blackfly that the spring planted ones do.

The peas are delicious though, and so far only one batch has made it to the saucepan, all the others have been eaten straight out of the pod. We are pea gluttons and no mistake.

The rhubarb hasn’t produced heavily this year, which is not surprising given that we only transplanted it in November, but it’s very tasty and didn’t bolt in May like the more established rhubarb on other people’s plots did.

So, time for a recipe?

Rhubarb and Strawberry Pudding

6 sticks rhubarb, cut into chunks
250 grams strawberries, hulled and halved
250 grams caster sugar in two 125 gram amounts
75 grams butter or margarine
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
150 grams plain flour mixed with 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
150 ml milk

While the oven is getting to 180 C or gas 4, grease a large square baking dish, wash fruit if necessary, and put in a bowl with 125 grams of sugar, stirring until fruit and sugar are well mixed. I like to use lemon verbena sugar for this recipe (just put some lemon verbena leaves in a jar with white caster sugar and store for around a month, shaking every couple of days to get a lovely lemony scent and savour).

Then pour them into the baking dish and spread them out evenly. Beat the rest of the sugar with the fat and add the egg and vanilla before alternating additions of milk and big spoonfuls of flour. Beat until smooth and pour the batter over the fruit. Should cook in around an hour, or when a skewer pushed into the centre comes out clean. Lovely with cream or thick yoghurt and equally good hot or cold. This is not a neat and tidy pudding though, so don’t expect it to look posh, even if it tastes scrummy.

Labels: allotment harvest, allotment-broad-beans, allotment-recipes, allotment-rhubarb, allotment-strawberries

Allotment planting: broad beans

Yesterday was broad bean day. We’ve had broad beans overwintering on 235 and the seem to be doing okay, but there were many more ready to go into the ground and we’d seen the distinctive black and white flowers on many a plot during the previous week, so we felt that we should be getting ours sorted out too. Most broad beans are quite sturdy, but in windy Sussex they still need some support, so Himself got on with creating that, while I dug up the area that will become our brassica cage. It was horrible work, at exactly the wrong time of year, the soil is still cold and yet the perennial weeds have got away wonderfully, so that it was a combination of deeply compressed earth, tussocky grass and horrible root systems that had to be dug out.

I mention this so that you understand that while Himself was making pretty things, I was doing the ugly, unnoticed labour that later allows pretty things to be made – I don’t want you to think I was swanning around drinking tea and talking to the neighbours while he toiled away.

So eventually, bean supports!

Because of the mouse, shrew, rat problem (we’ve seen them all in the past year) we start all our peas and beans in pots and don’t plant them out until we’re sure the plant has grown enough to have completely absorbed the legume from which it grew – it’s those legumes that are so attractive to rodents that they dig up the plant (or seed) to eat it. Once the plant has taken the stored nourishment from that pea or bean, which is really an embryo, the plant doesn’t have the same attractiveness for rodents. I don’t know if they can actually smell the seed in the ground, but it seems to me that they can.

Our autumn-sown Aquadulce Claudia went into the ground on 235 in October, and have suddenly shot up, as they always do in spring. It’s often not necessary to pinch out the tops of autumn-sown broad beans as for some reason they don’t have the same blackfly problem as spring-sown ones, possibly because the overwintered leaves are very much tougher than the tender spring growth.

Labels: allotment-blackfly, allotment-broad-beans, allotment-perennial-weeds, allotment-rodents, aquadulce claudia

Allotment frosts and fears

So, after we spent the weekend planting out peas (Meteor) and second early potatoes (Charlotte), we had a heavy frost on Sunday night.

The peas on 201, which is fully fenced, are planted against a bit of old wire mesh with metal posts to hold it steady and Himself pegged some horticultural fleece over them in a sort of makeshift tent. I have every confidence that they will be fine. But on 235, where there is no fence to provide even limited frost protection, the peas are being supported by twiggy branches and they don’t have any fleece over them. I have every expectation that they will have been blighted by air frost, but I’m hoping I might just be able to nip out the blackened tips and they’ll get back on course.

The broad beans on 235 have been overwintered – they were protected by old double-glazing panels supported on bricks until about a week ago when they got too tall and were pressing their heads against the glass. I know that if they’ve been frost-blighted, they should come back if I take out the tops, which we’d probably do anyway, given that broad bean tops attract blackfly like nobody’s business. The second sowing of broad beans is still in the cold frame at 201, so they should be fine.

The good news, as far as I am concerned, is that I prevented Himself watering the onion sets on 201 on Sunday afternoon – onions don’t need a vast amount of water, and had they been given a good soak, they would probably have lifted from the ground on the frost and could have been wiped out. Of course, all this is speculation until I get up there, this afternoon, to see what the actual damage is.

Our latest frost date is, as far as I can discover, 18 April, so there are plenty more frightening nights ahead. Some plants, like the Japanese quince hedge in the photograph, have a special enzyme that protects them from frost damage: snowdrops have it too, which is why they don't blacken when they are blanketed in snow. I could wish that some clever boffin would hybridise it into spring vegetables ...

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-fences, allotment-frost, allotment-peas, allotment-potatoes, horticultural fleece

I hate those meeces to pieces

There’s almost nothing that can be done on the allotments right now. On 201 we can’t paint fences because the wood is too wet, we can’t dig because the soil is too wet. On 235 we were chagrined today to discover that something (mice?) has been along and eaten several of the broad beans we carefully protected with double-glazing panels just a week ago.

So we had a mystery: mice, birds, some kind of insect or monopod? We think it’s mice and there’s not a great deal to be done about that, except that June, our neighbour at the other end of the site, when we’re working on 201, gave us a tip. If you grow your beans and peas in pots, when they’ve got a good root system you can just lift off the pea or bean from which they grew and which is what attracts the mice to the plants. So when we plant our spring broad beans in the greenhouse, that’s what we will do. For now, on plot 235, we’ve simply put some more twiggy branches around the plants in case it’s birds, and stuck some bamboo canes that were dipped in Jeyes Fluid around the perimeter of the plants, in the hope that it will confuse the noses of the mice.

And Sunday is Seedy Sunday here in Hove actually, so I hope to find some seeds to swap/buy and I’ll tell you all about it next time!

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-mice, allotment-peas, allotment-pests, allotment-seedy-sunday

Allotment Bird Scarers

Not the best photograph in the world, but you can see the problem. At this time of year, when food is scarce, the disgruntled allotment-holder finds him or herself fighting with birds.

Now the crow, bless him, is really not the problem. He turns up from time to time and will hop down ponderously to snaffle a bit of bacon sandwich, but really he’s not that interested in pecking our broad beans, that’s the pigeons.

And this is the scaraweb!

I ‘scored’ this off freecycle at the end of last year, and while it looks like a crash-landing by Santa, it does seem to be working – also, it’s biodegradable.

The problem with any bird scarer is that birds soon get used to it. You can try:




• Toy snakes (should be more than two feet long)
• Toy cats
• CDs on strings
• Bottles on canes
• Bunting
• Windmills
• Plastic shopping bags tied to string


But any and all of these only work because the birds are surprised and uncertain. As soon as they get used to the whatever-it-is then they’ll be back, pecking the tops out of beans and peas and taking the sprouts off Brussels. So what you have to do, apparently, is change your bird scarer system every couple of days so that there’s a constant novelty to the process. I assume this means that by the end of the week your resident birds will have forgotten what they saw on your plot at the beginning of the week, so they have a longer memory than goldfish, but not by much. Our fellow allotment-holders have a plethora of devices, so I’m going to photograph them and share them with you over the weeks ahead …

Labels: allotment-bird-scarers, allotment-birds, allotment-brassicas, allotment-broad-beans, allotment-pests

Allotment tasks – December

This is the month to start forcing rhubarb. The simple way to do it is to set a large bucket or dustbin over the hibernating crown to encourage the fresh, pink shoots to form – they do this better in darkness. A good mulch of straw or well rotted manure or compost cast over the crown before covering creates extra warmth to speed up the process further. As we now have a greenhouse (hurrah) and we’ve dug up and transplanted some crowns this year, we took one good root home, left it out in the frost for a couple of nights (this apparently accelerates the new growth. I am not convinced, as all the other advice is to protect crowns from frost but hey, it’s an experiment!) and then potted it up in a large pot with good compost, covered the pot with a black box, and set it in the greenhouse. The box exclude the light while the heat in the greenhouse should drive the forcing process so that we end up with slim, pink rhubarb as early as March!

If the weather is mild and expected to continue so for a couple of days, you can sow broad beans in a sheltered spot. The advantage of this, assuming you can keep the mice away from what they always view as an early Christmas feast, is that aphids find the tops of overwintered broad beans much less attractive than spring sown ones, because the overwintered leaves are much tougher.

this is also the ideal time to lay new paths, as can be seen in the proud example of the new plotholders on plot 254. And if the soil is neither frozen or waterlogged, you can always dig, and dig and dig …

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-december, allotment-forcing-rhubarb, allotment-paths

Broad Bean Planting

On two allotments and in one garden, I shall be sowing broad beans this weekend. There are few crops about which I’d say ‘you can’t have enough’ because you can definitely have too much of some: courgettes and spinach, for example, but broad beans, like raspberries, are something I just can’t get enough of, particularly as broad beans freeze so incredibly well.

Autumn-sown broad beans have several advantages: they do not need a rich soil and can be sown on ground that has been manured for a previous crop, as long as it has good drainage, you can sow them directly 5cm deep in double rows in late October which gives them a chance to establish good roots to support the heavy yields you hope they will carry next year! Over the winter the plants should reach 5-10cm tall and then stay this size through to spring – but out of sight they are putting on side roots to allow spring growth. To promote this, you can add an organic fertiliser around the roots in the spring and rake it in lightly, being careful not to damage the roots.

And in spring they’ll take off, producing those distinctive white and black flowers, and a lovely light scent that draws bees from miles away.

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-overwintering-crops

Allotment sheds …

Or, if you prefer, what goes up had better not come down! Because on Saturday, when the weather was glorious and the team was foregathered in one place (‘the team’ is what we rather grandiosely call it when the three of us are on the plot at the same time) it was the right time to put up Duncan’s shed.

The shed has been a bit of a saga – there were several attempted deliveries that didn’t work out, and then a second shed arrived after the first one, for no discernable reason at all, and then the shed had to be painted with some form of preservative, and as Duncan doesn’t have anywhere to store and paint a shed, and we do, it had to come to our house, then it had to go back to the plot, then we had to buy paving … you get the picture – it’s been one of those projects that seemed to go on forever without actually progressing.

And then, suddenly, it did. It’s a very small shed, and there are two quite large men in ‘the team’ so my role was limited to making tea and doing a bit of digging over what will become the bed for the over-wintering broad beans, while they did all the levelling and hammering, and cursing and tearing up of instructions (they were actually completely the wrong instructions, for an entirely different shed, so it’s not as drastic as it sounds) and then suddenly, there was a avocado and lavender coloured shed where no shed had been before ….

And the first of the garlic has poked its head above the soil where, it seems to me, I only planted it only hours ago. No sign of the seed onions or the onion sets yet, but I am living in hope of them appearing any minute.

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-garlic, allotment-onions, allotment-shed

Allotments get addictive

It’s worrying how much time we are finding we can spend on the plot. At least in the summer we could kid ourselves that we were busy doing ‘real’ things: digging, watering, weeding, harvesting.

Now, as October wanes, and all but one variety of onion sets are in the ground, there’s no digging, very little watering, minimal weeding and only sporadic harvesting left to do (note to self – next year, plant more late season cropping stuff!) and yet we still seem to be able to spend three or four hours up there on both Saturday and Sunday and also a snatched half-hour before dark on a weekday evening.

What exactly are we doing in that time? Well one thing is that we’re putting up the fence and painting the shed, cutting the ‘meadow’ which has been a bit of fallow land this year, and now needs to be cut with shears for winter stubble. And mainly, every time the sun shines, we’re heading up there to soak up the rays and just relax, footling around with watering cans and hoes but really, just enjoying ourselves.

And of course, the overwintering broad beans go in soon, and the last of the spring cabbage, and then it’s time to dig in the expired beans from this year to enrich next year’s potato bed … perhaps we’ve earned a bit of idleness in the sun?

And the picture shows yours truly getting her kit off on the plot!

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-meadow, allotment-spring-cabbage