Allotment haul 29 March

Dodged the showers to grab this haul. Now I can't decide between purple-sprouting broccoli in cheese sauce, or broccoli stir-fry. Either way it's going to be delicious!

Labels: allotment-broccoli

Allotment raised beds in March

Yesterday, while our neighbours got on with their own spring cleaning (see how the graffiti has disappeared from this window?) we spent three hours getting raised beds ready for planting, or actually planting them.

While Himself planted the first row of second earlies, I lifted the glass from one raised bed, in which we’d put sand and compost a couple of weeks ago, and planted two rows of parsnips and one row of radish. The idea is that the radish are all used up long before they can get in the way of the parsnips. The bed had got really dry with the glass over it, so I watered the mix well, then laid the seed rows on the damp surface, and sieved well-aged compost over the top. I prefer this method to drills or holes for parsnip seed, which doesn’t like to be too cold or too deeply planted. It means the seed has ‘wet feet and a dry head’ because it goes onto damp soil but is covered by warm dry matter which should speed germination. Everybody knows that parsnips are fussy germinators, but usually (fingers crossed) I’m pretty lucky with my seed.

The glass went back over the top, because our last frost date in 2009 was 29th March, so our glass stays on tender crops until at least then!

Himself moved on to putting up pea supports while I dug manure into two raised beds that will hold baby leeks, when they are ready, and one for a courgette or pumpkin (haven’t decided yet) and dug over a sandier bed for beetroots and carrots and sowed the first two rows of each – Early Nantes 2 carrots and Chioggia beetroot – I’ll make successional sowings every two weeks or so. That bed also has a glass cover.

I picked an entire bag of purple sprouting broccoli – enough for three meals for two hungry adults at least, and once that was done we suddenly realised we were so exhausted we could barely crawl home!

Labels: allotment-beetroot, allotment-broccoli, allotment-carrots, allotment-parsnips, allotment-peas, allotment-raised-beds

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

At last – allotment not under snow!

We managed to get to the plot on Monday and were half-thrilled, half- horrified at what we found,

First, the broad bean seedlings have held up pretty well under the snow and rain – a couple of them are lying down and I don’t know whether that’s the effect of the weather, and they will perk up, or whether it’s the result of depredations by our unwelcome visitors.

Second, those unwelcome visitors – pigeons! To our great chagrin, most of the purple-sprouting broccoli that we planted in the open air has been denuded, not just of florets, but of top leaves. We had anticipated that this might happen, as this was our ‘overflow’ broccoli, and it’s sort of a sacrifice crop, but we didn’t expect to sacrifice all of it! On the other hand, the broccoli in the brassica cage is fine, but seems to be a bit behind its outdoor cousins. I’ve been trying to work it out and the only conclusion I can come to is that because the cage roof was supporting a layer of snow for a week or so, the plants inside it got that much less light than the plants outside, so they’ve developed slower. Can anybody tell me if that sounds even slightly logical?

So we came home with: kilos of parsnip to make delicious parsnip curry as well as spicy soup; heeled in leeks; red Brussels sprouts tops; fresh sage and NO broccoli.

And the soil is too wet to plant shallots so we thought we’d try and get them in at the weekend, although as it’s been pelting down with snow/rain/snow all day today, that too may end up being a forlorn hope.

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-broccoli, allotment-pigeons

Crops in focus: brassicas

Which are what most people are harvesting now. I still have exactly one floret of purple sprouting broccoli, so I hope the rest hurries up a bit. First to clarify a confusion: broccoli is an over-wintered crop but calabrese produces its crop the same year, before the winter. Both are brassicas as are cabbage, kale and cauliflower - and they are all part of the mustard family, oddly enough.

The ideal brassica bed needs both nitrogen and humus so the addition of manure in autumn will accomplish both. Dig over the soil and then add a barrow load of manure per square metre to the land. Leave the manure over the winter to give the worms a chance to take some down into the soil. But because adding the manure will have had the effect of making the soil more acid and because brassicas don’t like acidity, it’s best to test pH to measure the acidity and add the appropriate amount of lime to take the level up to 7.0.

Seeds are usually sown in spring, planted out in early summer to give a crop the following February/March through to May. There are early, mid-season and late varieties if you want a long harvest. Wind rock can damage the plants, especially through the winter, so try to find a sheltered site, earthing up around the stems for several inches keeps the plant stable and you may want to stake the tallest varieties – we certainly do!

You’ll also want to keep them netted, pigeons will go for the young plants especially in winter when other food is scarce. Broccoli is a slow-growing crop and it may benefit from a liquid feed, high in nitrogen, in the spring as the heads begin to form.

All brassicas are at risk of clubroot, caused by a soil borne organism which produces cysts which lurk in the soil until a suitable host is available to infect, starting the cycle again. The cysts can live for 8 or 9 years. Even worse, it is easily spread. The first sign is a wilting of plants, especially in dry weather. The roots have swellings and look knobbly. If you have a clubroot problem - start your brassicas off in modules using sterile compost to which you’ve added a small amount of lime – keep potting on until they reach 5 inch pots. Clubroot thrives best in acid wet soils so ensure your brassica bed is well dug with grit or other material to allow free drainage and take the pH up to 7.5 or even as high as 8.5 by adding lime Before planting, dig a hole at least 30cm deep and wide which you dust with lime to whiten the soil in the hole. Fill the hole with bought in multi-purpose compost and then plant your brassica in this. And burn your brassica plants when you’ve harvested, so you don’t return any clubroot to the soil.

Labels: allotment-brassicas, allotment-broccoli, allotment-crops

January Allotment Tasks

While a lot of people seem to think there’s nothing to be done on the allotment over the winter, they couldn’t be more wrong!

To start with, from 235 at least, there’s harvesting: our weekend lunch included the last of the fennel and the first of the purple sprouting broccoli. Wonderful food, as fresh as possible and when you look at supermarket prices for broccoli right now, we’re eating pure luxury.

And on 201, there’s always clearing up – and burning stuff!




I love burning stuff, and now we have a proper garden incinerator, we also have a way to generate lovely wood ash so that we can sprinkle it around seedling plants to keep the slugs off. You can buy incinerators, or convert an old metal dustbin by knocking holes in the lower sides with a cold chisel to allow oxygen flow which gives a faster burn. We’ve been getting rid of perennial weeds, hedge trimmings, and lots of brambles that were creeping into our plot from over the fence.

Labels: allotment-broccoli, allotment-fennel, allotment-incinerator, allotment-perennial-weeds, january-allotment-tasks