New allotment tasks: finding room for beans and herbs

What you’re looking at was supposed to be my permanent herb and botanicals garden. On the right hand side, as you look at the picture, is what will one day be a ‘hedge’ of globe artichokes and on the left are the raised beds. In between is an area marked out with stones and with chipping paths in which I was going to grow herbs and plants for making toiletries etc.

Note the word ‘was’. As you can see, the most notable feature of the three beds, at present, is a bean wigwam. They are borlotti beans and while I love them dearly, they are definitely neither a herb nor a plant used for making toiletries. What they are, is extra. Extra beans, because we got a 100% germination from the seeds. And you can’t throw them away can you?

I thought we could give them away, but Himself sniffed at this, pointing out that we’ve already given away kale, tomatoes, rhubarb, alpine strawberries and chicory. Himself has a bit of a thing for beans, I think. A Jack and the Beanstalk complex perhaps? Anyway, he saw that the central herb bed, which is meant to become a home to lavender and borage and possibly lovage (very good for both the digestion and the complexion apparently, as well as making a lovely liqueur) and into it went the beans! There are more beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears) next to the sweetcorn too, but more of them anon.

So, for this summer at least, I’ve lost my central herb bed. The triangle nearest the path at least has some nasturtiums, marigolds and wallflowers in it, while the one closes to the fence has Love-Lies-Bleeding, dill and sage, so he can’t plonk vegetables into either of those (or at least I don’t think he can) but I can see that we’re going to spend the next few weekends arguing about finding places to put all our overstocks: I want more space for leeks, he wants more space for cabbages, and so on … It could get nasty in the allotment blogger household!

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-herbs, allotment-summer-crops

Allotment herbs and fruits in February

This is the time of year when we sow parsley. At home we put the seeds in those long biodegradable tubes and grow them in a bottom-heated propagator, but on the allotment, we put them in the greenhouse. They hate being transplanted, so they also go in biodegradable tubes up there, but instead of having bottom heat, the parsley gets sown with boiling water, which encourages it to germinate. Parsley’s said to go to the devil nine times before it comes up, which gives you some idea how slow it is to get going! There are strange compounds called furanocoumarins on the surface of parsley seeds, which actually get into the soil and stop the seeds of other plants germinating – this is a sensible evolutionary approach on the part of the parsley because it means it has a more than usually good chance of outdoing the competition, but these compounds, once they disperse in the soil, actually have an odd habit of affecting the parsley itself – which is why soaking the seeds or watering them with really hot water that destroys the effect of the compounds, can speed the process up.

It’s also the time of year to divide mint. We don’t grow mint at home, but keep it in a trough at the allotment because it’s such an invasive plant. Even a small piece of root is very likely to grow, and once it grows, it will take over a vegetable plot or border, smothering and strangling everything in its path, even bindweed. The allotment trough is lined with zinc, and there’s not much chance even of mint punching its way through that!

Chives can be split and replanted too, at this time in the year, as long as the soil isn’t actually frozen when you lift them.

One of the gardens that backs onto our site has big bud mite on its redcurrants. It’s one of those things that you can’t really describe but recognise as soon as you see it. It simply shows up as weirdly large buds which then don’t produce any fruit in summer. There’s no treatment, either preventative or curative, for the infestation, so we can only hope that it doesn’t spread and that somebody on the allotments knows the people in that house and can suggest they pick off the infested buds.

Labels: allotment-fruit, allotment-herbs, big bud mite