Allotment planting February

We finally managed to get our Golden Gourmet shallots in the ground – just in time for predicted snow in the week! We’ve sown three rows, with some sand added to the soil to give them the lighter conditions they like, and we’ve covered the rows with a little netting because we’ve had problems in the past with pigeons pecking out both shallots and onions. No photo, because, seriously photos of shallots being planted are really not interesting! What I do is scrape away a little soil and drop the shallots in – making sure they are root end down – and then just rearrange the soil around them. Lots of books recommend that you ‘simply push the shallot into the soil’ but they don’t presumably, have the clay that we do and the writers don’t presumably, mind losing a few shallots to rot as you push them down onto what turns out to be a stone, puncturing the bulb, which then sits in the cold, and usually damp, winter soil, gently mouldering away instead of growing. I am a pinch-penny gardener and I think the extra couple of seconds required to scrape a shallow trench into which to drop them is worth the effort!

I also transferred two barrows of lovely manure from the heap outside the shop to the bed for our first early potatoes – it’s a pretty long walk with a barrow so two a day is the most I can manage. I’ll need six barrows for the firsts, seconds and maincrops, so I’ll do two a weekend, and still have a couple of spare weekends to dig it in before I have to think about planting the first earlies.

In the greenhouse we’ve started off Feltham First and Meteor peas in toilet roll inner tubes (aka anti-mice devices), a tub planting of Nantes carrots which I’ll hope to be harvesting as baby salad carrots in six weeks time, and two trays of Elephant leeks for transplanting into pots when they are two inches tall, and then again to the plot a little later on. All in all it’s been a productive weekend!

Labels: allotment-carrots, allotment-leeks, allotment-peas, allotment-shallots

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 Tasks for November

We’re going to be harvesting leeks – ours have done well, although next year I might try collaring and blanching them to get even more lovely white tender length.

The great thing about leeks is that they put up with an awful lot: they grow in a wide range of soil conditions, really only objecting to being waterlogged and they are pretty hardy so you can leave them in the ground in winter until you need to harvest them.

We’re leaving the leeks in the raised bed to be harvested between full winter and late spring, as even if the ground freezes, they have a good degree of frost protection from the bed and from the bark mulch that forms a path around the beds, but we’ll be lifting the ones that were planted in the open and then brushing them off, and storing them in a box of sand in the shed, where they will stay nice and fresh for around a month

And we’re lifting a rhubarb to force at home because we love the sweet stems that don’t need peeling. Although you can simply cover a plant as soon as it starts to grow (round about February) we’ve found that if we lift one and overwinter it in the house, we can actually get champagne rhubarb (the thinner, pale pink stems that are strawberry sweet) at the same time as people are only just starting to cover outdoor rhubarb to force them! We pot a crown into a small dustbin and keep it in the porch with another bin over the top to exclude all light. We need to water it a couple of times a month, but because our porch faces south, the crown gets plenty of heat and by the end of February we can be harvesting rhubarb. Then we replant the crown and don’t harvest it at all the next year to allow it to rebuild its strength as forcing exhausts the plants resources.

Labels: allotment-leeks, allotment-rhubarb

Allotment haul 12 September

The allotment was looking okay today, I am reliably told by Himself, not having managed to get there myself!

It wasn’t for want of trying. My first attempt was headed off by the need to drop my files and associated stuff for the committee meeting into the committee room. There I go waylaid in the nicest possible way by an allotment-holder who wanted to talk about butterflies.

Then it was time for the ten o’clock tour and as we only had one person booked, I’d already decided to go round, and then another allotment volunteer decided to go with us, and finally an allotment-holder who’d been browsing our excellently stocked shop joined in too.

We were supposed to have four tours, each lasting an hour and a half, but two thirds of the way round the site, we were accosted by our Site Rep who pointed out that the next group were waiting to start! The next group consisted of two people, and he kindly headed off with them, while we wrapped up our truncated trip which meant we didn't reach the part of the site that contains our plot - actually I was rather glad because as you can see, some plots definitely put 201 to shame! The third tour had nobody booked, which was good, as we had a committee meeting to prepare for our AGM in October, and the fourth was due at 14:30 and consisted of three people and a dog.

So in total we had six actual visitors, although I think each tour gathered up a number of people along the way who wanted to explore the site (or perhaps they just wanted a break from their own plots!) in company with others.

I don’t know how the caterers did – I never actually got to taste or drink anything, but they had tables and chairs and cake which I was miserable to miss out on. All in all it was an experience, although a very mixed one, and if we get involved again next year, we’ll want to handle more of the publicity ourselves and perhaps not to have online booking systems.

Rather worryingly, somebody told somebody (you know how these things go) who told the catering lady, who told a section rep, that lots of people think the tours are tomorrow …

On a more horticultural footing, Himself picked a trug of beans, four cucumbers, a large handful of alpine strawberries and an errant leek. So dinner tonight will be lentil, leek and lamb casserole, followed by alpine strawberries, vanilla ice-cream and strawberry coulis from this summer’s frozen harvest.

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-cucumbers, allotment-leeks, allotment-tours

Allotment Leeks – to earth up or not to earth up?

Leeks – you can’t have too many of them! This is our raised bed of leeks, then we have two rows of leeks in with the peas and we even have a line of leeks in the raspberries because we had so many left over.

But I don’t know whether to blanch them, and if so, how and when? I do know why – it’s to increase the length of white stem and make it more tender by reducing sunlight. All the information I’ve been able to gather is that you draw dry soil around the stems when the plants are well developed, in stages, like earthing up potatoes, but not allowing any earth to fall between the leaves of the leeks or the plants will be full of grit. I also know you should finish earthing-up in late October.

So – some questions to the allotment universe:

1. is it a good idea to put something around the plants to avoid that grittiness like, say toilet roll inners sliced laterally and then held round the leek with elastic bands (hope the reader can imagine what I mean, the slicing to get the cardboard over the leaves, the band to hold the roll in place snugly) or does that give chickie-pigs and other beasties a perfect new home?

2. have I got the wrong kind of leeks, as mine seem to be growing leaves from the ground out, so it’s hard to imagine how they might ever develop a long stem – I’m sure they should have done it by now – or do I cut the bottom leaves off to make a long stem?

Gosh I’m confused. We grew self-blanching leeks last year, which was easier although the germination was nowhere near as good as with ‘classic’ leeks. Perhaps I should have stuck with what I know. I suddenly feel like a massive leek ignoramus, which is a sad thing to be, when you love leeks as much as I do.

Labels: allotment-earthing-up, allotment-leeks, allotment-raised-beds

Allotment: Hungry Gap

Apparently, according to some folk, we are now in the hungry gap. And for us, the hungry gap has been big indeed! Because we only got ‘our’ allotment (which isn’t, strictly speaking even ours) in October, we had no winter crops at all. There was a row of spinach and a couple of purple sprouting broccoli on 235, where we’re co-workers, but not enough to keep two vegetable hungry couples going for very long. Anyway, although I shouldn’t say it, I’m not a great spinach fan.

So this year, while we’re merrily greenhouse planting, transplanting, hardening off and outdoor planting all kinds of summer crops, I am intoning, at every opportunity, ‘Don’t forget the hungry gap’. At which himself gives me a funny look and goes and gets a sandwich. Not quite what I had in mind.

Anyway, for the bit between late February and Mid April which is what many people consider to be the hungry gap, the crops that you can overwinter and hope to have ready are the purple-sprouting broccoli (Rudolph appears to be the favourite), the kales, elderly (and whiskery) swedes, carrots and parsnips and onions and leeks.

We’ve got 74 leeks in degradable pots – as I’ve never grown leeks before I can’t tell if this is too many or not enough. Why did it never occur to me to keep a list of all my weekly shopping so that I could work out how many leeks or whatever I use in a year? Well, quite possibly because that would have been a bonkers thing to do! But it’s very annoying not to have some idea if I’m planting enough and to spare, or whether our hungry gap next year will have to be filled with expensive trips to the supermarket.

Smart folk will also have had all-year-round lettuce growing in greenhouses or cold-frames. No, we’re not that smart, but we will be next year, and if we’d thought ahead enough, we’d have done the same with deep trays of radishes, because they grow so fast that I reckon you could sow them in February and have a harvest easily by now, if you can control light and heat a bit, and there’s nothing like a peppery radish to make you feel that spring is on its way.

Other people, by the way, say the hungry gap is in late May and early June, when the broad beans are ready but nothing else is. Given the way we get through all forms of fresh fruit and vegetables, I would happily say that the hungry gap could be almost any time of year, for us.

I said I would mention himself's runner bean frame. Isn't it a thing of beauty and a joy forever? Well, not a joy forever in the same place, as it's sort of portable, having two long stakes that anchor it to the ground so we can rotate the beans around the plot. It was also the cause of much swearing in the allotment blogger household. Swearing is the natural accompaniment of woodwork, I gather, as green fingernails are the natural accompaniment of harvesting pea pods. The clever among you will have noted that the poles lean outwards - according to Andi Clevely, this makes it easier to harvest the beans. We'll see ...

Labels: allotment-brocolli, allotment-hungry-gap, allotment-kale, allotment-leeks, allotment-root-crops, allotment-runner-beans

Allotment Potato Beds, Raised Beds and February Tasks

Well, I’ve discovered a problem I never expected – when you have two days of good weather in a row, in a February that has followed one of the worst winters you can remember, you go a bit daft.

We spent ALL Friday and ALL today at the allotment, and I have to go back tomorrow too – although only for plot inspections with Site Representatives, not for actual allotment work.

The thing is, I’m cream-crackered! On Friday, before we went to the allotment, I planted out the Babbington’s Leeks in the greenhouse. Once we got to the plot we dug the potato bed over again, Himself raked the bean and pea bed, and I dug compost and some sand into the two raised beds which seem to be pure clay. We planted potatoes in tyres on 235 and 201, on the basis that while it may not be organic, it’s at least environmentally friendly to use up some old tyres in this fashion – and it’s supposed to get you your earliest new potatoes up to three weeks earlier than other methods because as long as you keep one empty tyre above the height of the haulm, there won’t be any frost damage to the plant.

Today, while Himself planted carrots in one raised bed, having built a nifty fleece-covered lid for it too, I planted the Jerusalem artichokes that Janet very kindly gave us yesterday. We hadn’t planned anywhere for them, so it was a swift decision to stick them along the fence by the thornless blackberry. Then we marked out the herb and simples garden (sounds posh, but actually it’s the size of two broom cupboards!) because Ray had given the Association some lovely wallflower plants for any plotholder who wanted them, and I’d taken a nice big clump, before remembering that they needed to go in yet another area of completely untouched plot.

Janet took two of our rhubarb transplants and June had a couple too. Ray also say he’d like some so we agreed to drop four pots off to him on our way home as his plot is on our way to the gate. I found myself potting up loads more rhubarb as a result, and Himself got busy putting up the frame for the climbing French beans, Cherokee Trail of Tears, that Fran gave us as a seed swap. The frame is actually a bit of shop fitting that was being thrown out, and as we're 'waste not, want not' we said we'd take it. We've used another one horizontally to make a frame for our blackberry to climb up/along and there's a third version, which is actually two much skinnier sections, with rungs rather than a grid, that we're planning to turn into an ornamental archway at one entrance to the plot - note that word 'planning' because it's one of those things that sounds great but as it actually requires two fences to be re-built so that the arch actually has some purpose. I suppose we could just stick it up anyway, but it would look pretty silly. So instead it lurks in the shed and I fall over it and curse all the time. Anyway, you can just see the carrot bed, with its fleece lid, in the foreground of the blue bed with the frame in it.

And Himself had already dug up a huge clump of snowdrops from home that needed transplanting into the plot, so I did those, then dug over the first of the herb beds, the equilateral bed we’re calling it, and then Anita and John from next door asked if we wanted some old-fashioned purple iris that they had going spare, and of course we did, and they had to be planted out while himself hoed around the raspberries and …

I came home and fell asleep on the sofa! If this good weather carries on, I shan't be able to cope. Mind you, I can't afford any more time off work either, so perhaps that will stop us working ourselves to shadows. Although we've still got to plant sweet peas, marigolds, tomatoes, leeks ...

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-carrots, allotment-flowers, allotment-horticultural-fleece, allotment-leeks, allotment-potatoes-in-tyres, allotment-raised beds, allotment-seeds

Allotment Perennials

Apart from potting up loads of rhubarb, to be either sold or given away to other allotment holders (I want to give it away, the committee may overrule me and either sell it or ask for donations) I’ve been thinking a lot about allotment perennials these past few days. There’s raspberries of course, needing to be pruned now to get going for the autumn harvest (if you have autumn fruiting ones, the summer fruiting ones should be pruned after harvesting). And black, red and whitecurrants, all of which are lovely to make jam and jelly with, and give you years of service. Our thornless blackberry is a joy – and even thorny brambles produce gorgeous fruit.

So what else?

How about perennial leeks? Oh yes! They are properly called Babbington’s Leek, and I’ve just been given half a dozen bulbils by the lovely Fran who helps organise Seedy Sunday. Plants for a Future says: Division in late summer or early autumn. Dig up the bulbs when the plants are dormant and divide the small bulblets at the base of the larger bulb. Replant immediately, either in the open ground or in pots in a cold frame. Bulbils - plant out as soon as they are ripe in late summer. The bulbils can be planted direct into their permanent positions, though you get better results if you pot them up and plant them out the following spring.

Doesn’t that sound great? They are like a mild leek or Welsh onion, as far as I can tell.

And how about perennial rocket, also from the lovely Fran. This is apparently a totally different plant to cultivated rocket with more finely cut leaves and a much stronger flavour, which is more complex but doesn’t get silly-hot like rocket does just before it bolts. It seems that it hates root disturbance and tends to sprawl, so needs a bit of room to allow it to self seed, at which point you lift the seedlings in a big dollop of soil so as not to derange the roots and give the plantlets a new home.

Also, somewhat scarily, I’ve agreed to take some tomato seedlings from Fran to raise up so that we can have a tomato tasting day on the allotments and then people can say which seed they’d like me to save for them so that they can then have seed to raise their own tomatoes in perpetuity – gulp!

Labels: allotment-leeks, allotment-rhubarb, allotment-soft-fruit, allotment-tomato, babbington's leek, perennial rocket