Allotment planting season

Our neighbours have been busy planting out potatoes and carrots and you name it … it’s always lovely to see the rows of seed, carefully inspected on a daily basis to check if ‘anything’s coming up’ and the excitement – especially in new allotment holders – when something actually does.

There’s been an awful lot of digging going on this week, as the weather has been really suitable for the first time in about a fortnight, so just about everybody at our end of the site has been turning over the soil, which makes the starlings very happy indeed. Greenhouses have gone from empty to full in a single weekend too, which is always a good sign. We have sweet peas and peas, tomatoes, broccoli, leeks, dahlias and herbs underway in ours.

But this bed is a bit grim to my eyes. I’m all in favour of raised beds but this on looks like a coffin to me … kiss of death to anything planted in it, perhaps?

Labels: allotment-planting, allotment-seed-bed

March allotment weather: lions and lambs

Not many words necessary for these pictures. We managed to wangle an afternoon off together, Himself and I, to get as much manure onto the potato bed as possible. The division of labour was simple – he would dig and I would wheel the barrow from the shop to the plot.

We still haven't resolved the potato argument, although I think we might be equal winners - he managed to get another line planted on 201, so we now have three rows of first earlies, while I managed to snitch eight potatoes and put them in big tubs in the greenhouse, so that we have early-earlies on the go (and only incidentally reducing the amount of first earlies available to be put in the ground, that definitely wasn't my ulterior motive!) and we knew that potatoes and garlic had to be planted, and that the beanpole frame needed to be moved to its new location so that we could work out the rest of our crop rotation, but before all that - manure!

I managed three barrows, along with stopping to talk to neighbours and to take photographs before everything changed.

Yes, that’s hail. And yes, it settled. From brilliant sunshine to winter wonderland in five minutes. Isn’t life wonderful?

Labels: allotment-manure, allotment-planting, allotment-weather

Allotment life

Tomorrow I have to do one of those things that goes with my ‘real’ job – standing up in front of a couple of dozen people taking a creative writing class. So last night, as well as preparing my various papers and information, I did that thing that ladies have to do, which used to be called ‘grooming’ (a term that now applies only to dogs). And it came as a bit of a shock.

I have five broken fingernails, mainly from planting things in our somewhat stony plot, or pulling out weeds. On my left leg there are four wheelbarrow bruises, from resting it against my thigh while I tip it up (bad habit, must learn not to do it) and on my right ankle a lovely range of bramble scratches. My face and arms are burnt brown by the sun, even though I wear a good sunblock, and yet the rest of me is lily white (where it isn’t bruises or scratches). Put it this way – I wouldn’t want to shake my rough, scratched hand and can’t imagine anybody else would either.

Yes, I should wear gloves, but gloves don’t let you feel the condition of the soil and are useless when you’re teasing out tiny seedling roots into a planting hole. Yes, I shouldn’t use myself as a fulcrum for the wheelbarrow and yes, thicker trousers would probably have dealt with the brambles. But I’m an allotment holder, that’s what I do, and no matter how often I tell myself I’m going to be careful, when I’m on the plot I immediately plunge into the dirtiest jobs with insane abandon.

So my poor students will be taught by somebody who looks like a daughter of the soil and I hope they don’t mind, because I know I won’t change …

… and anyway, on my way to class I just have to nip up to the plot and dig up some potatoes!

Labels: allotment-appearance, allotment-digging, allotment-planting

Allotment weather and first steps on the plot

Well what a weekend! Blazing sun on Saturday, enough to burn even the most well sun-creamed allotmenteer’s nose, gales and rain on Sunday, and a Monday of persistent rain, mist and misery. We’re in a bit of a finger’s crossed situation, we won’t know until this evening whether our temporary (old sheet) windbreak actually help up through the vicious weather, and my big fear is not just that it blew down, but that it scythed its way across several neighbouring allotments, taking the tops off people’s Brussels Sprouts and wrecking their bean wigwams as it went!

We’ve got tomatoes to be planted out, once the weather settles (assuming it ever does) plus some beans, although the peas have been dire this year once again – either Sussex doesn’t like peas or peas don’t like germinating for us, I’m not sure which! We were going to try a special local variety this year, but we forgot (as usual) and by the time we went to buy them, they’d sold out.

We’ve also got to move a water butt that will (eventually) take the water from the shed guttering to give us a lovely, reasonably constant source of irrigation, and some wood to make fences. It’s difficult, to be honest, to know where to start – plant up as much as possible, then worry about structural things like paths and walls, or work on the structure first, and then plant up once we’re sure the plot will be somewhat protected and easy to get around. We’re open to good advice, if people want to offer some!

Labels: allotment-planting, allotment-watering, allotment-windbreaks, new-allotment

Cold, chilly and clammy? Plant some cabbages

There aren’t a lot of things that will positively thrive in the kind of weather we’ve had across the UK since April started, but cabbages are extremely hardy members of the brassica family, they are resilient and enjoy cold damp winters, and above all they are capable of withstanding low temperatures which would destroy many other crops, even while they are still at the seedling stage.

Because of all this, cabbages are easiest crops to grow – although getting people to eat them may be a different matter! If your children hate cabbage, they aren’t being difficult on purpose. Some young people have a tastebud receptor that responds to one of the key ingredients of cabbage as though it were rotten eggs (it is in fact a sulphur-based compound and as we all remember from school chemistry, sulphur smells a bit like bad eggs) and the interesting thing is while around 40% of the population have it, most of them find that particular receptor atrophies over time, so by the age of twenty or so, they don’t think cabbage is horrible any more! One way to help them get through this, if you’re determined they should eat their greens is to steam or stir-fry young cabbage, then serve it with toasted sesame oil and sesame nuts which counteracts the flavour. To get rid of the smell, chuck a handful of parsley into a small pan of boiling water and let the steam clear out the cabbagey odour – it really works.

Back to the allotment: any well drained ground suits a cabbage, but if possible dig in a goodly amount of manure several months before sowing and make a series of sowings from mid spring to early summer for successional harvesting.

Cabbages grown outdoors should be transplanted when four or five true cabbage leaves have appeared and they are greedy, so you need to give them plenty of water and plenty of fertiliser during the growing period.

Cabbages courtesy of jmurawksi

Labels: allotment-cabbage, allotment-planting