A busy few weeks

My next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy. As well as preparing the ground for next year by digging in the goode olde mucke, which has to be done on dry days because wet soil is really horrible to work and anyway, isn’t friable enough to mix well with the manure, I shall be:

Planting out garlic bulbs for a crop next summer – November is the last possible date for this and if it turns out to be too wet to plant the bulbs outside, I shall simply start the cloves off in modular trays and over-winter them in a cold frame or even bring them home and put them in my plastic greenhouse until I can plant them out on the site in March, or, if the weather is good, February.

Sowing green manure where I grew Brussels sprouts last year - the crop will be dug into the soil in February or March to give organic nourishment to the soil in spring. Winter rye can be sown as late as November and that’s what I’m going to try.

Pruning my raspberry canes, blackcurrants and redcurrants - we don’t have gooseberries on the plot as yet, although I want to get some soon. I like the dessert gooseberries best, the red ones, but they are a pricey investment, so I might just settle for some of the standard green ones, which a generous allotment neighbour has offered to give me as hardwood cuttings taken last autumn and ready to plant out early in spring.

Labels: allotment-pruning, allotment-tasks, garlic-crop, green-manure