Allotment Raised beds in April

How's this for productivity?

Okay, I'll be honest. There are two beds with strawberries in, and one that's a permanent asparagus bed. So only two of these beds are planted up with seeds - the rest have just been covered to warm the soil. Looks good though, doesn't it?

Labels: allotment-raised-beds

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

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 Celeriac

I do love celeriac. And as it’s being sold for very silly money in our local supermarket I’m very glad to have got my 24 little seedlings into their bed this weekend.

Thanks to Soilman’s good advice, I started my seeds off early and got about a 70% germination rate, and then cosseted them in a very counter-intuitive way by keeping them cool and not particularly brightly lit because they tend to bolt, he says, and I am taking his word for it.

Last year we were given half a dozen celery/celeriac seedlings which grow rather well plonked into the end of a row in a bit of membrane. This year we’ve dedicated an entire raised bed to them, but I’m going for the same system of growing through membrane for three reasons:

1. it serves as a great weed suppressant
2. celeriac like moist conditions and membrane helps guarantee that
3. it’s easy to mulch them over the top as they start to bulb up, which softens the skin and sweetens the bulb somewhat.

So, on an insanely busy allotment day I got on with planting the celeriac out, while Himself put in all the beans (I’ll describe the lovely bean homes next time) and once I’d raked the bed, laid out the plastic, cut the cross holes with my trusty Swiss Army knife, transplanted the celeriac seedlings, watered them, and put out the slug pellets (yes I know, I know, but if you inherit an allotment that hasn’t been worked for nearly two years, you find you have a slug Armageddon to deal with) I was feeling as if I’d done a day’s work.

But I hadn’t. While Himself was single-handedly responsible for planting out the runner beans, the Cherokee Trail of Tears Climbing French beans and the Borlotti beans, between use we also planted out 68 petits pois, the marigolds, the sunflowers, the love-lies-bleeding and the dill.

And we dug over the leek bed – I did the rough dig while Himself went home to collect all the things we’d forgotten and Himself did the second dig while I sat and drank a cup of tea. And I got sunburnt, which surprised me, until I worked out that I’d been on the plot from 11 am until 7 pm … and no sunscreen would last that long!

Labels: allotment-celeriac, allotment-raised-beds

Allotment Gardening: Raised Beds

We’ve been having a good old ding-dong on our site about raised beds, amongst other things. We’ve put a quarter of 201 into a raised bed system, with chipping paths in between, and so far we’re pleased with the results.

The benefits of raised beds include:

1. Being able to grow a wider range of plants on difficult soils or where a plant requires a specific pH as you can change the soil mix inside the box.
2. Reducing the need to bend down to work on the soil at ground level
3. Improved drainage (assuming you’ve improved the soil in the bed, that is) which allows the soil to warm quicker in spring and bringing forward the vegetable growing season
4. Pest control – carrot fly is defeated by a foot tall bed, slugs and snails do not like crawling across chipping or grit paths to get to plants and selective treatments like garlic sprays or seaweed mulches can be more easily applied
5. Watering is often reduced because you’re not watering the space between plants as they are closer packed in a bed, and retention is usually better too, because the sides of the bed reduce wind-induced evaporation slightly.

Anybody else got any benefits from raised beds to share?

There are downsides, of course. Raised beds are not suitable for all crops – you can’t really grow spuds in them, for example, because of earthing up. If you get a pest or infestation in a raised bed, you’ve got to tear out the bed and dig out the soil to get rid of it. If you are the kind of gardener who grows large amounts of crops for a big family, it may be better to stick to the long row system rather than fiddling around with raised beds, and – of course – the capital cost in setting up beds is considerably higher than just digging and planting. Also, until you get used to them, you are inclined to trip over them and bruise your ankles – or perhaps that’s just me.

But in general, we’re happy with our raised beds. I planted out our asparagus at the weekend, in what will be there permanent home (the grey bed) and I am fondly imagining the years of asparagus luxury ahead …

Labels: allotment-asparagus, allotment-raised-beds

Allotment Problems

Well, maybe they are problems and maybe they aren’t – one is already solved anyway and the others may just be dilemmas.

1 – the case of the leaking kettle

"There once was a fine Kelly kettle
Whose owners would boast of its mettle
When a leak it appeared
Their joy disappeared
For their kettle no longer had fettle."

But the Kelly kettle company are wonderful people and they sent me a new storm kettle to replace the old one. How’s that for problem solving! It's nice to have a proper cup of tea up on the site again.

2 – the bees, the bees!

We were due a visit by a beekeeper next Sunday, to talk about setting up a hive on one of the plots. Since I put the article in the newsletter, half a dozen people have asked to have their plots considered for bee-housing. However the beekeeper turned up a week early and said he couldn’t undertake to put a hive on the allotment for a variety of sensible reasons including the fact that he’s going to be away for a lot of the summer. So we have two alternatives:

A – set up a bee cooperative amongst ourselves
B – find another beekeeper

In the midst of all this it turns out that an allotment holder has bee allergy and could go into anaphylactic shock and die if stung. Now that could happen as easily with a bumble bee as a hive bee, and he carries adrenaline, and now that we know at least … well, we know, because before yesterday, we wouldn’t have had a clue that the problem might be allergy rather than say a heart attack.

But what should we do now? Should the risk to him outweigh the benefit to over 300 allotment holders who should get better pollination of crops via the bees? If not, should we set up a cooperative and take on the responsibility of apiculture ourselves or find another beekeeper who might at least start us off? I admit to mixed feelings. I know that I already have enough to do as secretary, but if anything goes wrong and I’m part of the cooperative I shall be the one person that everybody knows how to get hold of, which means that I’ll be the one out all hours if there are panics and problems. Also I worry about the idea of having a hive when one person, at least, will be made unhappy and apprehensive about it. Suppose we drove him to give up his allotment – that would be horrible, irresponsible and against the ethos of everything we’re doing. Ugh. Any advice anyone?

3 – The water, the water!

Our mains water won’t be turned back on until April. The storage tanks along each row are virtually dry. Our water butt is less than a third full. The seedlings need water! What are folk to do if it doesn’t rain?

A – transport water to the site – which is expensive, hard work and environmentally damaging.
B – let their crops die as seedling plants – which is expensive, heart-breaking and silly.
C – badger the council to turn on the water – which could backfire because the council don’t like to be badgered and the rules say Easter. We ask them to stick to other rules so it seems odd to now start demanding that they break some, and it makes us seem inconsistent.
D – pray or dance or whatever (depending on belief system) for rain.

Ideas welcomed on this one too.

And we've made, painted and installed the last of our raised beds - this picture is pre-installation because by the time we'd finished I was too exhausted to go and find the camera again.

Labels: allotment-bees, allotment-kettle, allotment-raised-beds, allotment-seedlings, allotment-watering

Spring Cleaning the Allotment

Well, not really spring cleaning, but trying to get it looking organised and tidy – if you take photos from just the right angle, so that you miss out the huge top area of rough scrub, thistles and dock, it almost looks as if our plot is going great guns.

Stand in the wrong place, of course, and you can see the heap of rubbish still waiting to be collected by the council, the mouldering heap of compost, threaded with bindweed and nettles, that we’re trying to level, and the mound of holly branches, old pallets and general tat that isn’t going to be collected by the council, or be of any use to us, but is too green or wet to be burnt in the incinerator. Oh well!

So we put up some bunting around the raspberry canes, just because we could, and set a couple more raised beds in place, so that even though there’s nothing in most of them, it looks as if we’re productive - six beds down so far (does that make me sound like Henry VIII or something?). Then, hurrah! The council lorry turned up without warning (as it always does) and dropped off a huge load of wood mulch made from Christmas trees. So now, between our raised beds, we have a lovely fragrant carpet of pine chippings. And because John and Anita on the plot next to hours wanted some chippings too, I was busy with my barrow, wheeling heaps of chippings around the site. Quite the little paragon.

It was committee meeting weekend too, so I’ve been busy typing minutes and drafting letters – it’s a funny thing, but when I took on an allotment I had this mad idea that it would involve LESS sitting at the computer, not more …

Labels: allotment-appearance, allotment-cleaning, allotment-raised-beds, allotment-raspberries

Allotment Asparagus – first make your asparagus bed …

So we’ve got some asparagus and now it needs a home. It’s a long term business, is asparagus. Forget your cut and come again crops, your sow and forget ‘em beans and carrots, asparagus are prima donna types, but to be fair, they produce for 10-20 years once established and are a wonderfully healthy crop, high in B vitamins, vitamin C, calcium, and iron as well as being as tasty as it is possible for anything to be and still be legal.

Asparagus thrives in full sun and prefers a light, well-drained soil. It will not tolerate competition; so prepare the planting area carefully and keep it mulched after planting. Asparagus is a heavy feeder so stonking great applications of compost will provide the necessary nutrients. A garden bed should be at least four feet wide and as long as necessary and you should dig the soil down for at least a foot. We’re planting up a three foot by four foot raised bed, which is not a huge space for asparagus, but I’m going to make a mini trench alongside the west facing fence to take the ‘overflow’ crowns, so they won’t be wasted, they just won’t get such perfect conditions.

We dug the surface last weekend, so this weekend I shall be forking in around three inches of a mixture of mushroom compost and well-rotted horse manure. The hope is that by the time we’re ready to plant out the seedlings – say around late April, the ‘ingredients’ will have blended nicely. Then, usually, you dig trenches of at least ten inches deep and ten wide, about two and a half feet apart. We shall be staggering our seedlings in the bed, rather than trenching them, as we’d only get about three plants if we used the traditional method!

Anyway, the whole trenching thing is just designed to help the plants grow, so we can do that in a raised bed by adding soil to the bed as a whole. The classic style is to add two inches compost to the bottom of the trench, then an inch of soil to stop the organic material scorching the asparagus.

Then you put the asparagus on this mound of goodness, and if you’re trench planting, you set them 15 to 18 inches apart. Put a couple of inches of soil over the plants, and water. When the first spears appear, fill in around them until the trench is level with the soil surface, without covering the asparagus foliage. Once you reach that level, you should mulch the plants with a good layer of compost or some other organic material and make sure you weed well, you don't want the kind of weed undergrowth you can see in this picture, for example!

Labels: allotment-asparagus, allotment-raised-beds

Alpine Strawberries, Raised Beds and Ruminations

I was expecting to admit defeat on the strawberry germination front. Despite excellent advice and carefully packaged seeds from Patrick and Steph there had been a long period of absolutely nothing happening. But today there are four absolutely tiny seedlings in the white alpine strawberry seed tray! They are minute in a completely different way to the celeriac, which is tall and spindly, the strawberries are tiny but soil-hugging, looking like tiny green pinpricks on the surface of the John Innes #2. I’m very excited, especially as I have more seeds yet to plant, and hope that there will be enough seedlings to be able to raise some for other allotment holders. And we potted up about nine rhubarb at the weekend, so we’re definitely stockpiling goodies to be sold/donated/given away, which is part of our brief in working this plot for the Allotment Society.

Anyway, because the strawberries are just too intsy to photograph, here’s a picture of our first raised beds being installed. The wood was sourced by me from Freecycle, the beds were designed and constructed by Himself from old decking, and I painted them. He hammered them into the ground. I dug the soil over. In other words, it’s been a real collaborative effort. The idea is to have nine of them, all in different colours, but we haven’t agreed on which nine crops they will house yet: definitely celeriac, climbing French beans, summer salads and chicory but the rest are up for grabs, as it were.

What I’ve been ruminating about is the excitement of germination. I’ve been out to the greenhouse three times to look at the strawberries, and I know Himself will go and have a look as soon as he gets home. But having mentioned this to an otherwise good friend today, I was disturbed to find her reaction to be lukewarm. She’s not ‘into’ planting things, she told me. I can’t understand that at all. I’ve tried, but it’s like saying you’re not into breathing, isn’t it?

Labels: allotment-celeriac, allotment-chicory, allotment-raised-beds, allotment-rhubarb, allotment-strawberries

More Celeriac

As a couple of people have commented on the celeriac issue, let me explain why I’m so addicted to this particular vegetable.

It’s like celery but better – I enjoy the taste of celery but hate the strings, and also, I’m not too keen on anything that is quite such hard work on the old jaw! Celeriac has the same delicate flavour, but because it’s a root vegetable (well actually, I think it’s a bulb) it’s much more versatile – you can grate it and use it raw in coleslaw, boil it and mash it like potato, steam it and turn it into a soufflé – it’s really a vegetable with a thousand uses.

It’s good to store – while it doesn’t cope particularly well in the ground once the first frosts arrive, it does seem to cope well in storage in a cool dry place. I tend to peel, chunk and blanch mine and open freeze it before packing it into big freezer bags. Then I can take out as much as I want for a given recipe. I might use it to make soup, or as a roasted vegetable with carrots, potatoes, swede and onion, or mix it fifty-fifty with potato to make a mashed topping for pies.

There are downsides to celeriac - The first is that dodgy germination rate – from what I can gather, anything from a third to a half of seeds might not come up. The second is that it likes a long time in the ground but doesn’t like hot weather, which makes it a bit of a bugger to grow! Last summer the seedlings Maurice gave us did wonderfully, because the weather was so appalling, so this year I’m almost hoping my celeriac does badly as that should mean we’ve had hot and sunny weather. If it’s dry they need to be watered: they are a bog margin plant by nature, and if it’s overly sunny, you might want to cover them with a bit of fleece. We grew ours through mulch fabric last year, this year I think I shall put them in a raised bed.

And if you can’t get seed locally, try for a seed swap – there are several online swapping agencies that can help you.

Labels: allotment-celeriac, allotment-crops, allotment-raised-beds, allotment-seeds

Raspberry Bed - the final allotment version

Because I got nagged by email, I have somewhat reluctantly agreed to post a picture of the raspberry bed. It doesn’t look like anything much at this time of year, and certainly I don’t look like anything much, planting raspberries in my pixie hat and old allotment coat! You can see the raspberry canes that Tony dug out of the middle of the strawberry bed - and that I then cut the old wood from and pruned to planting height - laying across the planting string. We offset the plants from one side of the string to the other, to make weeding and harvesting slightly easier and to give each plant the maximum amount of air ventilation and sunlight – if you plant them in straight rows, the front one shields the next from the sun and the second one shields the third, so by halfway down the row, the plants are getting very little sun indeed.

As I say, it looks like nothing much now, but wait until I show you another picture in late Spring, when the canes will be shooting up and the leaf buds will have opened to show the lovely fresh green of new leaves.

We’re still doing lots of structural work – you can see that the cold frame is completely half finished! In other words, the front end of the frame has been reglazed and is ready to be used, but the back end hasn’t had its glass covers put back on yet because we’re waiting for the wooden frame to dry out – it was utterly sodden with rainwater and we don’t want to dry it too fast or it will warp and not fit the base. Initially Tony used webbing on the front end of the frame: it allowed the glass cover to fall back away from the frame without actually hitting the ground on the other side and breaking the glass – that lasted two nights! On the third morning we went up and found that mice had eaten straight through it. Now we have a wooden prop that fits into a narrow groove cut into the front edge of the lid – it means we can’t open it past the vertical, but it also means the mice can’t catch us out by chewing through it. We’re hoping that the regular presence of Rebus the Cairn Terrier will discourage the rodents from visiting us quite so often.

And if possible, I shall report on 235's onion experiment in my next post. I wanted to report today, but the rain and wind were so strong I actually couldn't see the onion bed well enough to check how many seeds had germinated. Oh the joys of a winter allotment!

Labels: allotment-cold-frame, allotment-raised-beds, allotment-raspberries, allotment-soft-fruit, allotment-winter-onions

Three days, two pairs of hands, one strawberry bed!

On Friday we had a day off and went to the allotment. Sue of the glorious tomatoes gave us a tray of strawberry runners and the idea was born – build a strawberry bed. First we chose a place in full sun, then we made the frame from decking.



On Saturday we dug out the turf under it. Then we filled it with a mixture of soil and well rotted compost.



On Sunday we planted our strawberries!



It's amazing what you can achieve in a weekend ... if you don't mind a few blisters!

Labels: allotment-raised-beds, allotment-strawberries

Allotment raised beds

This was today’s job: painting decking! We ‘scored’ the decking out of a skip (with the skip owner’s permission, let me add!) and the table on which the decking planks are resting was also a ‘rescue’ item. The wood preserver we paid for, but it was a worthwhile investment – it was a clearance sale item, and preserving the wood we use on the allotment will quadruple its lifetime.

The decking will be used in the autumn to build raised beds. We haven’t really decided how we’re going to structure the allotment yet, but we know we need at least three raised beds: one for asparagus, one for strawberries and one to use as a seed bed. It would be great to have the entire allotment down to raised beds because they are easier to manage, make less mess, have less problems with pests and diseases and – I think – look more attractive. But that would be a lot of wood and a lot of work, and it may be that we decide to stay with the open bed route instead.

So on a hot day I slapped on the stain (it’s called avocado – does that look like avocado to you? I’m not convinced by the accuracy of the name but it’s a very pretty colour) and felt very pleased with myself, until I looked down and realised my legs were almost as green as the wood. It’s good stuff: even after a bath I’m still speckled green!

Labels: allotment-building, allotment-raised-beds, allotment-structures