Allotment styles

I don’t know this particular allotment holder, but I like their style! The combination of excellent autumn ground-clearing and careful working around the little patch of wildflowers which will set seed-heads for the birds over the winter is an absolute winner. It’s a picture that tells you everything you need to know about the best of allotment life – a mixture of efficiency and environmental care that explains why allotments are my obsession.

Speaking of which, this is the time of year when hard-core allotment holders do what I can only call an informal audit – they sort of tour the site, pointing out to each other which plots are more than 66% waste ground or which haven’t been worked in the previous twelve months – because the process of removing allotment holders is a long and complex one, the serious allotmenteer knows that nothing much will happen this year, or even next year, but even so, this annual process goes on, and the old guard simply keep count, seeing whether fruit has been harvested, or ground turned. They might even tidy up a neighbouring plot themselves, to stop perennial weeds seeding into their own soil. Otherwise they just … watch.

It can be a bit intimidating at first, that feeling that there are eyes on you back as you hunch over fork or spade, but when you look up you can’t see anybody in sight, but it wears off very fast. And soon a camaraderie is established. This year I even found myself wandering round my local site with a couple of the veterans, pointing out a tree whose damsons were piling up under the tree and rotting, and a pond where duckweed had begun to creep OUT of the pond and into the paving, and I realised, slowly, I was one of them. I was a member of an old guard.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-secrets

Weird and wonderful crops

I think our mutant rabbit (Donny Darko if you’re under thirty, Dylan from the Magic Roundabout if you’re over thirty!) is about as weird an allotment crop as I’ve ever seen. He was very tasty too, but perhaps you have a better mutant to share with us? Send them in, I’ll feature anything really peculiar on the blog …

Why do these things happen? Well ….

Twisty, woody, or multi-branching carrots occur because carrots are a root crop and must penetrate deeply into the soil. This means the type and texture of the soil will influences their shape. Heavy, crusted, or overheated soil effectively prevents them from germinating, and rocks and clumps or clods of dirt will cause developing carrot roots to split and distort into a forked shape as they grow around these obstacles. To avoid these problems, prepare the seedbed for carrots well before sowing seed. Dig it up thoroughly, turning it over and breaking up lumps into small pieces. Cover the newly sown seeds with sand or fine soil that will not crust over when dry and keep the surface moist. Provide shade for seeds planted in mid-summer so that the soil does not heat up.

Tomatoes that are misshapen, with scars and holes in the blossom end are caused by cold weather during blossoming and perhaps also by overly high levels of nitrogen. To manage this, avoid setting out plants too early in the season. The Americans call this catfacing – but I haven’t managed to track down any research on rabbit-facing yet!

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-secrets, misshapen vegetables, weird crops

Growing up gorgeous – artichokes again!

Loads of comments suddenly appeared on the last globe artichoke article, so I thought I’d pick up the threads before I move onto one of the great joys of this time of year, the leaf beets.

So, Barrie wants a photo of the globe artichoke when it’s been put to bed for the winter and I will certainly provide that when the time comes, and Merenda wonders why she can’t harvest globe artichokes in their first year from seed or offset, and I’ve explained all that in detail as a response to her comment, so you’ll have to go and hunt it down in the archives if you’ve been wondering why your globe artichokes seem to be carved out of balsa wood!

But back to the plot, in both senses of the word. Just about now, we’re getting organised for a rare treat that we’ll enjoy in a few weeks – artichoke stems. Here’s how to get a second crop from your plants.

1 – when the flower buds cease to appear, cut down the foliage of the plants, taking off about two foot from the top of the plant and quite a few leaves. Between now and the end of the month you should start to see some new shoots appearing at ground level.

2 -When they are about a foot to eighteen inches tall, bundle them together (we normally have four clumps around the base of a plant) and surround them with brown paper, corrugated cardboard or drainpipe – the first two you have to tie loosely around the stems with string, the last one you slide over the top of the clump.

3 – After five weeks or so, take off the blanching material and you should find you have some pale, rather bendy stems. Cut them and cook them like celery; we braise ours with finely chopped onion, some celery seed and good vegetable stock with a dash of sherry added.

If you’ve had woody artichokes this year, you can still get a decent blanched shoot crop by following these instructions … but keep a couple of those offshoots out of the blanching, pot them up in November and use them for next year’s plants and DON’T FORGET to pinch out every flowering bud or you’ll have rock-hard artichokes again.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-recipes, allotment-secrets, globe-artichoke

Is it a bird ... Is it a plane ...?

No, it’s our allotment officer – Crispin.

If you’ve ever wondered exactly what an allotment officer does, you’re not alone. And I was fascinated to discover how Crispin’s workload actually breaks down, because it’s not what I expected at all.

His job, put in the simplest terms, is to get as many people using as much land as possible through the allotments. That means encouraging the people who’ve already got allotments to use them, and getting people off allotments who aren’t using them. Obvious, isn’t it?

But there’s a complication. Each individual plot under debate has to be examined against three criteria in our district at least. Is it 75% under cultivation? Is it free from flowering weeds? Is it tidy? If those three are breached, the allotment holder may be asked to leave. However, one person’s ‘tidy’ may be another person’s ‘mess’ and 75% under cultivation is hard to judge – dug over ground may have no crop planted while apparent grassland may hide native herbs and flowers … so Crispin spends a lot of time looking, talking and discussing. Not as much time as he’d like though, because his work also involves answering thousands of letters, emails and phone calls every year, from allotment holders or the public. These calls and queries deal with many issues – bonfires on allotments, vandalism, vacant plots, disputes between allotment holders, disputes between allotment holders and nearby householders, rights of way, theft, dilapidation, insurance, waiting lists, giving up allotments, finding co-workers … it’s an endless process.

One of the major issues is crime – and he wishes that more people who suffer vandalism or petty theft on their allotments would get a Crime Report Number from the police and then call him with it, so that he can use that statistical evidence to bring about change: maybe better security, maybe more police patrols, maybe more education in schools … but it seems that allotment holders rather assume they will ‘get hit’ at some time in their allotment careers and that’s something that we all need to take on board. If our houses were raided we wouldn’t brush it off, so we shouldn’t ignore allotment theft and damage either. We’re not helping ourselves, or the community, if we do.

Interestingly, the demographics of allotment rental in this area are changing – many people in the 20 - 35 age group are seeking plots; and many of them wish to be organic gardeners, but our 2300 allotments are already oversubscribed. Is there any chance of more land being brought into use for allotments? Possibly so – it’s under discussion at the Council level, so finger’s crossed for an allotment friendly decision!

It was an eye-opener to spend time with Crispin and see how complicated his job is – I still think he’s a lucky man to have it, but I have a greater respect now for the balancing act all allotment officers must carry out, to keep the rest of us happy.

Labels: allotment-eviction, allotment-personality, allotment-secrets

Allotment marvels

Just a quickie today, as I’m about to leave home to do something very interesting, ie interview my local allotment officer, but I’ve been pondering the wonderful – and sometimes weird – things that people grow on allotments. Up and down the country I’ve seen fields of dahlias, fiery horseradish, tobacco, orchids, living stones. I know one allotment holder who is hybridising a green tulip on his plot and another who has an informal tortoise sanctuary. But I had to share this. It’s Andrew’s echium, and it’s the most astonishing flower I’ve ever seen. It’s Echium pininana, which is usually found in sheltered south-facing borders and it’s a two year process to grow one, because in the first year echium simply grows into a rosette of silvery leaves – only about a foot tall - but in year two it rockets off and becomes a flower spike festooned with blue, funnel-shaped flowers, which may be as much as fifteen feet tall. After this impressive flowering it dies, but not before scattering its seeds like somebody throwing balloons off the top of a tall tower.

I think it’s gorgeous. But I'm sure there are even more impressive allotment marvels out there ... let us know if you have one!

Labels: allotment-flowers, allotment-secrets

Does allotmenteering make you a better person?

In my case, the answer is no. Sadly, not.

This week’s sins are pretty substantial I’m afraid. To begin with, look at that picture – couldn’t it feature on the cover of Country Life? Those are Louise’s stained glass cane-toppers, which I’ve mentioned before. And the sins of greed and covetousness are the result of me getting my hands on them for long enough to take a photograph. Now I really want that kind of pretty thing for my sweet pea canes!

I’d only just started talking to Louise about her allotment, which she’s had for three years, and her garlic harvest, which she lifted early this year because the last two years she’s encountered onion blight, when my phone rang. One of my nearest and dearest had managed to get himself stranded in the wilds of Sussex, where he’d been volunteering, so I had to abandon the interview and head off to find him. That added impatience to covetousness and greed, and then when I couldn’t actually find him (my sense of direction is feeble at best) I did a bit of taking the Lord’s name in vain too! And what made it even more annoying was that Louise and I had just begun a fascinating conversation about some glass sculptures she’d had in the Chelsea Flower Show – which is a pretty big deal, as we all know – and how she wants to develop her glass sculptures by accepting commissions from gardeners. It feels like a real cliff-hanger not to have finished our talk, and now I’ll have to wait until we find ourselves up at the allotments together again.

So that’s four sins, resulting from one single allotment visit. Add to that the frustration that I’m feeling because I still don’t have the beautiful striped geranium that I’ve been after for weeks (so that’s double covetousness and double greed, actually) because Andy and I keep passing like ships in the night. Each time I get to the allotment he’s just leaving, or I’m just leaving (in a rush usually) as he arrives, so we haven’t coordinated the collection of my desired plant yet.

And to round out the sin collection, my broad beans have developed rust as a result of all the rainy weather we’ve had recently, so I’m envious of all those folk who still have smooth green bean pods now mine are speckled and scabbed with red/brown spots. So, let’s add it all up: two lots of greed, two lots of covetousness, one impatience, one bad language, one frustration and one envy. Eight allotment related sins.

I’ve got to admit that at present, allotments seem to be bad for my moral health!

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-personality, allotment-secrets

The Sweet Pea man of Hurstpierpoint

I haven’t managed to interview my own resident sweet pea expert, Ron, yet, but my recent visit to the Hurstpierpoint allowed me to meet another sweet pea man – another genius with these gorgeous, highly-scented flowers. As you can see, his sweet peas are second to none (except, maybe, Ron’s!) and he agreed to share some of his secrets. The key to producing huge blooms like this is cordon growing. And it is quite a lot of work – but the evidence suggests that if you like sweet peas as much as I do, it’s well worth it.

Here’s what you do:

1. Choose a sunny spot and hammer two stakes into the ground to make a row.



2. Attach parallel wires between the posts, one at the bottom and one further up. Push canes into the soil every nine inches or so and secure them to the wires.



3. Plant one sweet pea in front of each cane – the Sweet Pea man of Hurstpierpoint has actually colour-coordinated his along the rows, but you might choose to mix the really highly scented varieties like the grandifloras amongst the others (the Spencer varieties usually have bigger flowers but less scent) to encourage the pollinators who will be drawn by the fragrance and then travel around the rest of your plot.



4. Let the plants grow to a foot tall and then select the strongest shoot and remove the rest – painful, but necessary if you want really strong flowers.



5. Tie this shoot to the cane and regularly pinch off side shoots and tendrils – this step means the plant gives all its strength to the flowers rather than dissipating it in side shoots and climbing growth. You will need pea rings or horticultural tape to keep tying the primary shoot to the cane.



6. When the plants have reached the top of the canes, untie them and lay the stems on the ground, parallel to the row.



7. Now re-tie stems to a cane further along the row, so the tip of the plant reaches about a foot up its new cane.

This is why so many people grow sweet peas on the allotment rather than in the garden at home - it's just too much to be expected give up so much garden space for a single plant, but on your plot you can extend the cane row as far as you like without losing much in terms of space.

Labels: allotment-flowers, allotment-secrets, allotment-tips, sweet peas

Allotment Aesthetics - Sheds

Well, what’s yours like? The shed is something that really gives away the personality, and purposes, of an allotment holder. There are severely practical sheds, weirdly personal sheds, artistic sheds, sheds that you suspect are actually more comfortable (and more lived in!) than the allotment holder’s home, and collapsing sheds.

My own shed is nothing special, mainly because I spend most of my time haunting other people’s sheds, poking in their corners and cupboards and making a nuisance of myself under the claim that ‘I’m going to write about this!’

Some sheds are well insulated, so that even through the winter, the resident can be cosy inside – does that mean they have an unhappy home life or are just sensibly comfort loving? Lots of sheds have solar panels now and most sheds have a kettle and some mugs, but one that I know of contains a bread maker. The allotment holder sets his bread off overnight and wanders down to the allotment the next morning to treat himself to a slice of still-warm bread and butter for breakfast – and yes, we do all hang around his door waiting to see if we’re going to be the lucky ones who get to share the loaf! I’ve been to a shed that contains a potter’s wheel and another that held a loom (and to be honest, not much else, a loom takes up a lot of room!) and I can think of at least a dozen sheds that have bunches of herbs hanging from the ceiling so that each time you enter them the fragrances of the garden overwhelm you.

Some of my recent favourites include a corrugated iron shed at Hurstpierpoint allotments that reminded me of the tool sheds that one finds everywhere in Trinidad, a ‘boat’ shed, that was just a fibreglass boat turned on end with a door fitted, and Louise’s shed, which has been painted a glorious pea green and contains, as well as tools and other allotment stuff, bits of her artwork and – always – a lovely bunch of flowers.

But this one, you’ve got to admit, beats them all hollow – half Tardis, half 1960s style icon, there is something ineffably cool and groovy about the red telephone box, and using it to store your rakes, hoes and spades is rather cool and groovy too.

Labels: allotment-secrets, allotment-shed, garden-shed, telephone-box

Allotment Secrets – Green Manuring

Green manuring is the big, but largely unknown, ace in the hole for the serious allotment gardener. Growing vegetables is an intensive business after all, and every vestige the goodness that goes into your lovely crops has to come from sun, water and … soil. So what you take out of the soil has to be replaced and the easiest way to do this is to use a green manure on parts of your plot that are not in current cultivation.

So, for example, let’s assume you had a lovely crop of winter veg and didn’t fill that area with summer plants – what you should do, to guarantee a rich and fertile soil, is sow a green manure and then dig it into the ground before it flowers so that it doesn’t become a weed and so that all the goodness of the crop goes into the earth. This does two things; it provides a small amount of nutrient that subsequent plants will be able to extract from the soil, but – more importantly – it increases the humus content of the soil which means that it can absorb plant foods more easily and has an improved structure which is easier to work and more retentive of water. Suitable green manures are mustard seed, annual lupins, rape, winter spinach or vetch, or many companies now sell a blend of green manure that you simply sprinkle on the soil and then dig in. These crops will all need a nitrogenous fertilizer (I use ammonium sulphate granules) at about 2 ounces a square yard sprinkled on the soil as you dig the crop in – this allows the bacteria in the soil to do their work of breaking down the crop. If, however, you plant a nitrogenous fixing green manure such as peas, beans or clover, the fertilizer isn’t necessary.

Now the thing you’ve got to bear in mind is that if you don’t get to your green manure in good time, it will flower and seed all over the place which will make you VERY unpopular with other allotment holders, so don’t plant a crop unless you’re absolutely sure you’ll be on hand to cut it down and dig it in.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-secrets, green-manure