Allotment tasks - February Pond

I got a phone call last night saying that Maurice is ready to install his new pond! Back at the late end of last summer, we volunteered to help him dig out the space for the line that he’s been given, but that was before my other half was told he shouldn’t be doing any digging, as he’s developed golfer’s wrist or hockey player’s elbow or bowler’s bicep or some such thing that means he’s not supposed to lift or dig. So guess who’s going to be up to her oxters in a big hole?

Anyway, it is that time of year. We’ve been working on our home pond this month, and I notice that several of our allotment friends have been doing the annual maintenance on theirs.

A big spring clean for a pond involves taking out some pond water and putting it in a big container, moving all the fish into that container, putting the plants in another container, and pumping out the pond. Then you need to scrub out the bottom and sides of the pond with fresh water and a soft brush (a hard one might damage a flexible liner), pump out that water, return the plants, fill the pond with fresh water (rainwater for preference, if it has to be tap water, you need to let it sit for two or three days so it can run through the filter and dechlorinate.

Put the fish in plastic bags with their old water and some air, and float the bags on top of the newly cleaned pond until the water in the bag and the water in the pond are the same temperature. If the clean water temperature differs more than a few degrees from the old pond water, the shock could kill all the fish.

Labels: allotment-pond, allotment-tasks-february

Really rotten allotment jobs in February

There can’t be a nastier time of year than February, on the allotment. I know I should be trying to find the good things about this month, but I do really, really, really detest almost everything that has to be done this month.

The worst job is turning over last year's potato bed and looking for those titchy leftover potatoes that hid in the ground and – if you don’t remove them – can spread diseases or pass on blight to this season’s crop. They have a lovely name: volunteers, but it’s a perfectly rotten job, back-breaking, time-consuming and fiddly.

The seed flats and everything above three inch pots are going to be used from next month onwards, and although every November I say I’m going to wash and sterilise all the pots at the end of the growing season, so they are ready for spring, I never do, and so I end up ferrying bagloads of flats and pots backwards and forwards as this is a task much more easily done with hot water at home.

The final horrible task for February is spreading black polythene over the first beds we’ll be planting next month, so that the soil underneath gets a chance to warm up before we begin to plant out seedlings that will be protected by cloches.

Labels: allotment-potatoes, allotment-seeds, allotment-tasks-february

Allotment Gardening – February tasks

What we’re up to right now, is:

Sowing certain plants indoors trays or pots - early beetroot, beans, summer cabbage, globe artichoke, lettuce and broad beans.

Last year we grew heritage broad beans, red ones, which were obviously a precursor of the Windsor variety. To just run through the difference - broad beans come in two main types (there are others, like dwarfing and heritage but with a bit of lateral thought you can usually see where your two foot tall beans or your burgundy coloured beans fit into one or the other type):
• The Long-pod plants have up to nine oblong beans per pod, hence the name! Generally considered the most hardy of the broad beans, these are the only ones it’s really worth sowing in autumn – when they should give you a crop about three weeks earlier that a spring sowing of the same variety.
• The Windsor varieties have only four to six round beans per pod. These are generally said to be tastier than the Long-pods and are less inclined to develop leathery skins. But they aren’t as hardy and should really only be sown in spring.

So we’re splitting the difference and going for dwarf broad beans and heritage beans grown from last year’s saved seed.

Sadly we don’t have room for spinach, although I notice a neighbour is sowing flat after flat, so maybe I’ll have something that he’ll be willing to swap for some of his first spring spinach to go in salads.

We’re also going to try, after last year’s success, sowing outdoors under cloches because while our February sown beetroot did nothing, we had plenty of lettuce and spring onions by doing this last year.

We’ve covered our rhubarb and we’re using up the last of our parsnips – the year’s turning again!

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-digging, allotment-seeds, allotment-tasks-february