Allotments don’t stop in winter

Forcing its way through snow, this broad bean seems determined to prove it’s winter hardy (I certainly hope so, as there’s not much we can do to help it now) which is more than I was, with water leaking through my boots which had unexpectedly sprung a leak, harvesting Brussels sprouts with frozen fingers, and trying to dig up leeks from a perma-frost of definite Siberian proportions.

Okay, I exaggerate a little. But it was a very long cold snap for Sussex, which has little or no dealings with snow that lays – usually it melts within a couple of hours. One thing it did reveal, for all the things it hid, was that our fox, or foxes, are very much creatures of habit.

We walked quite a bit of the site, making sure there weren’t any burst pipes which were waiting to spew out water as soon as the thaw arrived and one the 60 plots we passed, we found the same story – one set of fox prints, going straight down the main path, veering off to investigate any items of interest (usually compost bins!) and then returning the same way. It was a fascinating insight into the life of the allotments after dark, and the regular patrols that the foxes must make of their territory.

Sunday’s harvest: two parsnips, two leeks (planted in open ground, very hard to dig, compared to those planted in the raised bed which hadn’t frozen below the surface of the snow) Brussels sprouts and a Brussels top from a denuded stem (I shall stir fry the top leaves, they’re delicious and shouldn’t be wasted), one celeriac.

And with that sackful of provisions, I wish you all a happy Christmas and a productive and profoundly germinating New Year!

Labels: allotment-fox, allotment-snow, allotment-winter-crops

Allotment structures

It’s too wet to dig, and almost (but not quite) too wet to have a bonfire. So what did we spend Sunday doing? Apart from nursing the bonfire that we’ve been ‘saving’ up rubbish for all year (and by rubbish I mean brambles, old wood, bits of rotten fence etc, not plastics or green waste) we decided to put up the ‘rustic’ arch that has been kicking around the site all year. And I use the term kicking advisedly – I don’t think there’s been a single week where one or the other of us hasn’t tripped over the thing or kicked it on our way around the plot.

It’s a pair of old shop fittings that we rescued from a skip, which we’ve now sunk on either side of the path. The intention is to put some wire netting over the top to form the arch shape – as it took us a year to get the side supports into the ground, maybe, by Christmas 2010, we’ll have the top bit in place too!

And as we stood around, poking bits of old wood into the fire, I pondered a recent discovery, announced in the Linnean Society’s Botanical Journal, which suggests that petunias and potatoes may actually be carnivorous plants.

Yes, that’s right. Petunias and potatoes, it seems, have sticky hairs that trap insects, and they, along with several other commonly grown plants may turn out to be crypto-carnivores, by absorbing through their roots the breakdown products of the animals that they ensnare. We haven’t classified them as carnivores in the past, because unlike the Venus Flytrap, for example, they don’t actively demonstrate their ability to digest their prey. But roots easily absorb nutrients released from decaying animal matter, such as bodies, nearly all plants are capable of carnivorous behaviour by accident, if not by design. Hmm. The humble spud a carnivore … doesn’t seem that likely, but if you told me that pumpkins were man-eaters, I’d believe you, they grow fast enough to catch a slow-moving target!

This week's haul: Brussels Sprouts, kale, parsnips, celeriac, swede and the very first purple sprouting broccoli!

Labels: allotment-structures, allotment-winter-crops

Allotment plans for winter

What happens when you have great ideas and very little information? You guess. Duncan mentioned that he wants to grown onions and garlic over the winter. Sounds good to me! But …

Have you ever tried to find out the real nitty-gritty on overwintering onions? No, I didn’t think so. Because nitty-gritty there is not much of!

Here’s what I’ve found out:

• You can plant onion seed in the autumn for overwintering
• There is a risk of bolting
• You need to protect it with fleece through the winter
• There’s a Blue Peter style way of sowing onion seed with strips of newspaper and glue that looks like so much fun it should be legislated against
• Garlic needs cold to germinate (really? I planted mine late in May and it’s germinated just fine – perhaps I’m lucky?)

The Royal Horticultural Society came up trumps with facts, but not with details – to whit: Onions are biennial, grown from seed they produce foliage in their first season, overwinter as a bulb, and then flower and die the following year. It is the cold winter temperatures that initiate flowering, and problems can occur when fluctuating temperatures trick the plant into thinking that it has experienced a winter chill when this is not the case. Onions only become receptive to winter chilling once they are a certain size. Consequently careful manipulation of sowing and planting dates lessens bolting. For example, by sowing seeds of overwintering onions in August resulting plants are large enough to survive winter cold, but small enough to be insensitive to chilling.

Ah ha – but …

• Which varieties?
• Will simple fleece cloches work as protection?
• How close can the rows be?
• Do they need winter watering?

Well, I think we’re going to find out – I’m ordering the seeds this week … watch this space (or rather, peer under this cloche) for future developments!

Labels: allotment-garlic, allotment-overwintering-onions, allotment-winter-crops

Winter Wonderlands

It’s such a shame when people don’t keep their allotments going through the winter, for two reasons:

1 - it makes it much more difficult for them to come back in spring and turn the ground etc because a whole winter’s worth of weeds and pests have taken over the ground

2 – they miss out on all the wonderful winter vegetables that they could be enjoying in the months when, in fact, vegetable costs rise and there is less variety in the shops anyway.

Our allotments are full of winter cabbages and kale, Brussels sprouts and, of course, the wonderful winter beets and chards. These have been a real development in recent years. Until quite recently, such crops were only grown to be fed to cattle, which is a complete waste as they are both tasty and nutritious and amazingly easy to grow. And a benefit in my eyes is their beauty – they gleam through the winter months like some kind of exotic growth transplanted from a warmer climate.

Most winter crops have definite advantages: there are far fewer slugs and snails around to attack them, and they are necessarily robust plants, needing very little care once they have established themselves past the seedling stage.

Labels: allotment-beets, allotment-brussels sprouts, allotment-cabbage, allotment-kale, allotment-winter-crops