My Garden

Last weekend frost hardened the soil; this is ideal for fruit pruning.  Soft fruit pruning was finished with the winter trimming of gooseberries and the cutting back to ground level of the autumn fruiting raspberries.  Last year crops were enormous – the productive potential of soft fruit is amazing.  I have a gap for another hybrid berry – I find these so easy to grow compared to raspberries.

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Last weekend the spade was used to very good effect so that now just two digging jobs remain:

• Leek seedbed – leeks are readily sown outdoors from early March in this district so a perfectly level, crumbly seed bed can be made now and this is best achieved by careful digging. 

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This what I would have done on the allotment this weekend had the weather been sufficiently inspiring to tempt me away from the many long overdue DIY tasks abou the house:

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People have asked what are you going to do in your allotment this weekend?  Since, where no snow actually lingers, it is covered with 5cm of mud on 5cm of frozen soil the answer is very little.

None of the produce will get any better from now on so it is dig and use root crops (carrots, celeriac, parsnips, long beetroot, Swedes and scorzonera) as fast as we need them (a few days supply is covered against frost with cardboard and pallets). The state of dearth and desperation required to start lifting Jerusalem artichokes has not yet been reached.  A square metre of these are grown for that unhappy day in February when there is nothing else left

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Frozen ground means manure shifting time.  Cultivations are best left to the New Year on sandy soils as they slump if left loose and exposed to winter rains becoming what is technically called 'sad'.   A lorry-load of composted horse  manure was bought off a local manufacturer.  The owner assures me that he takes the greatest care to keep weedkiller contaminated manure out of his supply chain, but no one is perfect, so the propagator was cranked up to full heat and beans sown in the prescribed way.  After three weeks all is clear and the weedkiller-free manure can now be spread.

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Sandy soils in the south-east are very hot and dry now with plants potentially under great stress.  To avoid this watering is being done on a ten day cycle giving a good drenching to really saturate the top 25cm.  Thirsty celery, celeriac and runner beans are done on a five day cycle.  There is no need to water more often, although misguided plot holders water more frequently, their efforts are often in vain or worse due to lack of deep soaking or excessive wetting.

Without sprinklers the easiest way to water is to grow summer crops in shallow trenches and fill these with water.  This gets water to where it is needed, and nowhere else, quickly

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After six weeks of devoting every spare minute to sowing and planting and keeping the young plants alive, it is at last over, the allotment is fully planted. There are few oddments to do such as some module-raised Swedes to plant next week, but with a splurge of planting, autumn cauliflowers including romanesco, purple cape winter cauliflowers and purple sprouting broccoli the last of the significant planting was done this weekend.  The final sowing was a short row of Florence fennel.

From now on it is just a matter of replacing spent crops, a much more leisurely activity.  Early potatoes have been variable – the ‘Accent ‘(February planted) under fleece got rather weedy as the weeds grew unexpectedly fast beneath the fleece and got ahead of the potatoes and yield suffered, but ones in pots were good.  However pot grown potatoes never taste as good to me as soil raised ones.  ‘Lady Christl’ planted in open ground (early March) has yielded abundant crops of tasty scab free tubers.  The ground cleared is now ready for winter leek planting.  Deep grooves have been drawn in the soil, fertiliser applied to the base and once weeds have germinated and been eliminated by a contact weedkiller the leeks will be planted in the bottom of the drills as the grooves are officially called.  Further weed germination should be much less and the leeks should need little weeding

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Now that duties at Chelsea are over, the allotment can get some attention.  My favourite part of allotment gardening is raising new plants each year.  Every sunny place in the back garden near a tap or water butt is covered in young plants and tray by tray these are scooped up and conveyed to the plot and carefully planted one-by-one.

Sowing seeds direct in the ground is a lot quicker, but they have to fight their way through the weeds that are so damaging on sandy soils.  Transplants on the other hand are put out later, giving a interval to eliminate weeds.  On bare ground weeds are lightly hoed or treated with contact weedkillers.  The occasional bindweed or creeping butter cup is spot treated with a glyphosate weedkiller in a handy ready-to-use pack.  After recent wet summers horsetails have staged a comeback.  Normally frequent hoeing and heavy smothering crops keep horsetail at negligible levels, so it is back to repeated hoeing to beat this weed back down

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The spring has been very kind so far. Two weeks ago we had a useful bit of rain that helped wash the newly planted Brussels sprouts plants into the ground.  Before that we had some dry weather that provided an opportunity to wipe out weeds and sow more seeds.  When the rains came, the seeds, especially peas and beans, burst through the soil.

Last week it was warm and dry again, (just right for Chelsea Flower Show) and ideal for another go at the weeds with hoe and gloved hand.  More seeds were sown and the squashes, peppers, pumpkins and tomatoes were set out.  Now the rains have returned to wash them in too and ease the emergence of the seeds

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Recent dry, sunny weather allowed the slugs and the first wave of weeds to be tackled.  Subsequent rain restored soil moisture leading to ideal seed bed conditions.  The downside was that weeds germinated in hundreds, but just in time the weather turned dry and vigorous raking again polished then off.  The chickweed, annual meadow grass, shepherd’s purse and fat hen that predominated earlier have now been replaced by annual nettles and cleavers, with the dreaded galinsoga just beggining to show.  All die well when raked as seedlings. 

My sheet of black plastic have been out on loan to new allotmenteers to keep their undug areas clean.  The sheets are coming back now and covering the bare areas that will be planted up with tender crops such as courgettes and sweet cown as soon as frosts no longer threaten

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