The first salads from the garden are reaching my plate now, but from the herb patch rather than the salad crops. Sorrel and chives are abundant and tasty, and these are supplemented with lettuce ‘thinnings' and divine, crunchy mild radishes. Sorrel in particular is a most valuable crop for early spring. Sorrel is a perennial and grows anywhere, although my acid soil probably suits it better than most. In fact it is a common weed in my back garden, although it seems well behaved in the herb garden.
Disease
almost always ruins my onions if grown on the allotment, so I grow
these elsewhere. Allotments are rife with downy mildew spores spewed
out from onions inadvertently left in the soil from last year by
careless plotholders. This disease is very damaging in such a low lying boggy site.
I know it is mighty late to plant onion sets, but I had to wait for the ground to dry out. Anyway,
onion sets have been planted rather close at every 5cm in rows 25cm
apart as I don't expect the bulbs to be anything special.
Fortunately I have a large number of onion transplants in pots in my plant raising area and these are looking more promising. These will be planted out next month.
With
onions at £3 for a 10kg sack from local Asian grocery stores it is
hardly worth growing my own, but that is not the point... Carrots on the
other hand are also cheap, but by growing your own you can choose less
usual types:
o ‘Black Spanish' - Pretty purple-rooted form
o ‘Kingston' - F1 hybrid, hybrid, ‘Autumn King' type for long term winter storage
o ‘Nelson' - F1 hybrid ‘Nantes' type that I meant to sow last autumn for over-wintering, but the soil was too wet
o ‘Newport' - F1 hybrid, long, thin, sweet ‘imperator' type, which I have yet to raise a good crop of
o ‘Samurai' - pink fleshed Asian type, that are currently becoming more popular
I
like to sow carrots in early May for the best quality roots. But the
soil is so dry and so warm, I felt I ought to go ahead in case the
weather turns too wet or dry later. Carrots sown now will get their roots well down to moist soil before the worst of any summer droughts strike. Carrot fly is a severe pest on allotments, but it is a rather weedy insect and is thwarted by barriers 45cm high or so. However,
it must put its puny back into its tiresome work as it can do much
damage if not prevented. Therefore I constructed a 60cm tall polythene,
wire and batten ‘fence' or barrier around the carrot (and parsnip)
patch.
In
2005 I had to sow my carrots six times, finishing in late July, before
I got a satisfactory ‘stand' of plants, so I take pains to ensure that
they perform better in 2007. I draw out a drill or groove in the soil 5cm deep and water it well with a watering can. When the soil is thoroughly wet the depth of the drill is mere 2cm due to water washing soil into the drill. I then sow the seeds on the moist soil and carefully rake soil to cover the seeds. The head of the rake is then used to tamp the soil firmly over the drills pressing the seeds against the wet soil. I hope they will imbibe water, germinate and root into the wet earth giving me a good population of plants.
This latest sowing joins ‘Adelaide' and ‘Parmex', both early cultivars sown in March and February for tasty baby carrots in summer.
I have a packet of the general-purpose carrot ‘Nairobi' in reserve in case of failures.
However, the main work is now raising plants. The first batches of Brussels sprouts, cabbages and other brassicas are now ready to be planted out and are hardening off in my fleece-clad greenhouse. I
was surprised at how well the plants have responded to recent
applications of liquid fertiliser, suggesting that my potting compost
was insufficiently provided with nutrients by the manufacturer. I will feed plants more frequently from now on.
Basil, celery, celeriac, leeks, onions and parsley were pricked out into pots and cell trays.
To
my surprise, the mice killed relatively few of my tomatoes in their
recent raid, so I pricked tomato seedlings out into 9cm biodegradable
pots, followed closely by aubergines into 5cm biodegradable pots. The peppers are growing rather slowly and will have to wait.
My emergency sowing of tomatoes after the mice struck are now growing strongly. I now have rather a lot of tomato plants, but my colleagues at Wisley can be relied upon to take them off my hands.
Sweet corn and French beans were removed from the propagator and put to grow in the coldframe. In
their place the first batch of cucumbers, melons, pumpkins and
squashes, sown in 5cm diameter bio-degradable pots, were placed in the
propagator to germinate.
I
like bio-degradeable pots as they are very quick to plant, with a bulb
planter in the case of the 5cm pots, there is no root disturbance and
there are no ‘empties' to gather and bring home from the allotment.