My Garden

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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The first of the 2009 has arrived on the dinner plate – spinach ‘Napoli’ sown in March as a thick row was gathered by cutting off plants at ground level leaving  a plant every 20cm to grow larger for the next cutting.

My sandy soil can make leaf crops very gritty, so at least 3 washes are needed to get spinach ready for the table but with the patio plants beginning to need frequent watering the washings were put to good use

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Peas and broad beans are the mainstay of mid-summer supplies.  The over-wintered mange-tout ‘Oregon Sugar Pod’ peas did not do well.  Instead of ripping them out, broad beans were ‘stitched’ into the surviving peas.  As they get different pests and diseases the ailing peas won’t affect beans as they would peas.  There are enough pea plants to take a very light picking if all goes well.

The stitched in beans have emerged very well and will follow the early crop of over-wintered beans and the rather more numerous beans that were sown early to fill in the many gaps in the over-wintered beans after mice had done their worst

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Getting crops established in the most demanding but also the most interesting time of year for allotment holders.  This year (so far) has been brilliant, especially compared to the wet and chill of last spring.

Carrots are up and growing well.  Many years re-sowing is needed, and in fact I once had to sow six times before the crop was properly established, by which time it was July and the crop’s yield potential severely reduced.  Early finger carrots, ‘Amsterdam Forcing 3’, are now very well developed and the next sowings of ‘St Valary’ and ‘Campestra’ have emerged.  The former has emerged rather patchily suggesting poor quality seed, an all too common occurrence with non-commercial cultivars where seed production is less stringent than is ideal.  If the gaps are serious I usually just dib in a few seeds of beetroot to fill in the gaps.  Unlike other crops, carrots do not transplant well.  Having said that, another allotment holder transplanted his carrots last year and they did quite well.  Whether this was ignorance on his part or whether this is common practice in his native India I cannot now ask him as he has left the district. 

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Getting crops in the ground and growing is the critical task now.  To do well crops need plenty of leaf in June/July when the sun and temperatures are highest, days are long, and in this dry district they need roots deep in the soil extracting moisture.  Unless established in April they are in a poor position to take advantage of summer weather.

The red onion sets were planted out through black groundcover membrane to avoid the need to weed.  Foolishly I had not noticed that the packs only contained 50 sets this year instead of the usual 75 (same price of course), and I had a shortfall.  To fill in the gap some onion ‘Hyton’ seedlings were bought from the Wisley plant centre

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With the ‘Accent’ early potatoes emerging beneath fleece and polythene it was time to plant the rest of the earlies and second earlies.

First early ‘Lady Christl’ was set out in two rows at 50cm centres, allowing 30cm between tubers.  The ‘Accent’ should crop in June. ‘Lady Christl’ in June/July and then it will be the turn of the second earlies

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There is real warmth in the sun now.  After raking and stirring the soil to harry the slugs last week, weed seeds germinated and the uncropped ground began to green.  Another raking laid waste the weeds.  Their silvery stems were exposed to sun and drying.  As a bonus the twice raked ground is in perfect condition for sowing and planting.

Although the last set of sowings are now through they are not yet far enough advanced for the next successional sowing of lettuces, radishes and broad beans.

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Slugs are vulnerable when the soil is dry and the weather sunny.  To knock back their numbers, previously rotovated or dug land was stirred with rake, cultivator or hoe to expose the slugs to drying air and sun.  With luck a useful number will succumb to drying.  It is the smallest ones that will suffer most and these are those that do most damage and are least susceptible to slug  controls. Soil moisture losses will, I trust, be replenished by the rain forecast later this week.

Dry March weather is also ideal to clear away spent winter crops ready for the second batch of rotovating next month

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Seeds sown in the heated propagator are germinating freely now.  As the propagator lid cuts out a lot of light the plants are whisked out of the propagator and stood out on in bright cool place. My way of growing brassicas for next winter is to germinate them in pots of 50:50 vermiculite and multipupose potting media and priick out one seedling per 7cm pot of multipurpose potting media as soon as the seedlings can be handled. I like a coldframe for the growing on as this is very bright but cool giving sturdy plants in time to set out in June. At the moment I have sown: 

• Brussels sprouts, ‘Maximus’, ‘Diablo’ and ‘Revenge’ for early, Christmas and late respectively
• Calabrese ‘Fiesta’ for summer cropping
• Cabbage ‘Hispi’ for summer
• Cauliflower ‘Clapham’ for summer – it is clubroot resistant

 As these come out of the propagator the red and white storing cabbages and go in – the idea is to grow enormous heads that will store well next winter.  It is so convenient to have these hanging in the garage ready for a quick winter salad or casserole. As well as brassicas, the propagator is filled with: 

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With warming soil at last, the newly rotovated and fertilised soil was raked level and marked out for winter brassicas.  The winter brassica plot was marked out, with pegs, for three rows of Brussels sprouts, one row of purple sprouting broccoli, one row of winter savoys, one of red storing cabbage, one of swedes, one of January King cabbage, half a row each of white storing cabbage and autumn cabbage and finally a mixed row of kale, purple cape broccoli and spring cauliflowers. 

These are or will soon be, sown in pots for planting out in May and June, but in the meantime the spaces between the rows, which vary from 90cm between the sprouts, to 45cm for swedes and cabbages can be sown with small quick-growing intercrops that will use the vacant space until the brassica leaves meet over the rows in July: Read More...

With winter finally loosening its grasp, sowing and planting time is very close – in fact on my light sandy soil here in the south I can often sow from late February.  However, unless there is a spell of tropical weather soon the soil is unlikely to be warm or dry enough this February.

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