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My Garden » Guy Barter
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These are comments that Guy Barter has left on blog posts and gallery photos.
I leave covers on as long as practically possible. Weeding, p&D control and watering under covers is a chore however. If plants need pollinators the covers are at least partially lifted to allow insects in and out - I try to cover melons and peppers with clear polythene to give them more warmth but this requires careful management to avoid cooking the plants on sunny days, whereas fleece covered plants look after themselves. The extra warmth at fruit formation enhances ripening and flavour - green peppers are less rewarding to eat then red ones for example. Even if foxes, breezes and general mishaps make the covers a bit moth eaten by late summer they can still exclude deer and pigeons.
I am not so sure about guttering but the Rosemoor veg gardeners, afflicted with heavy clay, start off bunching carrots that produce finger sized roots, in small pots of multipurpose media and plant the pot containing several carrot plants out before the roots get congested. I have tried this and it works very well.
Robinta is a typical Dutch red with firm yellow high dry matter flesh that is good for most uses and yields very heavily; much like Desiree, which is similarly drought resistant. I cannot grow Desiree as it is very susceptible to common scab. I find Sarpo Mira good too, but they are more floury and also get scab. Sarpo mira needs no blight spray but does not seem to have the drought resistance we need on dry sandy soils in the south-east. Slugs are few on sandy soils, but on wetter soils I would grow Romano which seems to survive slugs and is a fair Desiree substitute but lacks drought resistance. Robinta, unlike Sarpo Mira, also has some resistance to potato cyst nematode always very common on allotment sites...
No, more a silty sand that is even more vulnerable to damage then clay. But I did dig over my mother's garden at the weekend. That is evil clay, but after a while I remembered the trick, which is to use a fork. My preferred fork has an extra long steel handle to give great leverage. Forks are easier to insert than spades and the clay sticks to them less. Using this to take small 'bites' of the clay the plot was soon turned over.
Well I hope your are doing better than mine - some were twisted out of the ground by the winds that are lashing my plot this week. Should have fleeced them.
Thanks – I am delighted to see new, younger allotment holders are continuing this Reduce/Reuse/Recycle attitude. I am strongly attracted by the idea of gardening as ‘low agriculture’ and don’t like allotments to be too fancy. Oh, and I have seen some very utilitarian, if well camouflaged, areas within Yellow Book gardens – I find that rather re-assuring.
Leek seedling emerging
Sturdy cabbage seedling