The new season on the plots 2014

The new season on the plots 2014

We are now well under way into a new season of veg growing on our plots so I thought I’d start a new blog here & at the same time record some of the things I’m doing on my own allotment, ‘Plot 12A’, as well as on my friend Gerry’s plots. I’ve mentioned before that I help him on his 1 & 1/2 allotment plots. I’ll recount some of our activity here as well.

View up Plot 58 from our shed:

I don’t seem to have taken a photo of Plot 58 from the top so I’ll use this photo of “View up Plot 58 from our shed” to give a little impression of what the plot looks like. Although the photo was taken two weeks ago little has changed in that time as we have concentrated our attention on the smaller half plot 59B.

The autumn/fall of 2013 & the winter of 2014 broke records all over the UK for the wettest since records began! It has also been a exceptionally mild winter & there have hardly been any frosts – especially in this part of the UK. The allotments field is a fair bit lower than the surrounding houses, up to almost a metre in parts. This is especially relevant in October & May when we tend to get frost earlier & later, respectively, than the gardens of the houses above us. We therefore have to contend with a frost trap which, in essence – puts an end to our frost tender plantings about the middle of October & also stops us from planting out frost susceptible plants, like beans & Sweet Corn, till the middle of May most years. We therefore only have a window of 6 months max in which to sow, plant, grow & harvest our crops, the other 6 months it is difficult to grow many things.

Due to the very wet winter we haven’t been able to anything on our plots which has put us well behind compared with other years. Nevertheless during this month of March as the weather has improved, & the plots have very good drainage, we have been able to make a start on clearing the weeds that grew during the mild winter & sowing our first few crops. Like most years it has been the first early potatoes we have planted first of all.

About the middle of March Gerry planted a bed full of seed potatoes that he had been adding horse manure to. These were First Early ‘Pentland Javelin’. These he sowed in the first bed, near the plot division.

Potatoes 1st Early ‘Pentland Javelin’ just planted out:

Since then he has worked on improving a couple of more beds with horse manure where he intends to plant more seed potatoes but this time maincrop potatoes ‘Picassa’. As these potatoes generally go in later than the earlies, he wants to get the beds ready before the weather turns wet once again & so that he can also concentrate on some other beds for future crops.

Lettuce ‘Little Gem’ seedlings & Crocuses under the small apple tree in front of the greenhouse:

The Lettuce seedlings were planted out at the same time in the greenhouse & under the apple tree. See the difference between these growing outside & these others growing in the greenhouse (photos taken same day!):

A few days ago I put up a heavy net that has been laying around in the shed for a year at least. As the winds & rains had broken down the finer mesh net I put up last year, to first protect Pea seeds from the pigeons & then to give support to the plants, I removed the rests of the netting & canes & put up this new net in its place. There are Sweetpea seedlings growing from the last year’s plants growing there & I’ve lifted them up from the ground & placed them on the netting in the hope they will continue to grow & later flower.

New net on plot division 58B:

Like Gerry I’ve been working on my own plot as well as helping him. About the same time as Gerry I also planted out a bed of first earlies, in my case some ‘Rocket’ & ‘Pentland Javelin’.

Potatoes 1st Early ‘Rocket’ being sown at far end of plot 12A:

Potatoes 1st Early ‘Pentland Javelin’ being sown at far end of plot 12A:

But I also planted some onion sets at the end of February:

Onion sets ‘Setton’ just sown:

I noticed a week ago that these have now sprouted:

At the time I planted the onion sets I also planted out seeds of Broadbeans ‘Aquadulce Claudia’:

When I last looked, last week about Tuesday, there were no signs of them sprouting yet – something that concerns me as after 4 weeks of being in the ground they should have germinated by now.

Last week I also planted some more onion sets, on my allotment & also on Gerry’s. On both allotments I sowed a complete bed the width of the plots & about 4ft wide. The sets were planted approx 6″ apart . I got 4 rows in each bed. These sets are called ‘Stuttgarter’.

Onion sets ‘Stuttgarter’ just sown:

At the same planting distances we got some really big onions last year!

Plum tree ‘Black Czar’ blossoming:

This tree is near the top of Gerry’s main allotment. I expect the yellow Plums will be flowering during the coming week also.

The August plot – Part one

The August plot – Part one

Well here we are already half way through the 8th month of the year! Where did the time go? It has just flown by! It seems it was only a couple of days ago we were planting out the spring plants for our summer crops & now we are in the middle of harvesting them!!!

Cucumbers:

Here are a few photos of the Cucumbers in the greenhouse:

We have had the equivalent of about one a day for the last month or so! Some days there haven’t been any due to low temps probably, other days we have had 4 – 6 which I’ve picked to take home. The ones grown in the greenhouse have produced more & better quality fruit than those outside. The plants in the GH have been covered in Powdery Mildew for several months (as have the outdoor plants) but they keep on growing & producing more fruit. I give them 5lt of water a day or more! They are growing in 3 growbags, a tomato shares one of the bags!

Tomatoes:

The Tomato bed has grown a lot during this month. Now the plants are head high & the very first few fruits are starting to turn orange.

You can see the progress in just 2 weeks!

Now the tomatoes are beginning to ripen & here is just one photo – so as not to bore you too much!

I thought I’d introduce a new feature in this blog – I call it:

Find the veg!

Let’s start with an easy photo – just compare the following two photos to see if you can spot the Beetroot, among our “native flora”:

There, that wasn’t hard, was it? Well now that you have “warmed up” try this next one – you may have more difficulty this time:

Ready for another? Here we go then:

Did you enjoy that?

Our “native flora” grows incredibly fast after a drop of rain! It wasn’t through negligence the beds got in that state I only put the seedling out into the beds about 10 days before!

Here is a photo of a miniature Lettuce called “Tom Thumb”. It’s extremely hardy as it coped with all the worst that our last winter could throw at it with no protection whatsoever! I think I will grow some over winter in the greenhouse! I picked a load of them today & we will eat some tomorrow. I also sowed some more seed in the GH.

Here is a photo of Lettuce “Ruboneo” gone to seed:

This was one of the Lettuces I grew from the seeds my wife brought me back from Spain last year. The main head had been eaten but we cut them back to within an inch of the soil & they sprout again. Gerry has been taking the new sproutings for his birds & rabbit but there are many in flower now as each original plant produces 6 or more new shoots.

Peanuts:

Though the plants themselves are not getting very big they are producing flowers!

As you can see they have very bright yellow pea-like flowers, now I hope I get some Peanuts from them:

Potatoes:

Here is a photo of Gerry’s King Edward main crop potatoes which I dug up as the foliage had gone yellow/brown. Some of the soil was being eroded away from around the tubers thus exposing them to the light:

There must have been well over 10kg there!

Legumes or Pulses: aka: Pinto beans, Garbanzo (Chick peas) beans & Lentils:

As I got such a good crop from the Pinto beans I sowed last year I’m sowing many more this year in different beds, mainly where potatoes were grown earlier. Although I didn’t get any return from the Garbanzo beans or the Lentils I’m sowing them as green manure. When I pick the beans I shall dig the rest in.

The photo above shows them a couple of weeks after I made a sowing where we had 4 rows of potatoes earlier.

The next photo was taken on 15th August (somehow it escaped from having a caption printed on it!) & shows the Pinto beans that were sown between Gerry’s onions grown from sets. These were harvested a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t germinate very well but now they have made quite a bit of progress & are even flowering now, you may not be able to see the small white pea-like flowers on this photo.

The following picture is of all three legumes which I sowed after taking out Gerry’s Shallots. As the self-sown Sunflowers had made such enormous leaves & are coming to an end now I removed many of the leaves on each plant so as not to have too much shade when the legumes germinate:

Three Sisters’ bed:

August has seen this bed come on by leaps & bounds! The photos don’t make this as clear as I would like though:

You can see the runner beans climbing up the canes here. (Note to self, in a future planting use shorter beans!) Unfortunately the Water Melons used as ground cover plants have almost all died off! So there will be no Water Melons from the plot:

The Sweetcorn used as support for the climbing beans have taken off & produced plenty of flowers & it seems the cobs are developing well. I did wonder if the leaves of the beans would hinder the fertilization process but this does not seem to be the case.

Below is a picture taken from the opposite angle to all the other pictures I’ve posted up till now of this bed. The Sweetcorn here didn’t get planted with beans – I didn’t have enough!:

I’m going to finish this blog with a couple of photos of flowers plus the shed one – with a difference!

Morning Glory:

Where we have the divide between the two half allotments I put in some canes & tied them to the wire between the two iron posts Gerry put in some years ago. I also put a lot of string to give the Sweetpeas something to grip onto earlier in the year. I also grew some Culinary peas there as well.

They have all died & I planted seeds of Morning Glory (Many colours) that I bought when in Spain back in May. They are now in full flower & look absolutely lovely! Here is a picture of them during the middle of the 2nd week of August

Here is a close up of a few Morning Glory flowers that I took this morning! As you may notice we had a little rain but only a little:

View of the shed:

Here is the picture I promised of the shed with a difference! This time it is from outside as from the inside the view down the allotment is blocked by Dwarf Sunflowers, Gladioli & the Raspberry bed!

I apologise if you found the blog longer than usual but even so I could have gone on as there are many things I haven’t included! (Perhaps I could make up an extra blog in a day or two? Let me know what you think!

Until my next blog,
Happy gardening!