Sleeping on the job

Contrary to popular reports I was not buried under a Couch weed avalanche.

This blog should be backdated to 25th april or so when I picked my first Cauliflower and was given a monster Parsnip!

 We will start with the Parsnip because I may have mentioned before how Barney on the next plot grows massive root veg, well this one was as long as my forearm and still tasted great when I souped it without any woodiness.  If I can grow Parsnips half as big and good as these I will be very happy, Barney employs the sow a row of parsnips thickly and constantly thin them out until they reach the correct spacing method.  Another thing he does is dig in the mulch that you can see in my previous post showing the sweetcorn area I mulched before sowing.

Now my proud moment, my first Cauliflower, I have 8 more in the ground but unfortunately they all seem on the verge of bolting as they are getting bigger so it looks like a giveaway/blanch and freeze time is coming.

Wonderful Sunday, not so wonderful sunburn.

I was hoping for BBQ weather sunday, we got the Sun in the end shame about the 35mph gusts of wind!

 

Still undeterred by the fact even a shed was blown over on the allotment a few rows over I started by helping my plot neighbour dig over his old strawberry patch,  this involved me *Cough* 'saving' 70 odd runners (no idea of the variety) to expand my Strawberry bed to almost 100 plants.  I planted them in and afterwards gave them a sprinkling of Blood, Fish and Bone (BFB) along with a decent soaking, I am pretty sure they are a little closer together than they should be but time will tell.

 

 

Here we can see my other reason for being down the allotment today, I planted out the first 80 Peas (Kelvedon Wonder) I have another 80 at home to put out next weekend and I also sowed in the ground approximately another 100 in this row.  I was going to sow 80 peas followed by 5 more sowings of 80 successionally at home but they take up so much space and the weathers turned now so I am risking it direct sowing.)

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I did uncover a first early potato by accident earlier in the week and that was throwing off roots nicely so the soils definetly warmed up considerably in the past week which is good news.  I will do another line of beetroot soon and direct sow some lettuce as my transplants in the bed at home don't seem to be taking well.

 

 



Easter weekend fun .

Easter weekend was cold but importantly it was dry and had been for a few days which meant I could really get stuck in on the allotment doing jobs, so much for 4 days off!.

 

 

Below is one of my original beds which I extended by 5ft to the left after measuring and finding out my 30ft x45ft 5 rod plot was actually only 25ft by 45ft  just over 4 rods with the path included.  I also dug it all over, weeded and put in some Chard from home as well as some very leggy  mange tout (Golden Sweet) peas which I don't expect to do much but they might recover.

 

This is the bed where my sweetcorn will be going in and I covered it with a layer of manure and bedding which is quite fresh and ordinarily I wouldn't do as it is a no no however seeing as the weather has been so cold with no signs of change I am gambling on it being later in the ground.  The sweet corn goes in around June and the manure will have the burn chance taken out of it by then and as a side bonus it will be acting as a weed mulch. 

(bottom right corner you can see a mass patch of scallions, so easy to grow and fire and forget really no care needed) 

 

The picture below shows my first fruiting area which is red currant, white currant, black currant and rasperberry .  I intend to build a fruit cage around this area as I lost a majority of currants particularly to birds last year, undecided yet wether to make with chicken wire or 1" gap pea netting obviously there is a big cost difference but the chicken wire should last years whereas the pea netting might only last 1 or 2 seasons.

 

 

Although I don't have pictures I also cleared up my strawberry bed and I am debating wether to dig them all up and then lay weed membrane to plant through. Weeding a strawberry patch without disturbing them is a serious pain due to their shallow rooting and keeps fruit cleaner but the downside is the membrane makes a nice safe home for slugs.

2nd post in one day, it must be raining.....

Well I was down the allotment bright and early this morning and despite being overcast it was quite pleasant when the sun broke through on occasion.  I was surprised to see again the allotment was empty bar maybe 2 or 3 of us and there must be 200 odd plots id say now but hey ho.

 

I started off by digging trenches for my 2 rows of first early spuds (Rocket) about 5" deep, it's a bit early judging by the way the weather has been lately but as long as I earth them up in good time on frost alerts I should get away with it.  I then laid down a thin covering of grass clippings and a sprinkle of chicken manure pellets in the bottom of the trench, there is some concern chicken manure pellets cause scab on your growing potatoes but I never had any trouble with that personally and it might be because I add them at planting not as a food later on.  Now the potatoes go in with chits facing up 30cm apart and then firmly push down so they are stable when earthing up, next I cover the potatoes with a good 3" of soil and spread some blood fish and bone on top as extra food.

 

Onto other things, shown below are 5 transplanted self seed Chard I moved a week or so back.

 

As a little experiment I am going to cover the smallest 3 of these Chard on the right with a cloche that has both vents open either end for airflow so there is less chance of mildew forming etc.  The other 2 larger specimens on the right I will leave uncovered and then after 2 weeks I will photograph them again and compare size changes and any diseases gained.

 

 

Conventional wisdom would say the 2 larger plants wouldn't put on nearly as much growth as the sheltered warmer ones but the larger plants have a head start of root ball size and surface area for the leaves as well to consider.

 

 

P.S.

Just a thought here on something I read a year or so back that is pertinent to the frost issue, plants that are damaged by frost apparently aren't actually damaged when the frost hits them (bear with me now I know that sounds kooky) the real damage occurs when they slowly thaw out and you can even help the plants out by giving them a quick soaking with room temperature water.  

Rhubarb forcing - Results.

Rhubarb, you either love it or you hate it.

The way my Nan used to cook it bless her mashed into a stringy soup I used to hate but wait, I like it now because there are better ways to cook Rhubarb and I may even add a recipe.

 

Now on to the main point of this post which is to show the efficacy of Forcing Rhubarb, you'd think at this time of year it would be barely poking it's head above ground

 

Like so

Lots of lovely heads appearing but nothing to eat ;(

 

Now hold your horses because if you happen to know about forcing your crop then yours could look like this!

 But they are small I hear you cry?  Well I have to admit before I even considered making a post about forcing the Rhubarb I picked all the big pieces, I couldn't help myself.

 

There is a small extra point to consider when forcing and that is you need to have a container to place over the crowns that is quite deep or the Rhubarb will hit the top, double over and split as its very delicate.



Hardening off my first sacrificial plants

Today I will begin to harden off my first seedlings that I sowed about 2 weeks ago my Peas, Pak Choi and Lettuce as they have all put on their first true leaves.  These are all meant to be reasonably cold hardy plants but if you start them off indoors you will need to transition them outside as they will be soft from the nice sheltered conditions

 

Hardening off a plant is a process whereby you gradually transition plants from inside the nice warm house or greenhouse etc into the exposed ground whether that is an allotment or pots and tubs.

They will go outside in the Blowaway during the day for a few hours at first and gradually increase this time from morning until night by the end of the week.  There is still a good chance of frost and worse at this time of year and when hardening off it is best to do things gradually or the plants will sulk and stall their growth for a time or may not recover at all.

Just as a side note, putting the plants outside during the day has another benefit in they will receive more light from being outside rather than a windowsill so reduce the chance of them going leggy.

If you are interested in your approximated last frost date look here -

http://www.gardenaction.co.uk/main/weather.asp

Leggy Seedlings?

 

Some of you may have heard of leggy seedlings and wondered exactly what they look like, well now you can get an idea thanks to the fact the Sun did a disappearing act Tuesday being replaced by heavy fog and rain just as the seeds germinated.

 

(Top 2 rows Webb's Lettuce, bottom 2 rows Pak Choi F1)

Brussel Sprout ( Trafalgar)

Now this doesn't necessarily mean the seedlings are going to be no good and a simple fix is when you pot them on to plant them deeper so the stem isn't as exposed above ground.  With some plants this fix will work better than others but you have to be very careful not to crush the stems as they are delicate at this stage anyway but even more so when leggy.  Be sure to execute best practice when you prick out the seedlings you should gently pull them out by their first leaves (Cotyledons) after loosening the compost around the seedling (I use a toothpick).