Sunday Sunday, so good to me..

Sundays are special. Its the one day when you don't have to rush about making sure you get to the shops, work or school. Its the day when ,hopefully, all the family will be together, the post doesn't arrive and the whole world turns a little slower. OK, in reality, shops are still open and people are working in them, but the world does rotate a little more calmly.
Meanwhile, its a good day to visit the site and get stuck in. I didn't dig much today, a couple of rows maybe, but I did harvest the last sprouting from my earlier sowings. The ones I made early last year, around March I think(must keep a diary) as opposed to the plants I bought online. The Broccoli was a surprise success as I'd never tried it before now. Not growing it anyway, I love it as a foodstuff and even though I may be the only one in our house to really enjoy it, I decided growing it would be a challenge.My only comment is, the challenge is in the waiting, being nearly a year between sowing and eating. I initially didn't plan on growing any brassica as the plot I took on was so small, anything had to be a fast turnover crop. When my luck turned and I was upgraded to a full plot(two halves) I decided to go for the greens!

Enough of then, more of now. Today I noticed the buds bursting open on the new apple tree I planted late last year.

A discounted James Grieve from Focus. Think I paid about a fiver at most for it. The one benefit of a store like Focus is the staff are minimum wage students or housewives who know very little about gardening and are given very little training in that area so they don't know when a plant is just dormant and sell things like Clematis as clearance items because they think they are dead. Same for deciduous plants. Bargain!

Unfortunately for the employer, they don't seem to know which are weeds and which aren't so happily continue to water and try to sell pots of herbs etc that have long since died and disappeared to be replaced by a decent sized, well fed dandelion!Ahh well, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.The signs of life on the fruits is encouraging as they will go on to form the backbone of the plot in years to come. It's the long term plants like these that will give shape and form to the layout as the seasonal stuff comes and goes. Beneath the Tree I've made a concession to colour and planted out these wallflowers, grown as tradition dictates, on the veg plot. Its this time of year when you need all the colour you can get.

I later tidied up the seed bed I started a week ago and sowed two more crops for later . Four rows of Chanteny Red Cored carrots from Unwins and two rows of Tender and True Parsnip from Kings seeds (site shop 50p)

The Broccoli and Sprouting stems from the early plants will be composted once they have been crushed but I did take the time to strip off any leaves and odd greens to compost them separately. The best way I can think of to crush stems is to lay them on the driveway at the site and let them get run over several times by the plot holder's cars!

There's life Jim,

Down the plot today and was surprised by some new arrivals. No, not a family of rare albino leopards but new shoots on the fruit canes, new growth on the rhubarb and new leaves on the shallots.

Its a sure sign that the ground is warm enough to start sowing hardy crops and planting out the tougher plants. Of course , most of what we should call hardy plants are already out. Broad beans, new potatoes, brassicas and overwintered onions and relatives such as garlic and shallots have all been in the ground for ages now. I mean the stuff we usually wait for warmth for before planting out. The old system for checking involved sitting on the soil with skin contact(yes..). If it was warm enough for that, it was warm enough to plant and sow. Not wishing to bare my prize assets to the compost I normally wait until I see the shoots on shallots or other things like the currants. If the sap is rising (oh its all a bit carry on today) then its safe to put out the tough stuff. I have continued with my early spuds, and started to sow some runners under cover too. Im trying a modular tray of Lady Di runners (available from site shop £1:50) and another tray exactly the same but of Lady Di seed saved from last years crop. I hear a lot about saving seed so I'm giving it a trial.

The Purple Sprouting is still providing plenty of food as is the Brocolli although the earlier plantings are starting to keel over now. Im keen to see some sign of sprouting on the white varieties though. I have been caught out by the Asparagus plants my lovely wife bought me(Wilkinsons) about a month ago. They were in polybags and were sprouting so I just planted them in a well dug and well rotted manured plot. I fully imagined that they would be killed off by the cold but today I went to dig into the same plot to plant out another crop when I almost uprooted the two healthy looking spiders!. Nature is a suprising old bird.. Unfortunately I don't see the Cardoman Lemon Tree coming back from the grave though. I hate it when shops start selling things so far out of season there is no chance of them surviving. It makes people think it is their mistake when they die and it discourages more gardeners taking up the spade.

I have no problem with people like Wilkinsons and the like selling low priced plants and tools etc., just that they time things wrongly. I have managed to do ok by them recently with onion sets and red gooseberries romping away and the red currant holding its own well against a set of black currants from my favourite supplier, a friend with an excess.

I was about to order a collection of autmn raspberries earlier this year when I was stopped by a good friend on site who was keen to thin out his patch of Autmn Bliss canes. He offered me all I could carry and a few black currants to go with them. Thanks mate, you're another salt of the earth site member , one of the many that make sites work against the odds.

Well, as predicted, weather is giving us one more reminder that March, and winter, isn't over yet!
Didn't visit the plot this weekend as the driving wind was only worsened by the sudden and heavy showers.Some Pyrethrums I am raising from seed were being hardened off out side at home but they went back under cover in the smaller greenhouse until the temperature returns to something more like it was.Fortunately all the veg growing on the plot at the moment is hardy and should happily cope with the drop. Maybe the radish I sowed two weeks ago will be sacrificed but radish can compete with weeds for speed and survival so Im not unduely concerned. The autumn planted onion sets are tough enough and big enough now to put up with much rougher conditions as are the brocolli plants. The fruit canes are long term plantings and are generally bred in the scottish highlands so will feel cosseted and warm by comparison!All this meant I could spend time with my wife on Mother's day and fit in a visit to my parents too.As they say(rarely now) it's an ill wind that blows no good.

Start at the very beginning, it's a very good place to start...

Went to the plot at about half one. I can on Thursdays because that's my regular day off at the moment. I try to get down on Sundays too, preferably before noon as there is a shop there run by the site committee members that sells all you need at very reasonable prices. The staff know what they are talking about, which makes a change from most chain stores!

I think its something very English and very parochial and as such should be preserved by the very people it exists to serve. Walking into the shop on a Sunday morning, light breaking through the dust covered windows onto the concrete floor and the old wooden shelves, you catch a glimpse of another world.
Anyway, back to today. The soil is starting to warm up and dry out. Its a good sign. Almost ready to plant out and sow seeds. Not yet though, still a chance of a late frost so I'm playing safe.

To that end , I've pulled last year's old plastic greenhouse and set it back up at the sunny end of the shed.
Its a cheap way of starting out in veg growing as it costs under £50 and can take about four seed trays on each of its four shelves. Ventilation is via a zip front which can be rolled up to a desired level and tied off.

Its essential to ventilate and water without fail on a daily basis with any sort of greenhouse or cloche as the temperatures can go well into the hundreds on even a cloudy day. Seedlings will bake and end up literally fried within a few hours. As defeatist as it may sound, it pays to have some sort of shading to cool the air inside down if necessary.

I have a smaller version(right) at home to start off some of the more demanding seeds. It is about a quarter of the size of the one at the plot and only takes six trays at a squeeze but is invaluable for early crops.I managed to fill two carrier bags full of broccoli spears and purple sprouting from the plot today. That equates to about £20 in Tesco!

I was amazed to see how much 'Tenderstem' broccoli is selling for, when ALL my home grown broccoli is tender! My wife makes a stunning soup using the stems and smaller leaves as well as the broccoli heads and it's delicious. The purple seems to be in vogue right now so I seemed to have lucked in like I did last year with the butternut squash. Couldn't get enough of those either!I can't predict what will be the super food of 2007 but I hope beetroot or onion as I've found my soil is great for those two!

The bottom line is I have to see what grows. To that end I bought a bag of seed compost from the Trading Hut at the site last Sunday and a few seed trays divided into cells. I want to see if root disturbance has cost me successes in the past so I'm going to trial the cells this year and see how it results.

Watch this space!

I already have radish seedlings showing out in the open so there is life already. It's a positive start to, what I hope will be, a positive , productive year!

Real start!

This is a recent view of my plot.Still a good layer of grass about but it's going slowly. I've divided it into beds to reduce ground compaction and the amount of digging needed. I don't use strictly organic means but do where and when it's sensible and possible to. I eat this stuff and feed my family and friends so I want to be sure I know whats going on and into the crops. I'll give you sizes another time, but for a rough guide, the small shed at the end is 6' x 4'.

I'll not bore with a list of crops yet but may list them elsewhere on here as a reference. Needless to say in these modern times, I grow more than I can eat, more than my children like and a lot of what is termed as weird looking by them and others! But I grow for the fun and satisfaction of it, not for the profit or logic of it. It could be time consuming but I can make as much or as little time as I feel I want to spend there. There may be differing results because of that but I want to enjoy it , not be a slave to it's demands. As I said, I grow more than is essential and therefore wont starve if something fails, just disappointed.

I try to get down to the plot at least once a week in the colder season and daily in the height of summer. It's easier when the days are longer to spend a few hours juts watering and losing track of time. It's a blissful waste of a summer's evening to be honest! Oh I can hardly wait now for the crisp crunch of a fresh lettuce or the bite of a radish pulled out of the ground and rinsed off there on the site. Lovely days just around the corner now as I sowed a row of French breakfast last week and the seedlings are poking through already!

Welcome to my plot

Well, its time to turn the first spit on a new plot. OK, maybe not a new plot but a new site to blog about the old plot.
I have been gardening since I can remember and since my marriage at an early age have been a keen veg and fruit grower. Add the that the joy of growing flowers to be cut for the house and you can see why I took up an allotment.
Yes, the refuge of the hen pecked old man, the cloth cap and wellie capital or the weird organic knit your on lentils couple.
Well, look again. Young couples, single women and teenagers are now plot owners.Even the odd meat eater!
Maybe the single women are vegan charity workers and the couples are Organic Jamie Oliver fans but they aren't all bad!
As this is a test, more about me,my plot and the various madness soon.