View from the Plot - April 2017

So, what did I get up to on the allotment last month? To some extent it feels like very little, although looking back through my diary quite a lot of sowing and potting on has gone on. I guess it feels like I haven't accomplished much more than more digging because the plot is still relatively empty.

I dug up the remainder of last year's crops last month; the last few leeks and carrots and a lovely big parsnip. Currently deciding whether to make a parsnip cake with it! The purple sprouting broccoli seemed to finish quite abruptly. I think because I missed picking it for a few days, the heads went too far and started flowering.

As far as this year's crops are concerned, the onion sets I started off in modules were planted out and I've gradually been planting the chitted seed potatoes, just one more variety to go out now and they will get planted where the PSB are. I'd left those to flower as the bees seem to like them.

PSB left to flower

I've sown some root crops; two types of carrots, beetroot, parsnip and some radish. I warmed the soil this year and sowed them in the small polytunnels I use for my sweet potatoes and think that made a difference, particularly with the parsnips although come to think of it, I'm not sure the beetroot have germinated yet.

I've also sown some calendula and eschscholzia on the plot and am pretty sure they have germinated.

The first asparagus spear appeared a good week or so earlier than usual. The spears have been a bit sporadic again. Maybe I don't have enough crowns? Not sure. Unfortunately a frost on 26 April put paid to a few of them that were ready for harvesting. I cut those out and am pleased to see new spears popping their heads out of the soil.

New asparagus spears appearing

Weather-wise, the temperatures are still up and down and it feels a bit risky planting anything out at the moment. Another cold night is forecast in the coming week but after that things are looking a bit more promising...

The main problem is a lack of rain. The ground is bone dry, like dust. I can't remember when we last had a decent deluge and I think we're going to need to have quite a few to make any difference.

It does look like the strawberry crop may be a good one though. Although the blackened centres of some of the flowers suggests some were damaged by the frost last week.

Lots of flowers on the strawberries!

On the whole though I have a feeling it's going to be another challenging growing year!

Introducing.......Plot 51b

As promised a couple of weeks ago, an update on where I am with the 'new' half plot. You can see what it looked like when TK and me took it on a couple of years ago here. I guess I really started working on it last summer. I had previously tackled an area at the top end of the plot with the vague notion of having a polytunnel. One of the storms put paid to that notion when I saw another one on the site flattened for the second time....our allotment site is on the edge of town with farmland bordering on two sides so it's very open and the wind really races through when it blows!

As the plot was in quite a poor state, the worst weed to deal with has been couch grass and really the best way of dealing with this is to literally remove every root; and when every spadeful you dig up is just a mass of couch grass root system, you know it's going to take a while to make sense of a plot. Before long though I'd dug one bed which equated to about a quarter of the plot. I decided this would be a bed for currant bushes as I loved a blackcurrant cordial I'd made from the berries from my father's garden.

Blackcurrant bed

One bush was inherited on the plot but needed relocating for a second time; this time I made sure I cleared the rootball completely, When we had moved it the first time, in our innocence we just dug it up and replanted it with the result that the poor bush was being smothered by grasses.

A purchase of a proper bush, Ben Nevis, from the now defunct Edible Garden Show, a bargain buy of another variety called Ben Ojebyn and cuttings which had rooted filled the bed nicely. I just need to create some kind of fruit cage to protect them now!

Next job was to try and limit the out of control raspberries to one section, so I've made a bed in the middle of the plot so that I can contain them more. There does seem to be a rogue plant in the bed which I think is a thornless blackberry. It has flower buds forming for the first time this year so hopefully we'll know more soon!

The raspberry bed with the possible thornless blackberry in the foreground

There will be a flower bed but this area is pretty much overgrown still. I did cover it with cardboard to keep the weeds down, but many of them have grown through it as it breaks down.....

At the top of the plot is the lovely shed we inherited from another plotholder. The area next to it is where a couple of fruit trees will go together with the thornless blackberry. The plan is to train it as a cordon along wires between two fence posts. I'm in the process of creating this area at the moment. I'm also planning on erecting that short length of chestnut paling between two of the posts to act as a wind break of sorts. One of the fruit trees is a small pear tree called Little Sweetie from Blackmoor Nursery. It won't ever get bigger than 5ft odd and as it blossoms so much earlier, I figured the more protection I can give it on our open site the better. The other fruit tree is a Victoria Plum, also from Blackmoor. Thank you Santa!

So still very much a work in progress (aren't all allotments?!) but it's starting to take shape.

Plot 51b - April 2017