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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-82210324289377030362016-02-07T17:02:36.582+00:00NomeGrownAllotmenteering AdventuresNomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-701096584388671742016-01-26T10:22:00.000+00:002016-01-26T14:13:27.641+00:00Conquering CompostThey say composting is easy. They say you just chuck your garden and kitchen waste in a big box and leave it a year. Then they talk about greens and browns, and layering, and mixing, and activating it if it's not going well. They talk about insulating it, ventilating it, aerating it, covering it, making sure it's not too wet, making sure it's not too dry. Then they talk about formulae; two thirds brown and one third green, or maybe it's 90% brown and 10% green (and what kind of waste do we create more of? Green!), or maybe it's half and half. Then some guy says you've gotta add ash or clay, and another says you've gotta buy worms, and another says you need a bokashi bin, and another says a hotbin is the only way, and another says you only get really good compost if your heap is three cubic yards. One guy says you have to turn it regularly and another guy says never turn it. Then there are the big questions: how hot does your heap get? Is that really properly-formed humus, or is it just decomposed organic matter? Let me tell you, compost is THE number one most hotly debated subject at our community veg-growing plot at FoodSmiles.

Me, I find life's too busy to worry about it very much. On our allotment, we have a two-cell bin made of pallets. We fill it up, it sinks a bit, we keep filling it up until we can't fill it any more, and then when we have to - usually every two years or so - we dig it all out and use the good stuff at the bottom and in the middle. There's always a lot of uncomposted stuff, on the top and round the edges where it's exposed to the air, so we just return it to the bottoms of the bins to keep going. It's slow going, and the compost isn't going to win any prizes and is usually still full of fibrous bits of root and twigs that didn't quite break down enough, and a few bright white bindweed roots to pick out, but it makes a satisfactory mulch, must contain plenty of nutrients, and disappears into the soil soon enough - and I certainly can't complain about the quality of my soil.

Last autumn, though, we were despairing about the size of our compost heap, which just didn't seem to be breaking down at all. It may be because we moved it into the part-shade of a tree, or because of the big piece of cardboard we threw in without tearing it up, or maybe we just produced more waste than usual for some reason. But we couldn't add any more to the mountain - we even had to start a new heap in another corner temporarily.

In November we started forking all the uncomposted matter off the top onto an empty bed. We didn't have time to finish the job and it just sat there all through December, but yesterday, at last, we got back to it. We forked out the rest of the uncomposted stuff, piled the good stuff into the right-hand bin (plus three plastic dustbins) ready for use, and piled the uncomposted stuff back into the left-hand bin.

We also wrapped black plastic sheeting round the bins and stapled it in place. Despite the popularity of compost bins constructed from old pallets and a lingering notion that bins should be well-ventilated, I've noticed lately that bins without ventilation seem to be much more effective, and by enclosing the waste you don't get a layer round the outside that dries out and doesn't break down. We'll have to find a lid as well, I think...

Somehow, almost everything fitted back into the bins (we did also fill three 80 litre plastic dustbins with good stuff), and despite mostly ignoring the bins for two years, one of them was 80% or more good compost and the other about 50%. The mountain is no more - hurrah!

I guess composting is easy...Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-87776592178801315802015-08-17T19:00:00.003+01:002015-08-17T19:05:52.043+01:00Tomato UpdateAs usual, I've grown a range of tomato varieties this year, all lined up across my patio. They're barely ripe yet - I'm still waiting on four out of the five varieties to redden - but it's looking like a pretty good crop on the way!

The first variety, nearest my door, is Skykomish, an open-pollinated variety from Real Seeds that is supposed to be blight resistant. Unfortunately it's the least vigorous of the lot, hasn't grown very tall, and has the least fruit on it (fruit set seems poor) - and it's always had a few sickly-looking yellowy leaves! The fruits are a real mix of sizes, but there are a few nice big ones so hopefully it will be worthwhile in the end...

The next is Indigo Rose, the black tomato bred to be very high in antioxidants (anthocyanins, like in blueberries). The dark leaves and black fruits look rather dramatic and prompted lots of questions when I had friends round for a barbecue, but the plants have always looked rather stressed, with curled leaves, no matter how I've cared for them!

Whatever the problem is, it hasn't stopped the plant producing an abundance of fruit on looong trusses. They look black from any distance, but if you peek underneath, where the sun don't shine, they have green patches, and it's these I'm watching to check for ripeness - they should turn red eventually...

In the middle is Angelle, my trusty favourite from seeds saved from hybrid supermarket toms. I used to save the seed from year to year but they got more and more susceptible to blight with each generation, so I've started again from the hybrid this year. They're performing as well as before and are the most vigorous (and tallest) of the bunch, with huge trusses of small plum-shaped toms - and they've been the first to ripen!

We have a few Angelle plants in a plastic greenhouse on the allotment too, and under cover they ripened even quicker - we've had a few harvests from them now while we're only just about to start picking the ones at home.

Next in line is heirloom Amish Paste, a great tom for cooking (though I like it sliced as well), with vigorous plants and huuuge fruits!

I've had my first-ever experience of blossom-end rot this year with these - my watering habit must have slipped! - but thankfully only lost one truss of fruits, and I've been extra careful to water well since to prevent it from happening again. Blossom-end rot is caused by a lack of calcium, but it's rarely actually a shortage of calcium in the soil; more often lack of good transport through the plant's system, due to a shortage of water.

Finally, Dr Carolyn, another Real Seeds heirloom which I love, and they're doing really well. They're not as productive as some other varieties, but they're delicious!

I had the dreaded notification from Blightwatch at the weekend that my area was experiencing a 'Smith period' - perfect conditions for blight to develop - so I'm watching them carefully now for any signs. I'm disappointed that we've reached this stage already and I've harvested so few ripe toms so far - I think I need to choose an early variety or two next year so I can start picking sooner. In the meantime, I've cut a lot of the leaves off these plants to try to speed ripening - really I should have started this sooner so that air circulation around the plants was better when the conditions for blight struck. I've taken off everything below the first truss and leaves which crossed over and touched each other a lot, and I've taken off leaves which shaded the fruits a lot.

It's only been a day since I did it and I'm sure I can see new tinges of colour appearing already, so hopefully it's working! But when blight does strike, I'll be ready to pick lots of the toms green and use them in chutney, green chilli and whatever other green tomato recipes I can drag up!Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-38197052172651943582015-05-06T11:40:00.001+01:002015-05-06T11:40:58.214+01:00A Wildflower LawnWe don't have a very big lawn in our garden, but it still managed to be a lot of trouble - it had become infested with couchgrass and lots of weeds, and was always trying to escape its brick boundary and creep across the paths. So last year we decided to turn it into a wildflower lawn, where 'weeds' could be at home, within reason, and we wouldn't have to worry about keeping it looking tidy and even and flawless.

We covered it up with black plastic for a couple of months in the late summer, to kill off the exisitng growth. That seemed to work fine for the lawn itself but the couchgrass, dandelions and creeping buttercups still kept going, so it's been a battle since then to get rid of all the weeds, and I spent a couple of weeks in April hoeing regularly to cut down any new weed seedlings.

We bought a low-flowering seed mix from Wildflower Lawns and Meadows which contains 26 different flowers including buttercups, daisies, agrimony, selfheal, ragged robin, camomile, creeping thyme, cowslips, clovers, yarrow, fox and cubs, wild orchids and more, as well as a mixture of grasses. It's supposed to have a very long flowering season, to be tough enough for light traffic, and to reflower rapidly after mowing, which will only be needed around once a month. And of course it'll be wonderful for bees and butterflies!

After much weeding, hoeing and raking, I scattered the seed about two weeks ago and we've been keeping it watered to help things germinate. The first seedlings are beginning to show now - I hope they are the seed I sowed and not other things which were already in the soil! (Of course, some of the old 'weeds' were species which are also in the seed mix, so it's not all bad!)

There are some tough older weeds rearing their heads again too - obviously I missed a few - so it's going to be an ongoing task to weed out docks and couchgrass for a little while...

Though I'd really like to be using the lawn this summer, I think it's going to take quite a while to grow strongly enough to walk on. But I'm sure it's going to be worth the wait and look lovely when it's established!Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-33146250001528567172015-05-03T16:29:00.003+01:002015-05-03T16:29:58.565+01:00Tater TimeWe've had some early potatoes growing in sacks in the garden for a few weeks now - I've been gradually filling the sacks to cover the growing shoots and protect them from frost, and we should have our first new potatoes by the end of the month. I've made three successional sowings, three weeks apart, to spread the harvest out.

But we've only just planted our maincrop potatoes on the allotment. As with seed-sowing, when I was new to growing I used to be anxious to get this job done as soon as we hit March, but these days I take a more relaxed attitude; it takes about two weeks for potato shoots to appear so they'll be arriving in mid-May and I suspect they'll be safe from frost by then.

Our three chosen varieties - Pentland Crown, King Edward and Sante - have been chitting on the bathroom windowsill for a good long time now, and all have healthy chits which should get them off to a good start. They have a full bed to themselves in our crop rotation - space for about 60 plants - and had we to remove a few forgotten carrots and parsnips, as well as quite a lot of dead nettle and chickweed, to clear the area. Then we raked some home-made compost over the whole lot, divided the bed into three, laid out the seed spuds in two double rows, and used trowels to plant them all 4-5 inches deep.

I'll be sure to hoe this bed over the next couple of weeks to get rid of any new weeds, and then in a few weeks time when all the shoots are up we'll earth them up, but otherwise we'll just leave the spuds to do their thing now until they die off again in August or September. Easy-peasy - just the way I like it :-)Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-63496994534139814222015-04-28T12:54:00.000+01:002015-04-28T12:54:47.420+01:00Seedlings UpdateWhen I first started growing things, March was the month of frenzied seed-sowing, but now, having had a few years experience, I've chilled out a bit and a lot more happens in April. That way I don't have so much trouble looking after young plants and protecting them from frost, and plants don't get pot-bound and unhappy in their containers. So yes, with those digging and structural tasks out of the way, April has been largely about seed-sowing and caring for baby plants.

At home I have several trays of tomato, pepper, squash and cucumber plants to look after. They live outside on sunny days and all over the kitchen table and floor overnight. It's a bit of a chore but hardens the plants off thoroughly and allows them all the light they desire, and it's only for a few weeks.

The raised bed is looking great, full of salad veg seedlings including lettuce, mustard, spinach, watercress, komatsuna, kohlrabi, carrots, radish, turnips and spring onions - it'll be a salad bar all summer, and there'll be space for pepper plants here too. Despite my fears and the poor performance last year, I'm seeing no growth problems at all so far - hooray!

The plastic greenhouse is full of seedlings too; chard and perpetual spinach, kale and cauliflowers, dill, leaf celery, achillea, cerinthe, stock, snapdragons, cosmos and marigolds.

The cerinthe seedlings are so pretty!

On the plot, parsnips, beetroots and turnips have germinated and I gave them a good hoeing between the rows yesterday to keep the weeds down. Soon I'll sow swedes and calabrese in this bed too, and plant out young celeriac, leeks and cauliflowers.

The bindweed in this bed and our perennials bed is bad, but all I can do now is keep pulling it and hope it gives up eventually! You can see below there are a few gaps among the broad beans. Not sure why... But I think I'll resow them next time I'm down there - it's not too late! I'm a bit ashamed to say I forgot to put insect-proof mesh over my carrots again, having failed last year too. I couldn't bear to see the carrots split and deformed from carrot fly again, and carrot fly are no doubt laying eggs by now, especially thanks to this mild spell! So I've hoed out all the seedlings and will resow them in a new location at the weekend and put the mesh in place straight away!

We've sown the flower bed with hardy annuals now too (cornflowers, vipers bugloss, ammi majus, bupleurum), though loads of tiny weed seedlings are coming up too and it's going to be a job to know which seedlings to weed out and which to keep!

April has rushed by but I'm glad it's nearly May - the month of planting-out! By the end of May the house will be seedling-free again and I should be able to stop worrying about cold nights and spring hailstorms!Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-60274247469381091552015-04-01T12:54:00.001+01:002015-04-01T12:54:41.043+01:00Busy, busy!Winter and early spring are great times for gardeners to do all sorts of non-growing jobs, like developing new areas and working on paths or buildings. I had a long list of these this year, and a long session on the allotment on Monday finally allowed us to finish up all but one of them. Just in time I'd say - 'early spring' is most definitely over now we've hit April!

We finally finished digging over what was previously our strawberry bed, which will be our flower patch this year and hopefully bring looooads more beneficial insects to the plot, as well as giving us flowers to cut and give away. I planted out the corncockle, calendula and clary sage I raised at home over winter, and I'll sow lots more here in a couple of weeks...

We've also planted up the herb patch round the pond and fruit trees. The focus here isn't on culinary herbs, as they're much more useful grown at home where you can grab them easily as you need them, but on flowering perennial herbs for insects and some herbs which I'd like to try drying for tea - lemon balm, camomile and peppermint. I've also popped a few perennial and self-sowing flowers in; some poached egg plant and primroses, an oriental poppy and an echinops. Maybe I should call it my 'companion plants patch' instead of my herb patch.

There's still a bit of work to do to get rid of the last of the grass in that corner by the pond... But it's so good to have this area looking nice again after it got swamped with grass and then we mulched it with manky cardboard over winter!

When we moved our compost bins last summer, there was a lot of good compost in the bottom that we just couldn't use at the time, so it's been heaped up in the place where the compost bins were ever since - we even grew our beans late last summer on the temporary raised bed it created...

...but now we've levelled the ground and moved the pile to this year's potato bed, where it will help build the soil. Our greenhouse will go in this spot this year. I hope the people on the next plot sort out their compost pile soon - it's a bit of a battle to stop it falling onto our plot, and there are brambles growing in it which keep finding their way into this bed.

While we were on the plot I also took the opportunity to sow some more seeds: I scattered some dill and parsley seeds in some carefully-chosen corners, and sowed beetroots, turnips and parsnips in rows in our roots bed, a foot apart, and covered with sieved compost.

Do you like my new plant labels? They look a bit industrial, but I was desperate to find something that would last for years, instead of perishing in the sun or rotting in the rain or just getting kicked about and lost in the dirt, and I hope these are the answer. They're from Amazon - I tried to find another supplier but couldn't - by a company called GardenMate. The permanent marker is supposed to last all season, and I'll be able to clean it off with a solvent cleaner to reuse them. That's the theory, anyway...

I'm happy that we have some broad beans on the plot at last, after a bit of a battle against mice eating the seeds! These were actually sown at home in a big seed tray at the beginning of March, and planted out this week. There are a few more sown direct here too, and covered with the same mesh to try to keep the rodents off this time. I have half a feeling I'm going to go down there and find little holes chewed right through the netting one of these days!

At home, I've sown lots more seeds, including celery, basil, dill, perpetual spinach, pea shoots and some more flowers; sunflowers, achillea and cerinthe. After a manic March, I think I've just about caught up with myself. The only things remaining are to clear and dig over the old asparagus bed, which is small and shouldn't take too long, and plant out my poor sweet peas which are getting desperate for some space and some support! Poor things!

I'm glad it's April now and the weather must warm up a bit more soon. I feel like I've got a bit of a holiday coming up over the long Easter weekend, and I'll probably get stuck into some more sowing: courgettes, squashes, brassicas and beans are next, as well as the bulk of the flower patch, getting the greenhouse sorted - and it'll be time to plant potatoes before we know it!Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-22484987209983046842015-03-29T16:09:00.000+01:002015-03-29T16:09:21.380+01:00The Importance of EdgesWhen I started out with an allotment, I wish someone had told me the importance of edges. I thought we could just dig the plot over and it would be dug, and grass free - I see some others doing this in pictures online, digging over neat square beds amidst grass paths, and sometimes it seems to work for them. It doesn't work for us. The grass on the paths moves in so fast and so vigorously it's a constant, time-consuming battle to keep it back. It swamps everything. Even the low raised beds we put so much time and effort into a few years ago didn't help - couchgrass roots went right through the plywood, and could easily get underneath a thin barrier like this!

Pretty, but pretty useless.

When we divided our plot up with paths that the grass couldn't penetrate we hit on something; the grass couldn't get past one of these paths. By dividing grassy areas from cleared ones, we finally kept some places grass-free. Hurrah! We also began digging small trenches along the sides of the plot, alongside the grassy paths, about six inches deep and six inches across, and this too slowed the grass down enough to concentrate on doing other things during the growing season! The trenches need some maintenance a couple of times a year (and we do occasionally fall in them!), but they do the job. Woohoo!

So we've been maintaining our borders this week - the cheap weedproof membrane we used for our paths first time round was obviously not made to last and grass was starting to creep through in places - a situation that was bound to only get worse if left.

We invested in some heavy duty woven groundcover fabric, and with the paths already in place, it was a simple enough matter to move the bricks aside, lay the new fabric over the existing woodchip, replace the bricks and top up with more woodchip. The council delivers woodchip to our site regularly for things like this, which is really handy.

One day... one day I will eradicate all couchgrass from our plot!Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-2562942392287317362015-03-27T12:59:00.000+00:002015-03-27T13:00:15.427+00:00Sowathon!March has been a busy month for many reasons, and I've been way behind with seed-sowing for the new season, but in the last week I've squeezed in a few hours in the garden and taken the opportunity to catch up!

This time last week was the spring equinox, when the days become longer than the nights again (hurrah!), and it seemed like a good time to sow my tomato seeds. I potted up all the pepper, chilli and aubergine plants from the propagator - they're looking big and healthy and have been spending daytimes out in the plastic greenhouse (pic above) - and I sowed five varieties of tomatoes in their place: Amish Paste (a good cooking tomato, but tasty sliced as well), Dr Carolyn (delicious heritage variety!), Angelle (my favourite, from seeds saved from supermarket toms), Skykomish (a blight-resistant variety) and Indigo Rose (the 'black tomato', super-high in antioxidants). They all popped up in just four days and are growing away on the windowsill now. The electric propagator is a real help in getting warmth-loving seeds to germinate!

They look a bit leggy - I guess we've had some gloomy days lately - but they'll catch up with themselves and I'll plant them deep when I pot them up.

We spent a couple of hours topping up the big raised bed in the garden, with the last half-bag of the compost we bought for the purpose last year, plus a layer of new multi-purpose compost. I treated the bed with sulphur before sowing to try to begin lowering its high pH (see previous post), but I decided it might be overcautious to limit what I sow in it this year - after all, growth did seem to improve quite a lot during the course of last season, and the layer of fresh compost should help a bit too - so I'm trying a bigger variety of veg in it than I originally planned. It won't take long to see whether they grow well or not, and I can always resow something else later... The bed already contains some parsley, chives, garlic and perpetual spinach from last year, and I filled up the rest of the space with rows of carrots, turnips, lettuce, spring onions, komatsuna, watercress, spinach, kohlrabi, radishes and mustard.

I also sowed some more celeriac seeds. I had been hardening off my young celeriac plants, but then I read somewhere that if celeriac gets too cold in its first spring it can think it's in its second year, and go to flower rather than producing a good root. Last year's celeriac didn't actually go to flower, but it was a terrible failure and I wondered if my early-hardening-off could possibly be why... So this new set of seedlings will be coddled indoors until the temperatures are higher out there, and we'll see if it makes a difference!

The corner garden bed needed a good clear-up - it had quite a few weeds, last year's bean poles and old bean and pea plants, and some honeysuckle and snowberry invading fast. Once tidied, I sowed some peas and mangetout against the fence, and scattered mint leaves and chopped up dry mint stems over them to keep the mice away - it works a treat!

Finally, I sowed some chard, leaf celery and flowers (cerinthe and achillea) in cells in the plastic greenhouse, and planted some early 'Accent' potatoes in sacks. The potato shoots could be harmed by frost after they appear, so I'll need to keep an eye on them and keep earthing them up or throw fleece over them on cold nights. I've got six of these bags so I'll sow two more in two weeks, and two more two weeks later, to spread out my harvest a bit.

I'm nearly caught-up but there's still plenty more to do, and it'll be April in just a few days... In fact, I'd better get back out there!Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-23046172021502165062015-03-21T17:13:00.001+00:002015-03-21T17:21:01.116+00:00More Geeky Soil Stuff: My Soil Analysis Results!As I've mentioned before, I resolved to get a proper lab analysis done of my soil this year, to identify any deficiencies and attempt to bring it to - or close to - the ideal mineral balance described in Steve Solomon's book The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient-Dense Food.

I took not just one but four soil samples. The allotment is perhaps the most important, but I also wanted to test the raised bed soil which gave poor growth last year and the soil of my garden veg bed, which did very well last year but which I suspected of a boron deficiency due to some hollow courgettes. Finally, I thought I might as well send off a sample of FoodSmiles soil as well, mostly out of curiosity.

To take a sample, you're supposed to cut regular-sized-and-shaped slices of soil, six inches deep and an inch or so across each way, from several points on the plot, to get a mix representative of the whole area. Professional soil-testers have a tube-shaped device they use to get a perfect even core of soil each time. I was just working with a spade and trowel... but I think I did good enough for a first-timer! For each sample, I put all the soil 'slices' in a bucket or bowl and let them air-dry near a radiator for a few days, then broke up any big lumps, picked out stones and twigs, mixed it all up really well and bagged up two cups of the soil for sending off.

Sending it off was a faff as well! I could only find one lab in the UK that would do the soil test described in Solomon's book - what's called a Mehlich 3 extraction along with pH, organic matter, total cation exchange capacity and base saturation - and it cost three times more than what it costs in Solomon's recommended lab in the US... So I sent my samples off to the US! I felt a bit guilty about the air miles, but I couldn't have afforded to do it any other way. Samples had to be labelled and double bagged, sealed very securely in a strong envelope with all the seams taped up, and an import permit and special label attached to the outside of the package to declare what was inside and show that I was allowed to send foreign soil to this address!

It must have made it through, because two weeks later, my results came by email, and you can see the full report here if you like. But most of the numbers are fairly meaningless until you take a deeper look; everything swings on the TCEC, which indicates the amount of nutrition a soil can hold, so XX lbs per acre of a nutrient might be way too much for a soil with a low TCEC, but not nearly enough for a soil with a high TCEC. Solomon provides worksheets to help crunch the numbers and figure out exactly what your soil has and what it needs.

A Note on Organics...

The soil amendment 'prescriptions' mentioned here, involving measured amounts of all sorts of mineral compounds, might seem to go against the grain for someone who is concerned with gardening organically and sustainably, and have certainly given me cause to think a bit about 'organic' versus 'chemical' fertilisers. But there are plenty of mineral soil amendments approved for organic use where a need is identified, and just because it's not organic compost or manure, doesn't mean a substance is necessarily harmful in any way. Adding pure mineral supplements carefully chosen according to measured needs is a very far cry from routinely applying synthetic, high-nitrate, petroleum-based mixes (many of which contain heavy metals) at maximum application rates, as is much too often done in modern agriculture; these kinds of chemical fertilisers feed the plants but diminish soil fertility. In his book Solomon spends quite a lot of time discussing the sustainability and impacts of different amendments, and before buying I will check out each one and decide individually whether I want to use it - but even though Solomon's method isn't 100% 'organic' all the time, these amendments are all designed to help the soil and its microlife, which is of key importance in this soil health business!

Allotment

The allotment soil has a pH of 7.1 - just above neutral which is what most veg-growers will aim for, with a range of 6.0-7.5 commonly recommended. 6.5 might be nearer to ideal, but since different veggies like slightly different conditions it's certainly good enough.

It contains 7.6% organic matter, which will supply more than enough of nitrogen through the growing season as it is digested by soil organisms. 7% is plenty - 4% is about the minimum it needs and 10% is more than a soil can efficiently use. More good news! I'm actually surprised it's this high, since I've never been good at adding organic stuff to the soil. I compost allotment waste and return it to the soil as and when it's ready, but only once in eight years have I bought in manure and compost to spread, and I know some gardeners do it religiously every year.

The TCEC is 13.1, which indicates a good level of nutrient-holding clay and humus in our soil. TCECs in very rich clay soils might be as high as 40 or more, but for the purposes of the analysis it only matters whether our TCEC is below or above 10, and above is a good result.

The main purpose of this exercise is to make sure the major cations - calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium - are in balance, and a good supply of sulphur, phosphorus and trace nutrients are available. 68% of the TCEC should be calcium, 12% should be magnesium, 3 or 4% percent potassium and 1 or 2% sodium. The allotment soil has an excess of calcium and potassium and a deficiency of magnesium and sodium - a balance of 81%, 10%, 4.5% and 0.3%, so I'll take some action to adjust this balance. It also has very significant sulphur deficiency. Phosphorus is very slightly low but not enough to worry about.

Trace minerals measured are boron, iron, manganese, copper and zinc. In the allotment soil, iron, copper and zinc are plentiful (with more than twice the iron needed and more than four times the zinc!) but boron and manganese are very low, so I'll aim to add more of these.

The prescription to amend this soil is to add, per 100 square feet, 225g manganese sulphate, 120g sea salt, 110g agricultural sulphur, 60g magnesium oxide and 20g borax.

Garden soil

It was extremely difficult to get an accurately representative sample of the garden veg bed as it comprises two very different layers: a few inches of old bagged compost and used growbags on top, and a hard clay just underneath at a depth that varies across the bed... So my confidence in the accuracy of these results is lacking slightly, but I was interested to see them anyway.

The pH is 6.8 - very slightly acid and pretty perfect for growing vegetables. The organic matter was very high - 38% - but perhaps not surprising given the thick layer of old compost. The TCEC is high too at 17.9, probably thanks to the heavy clay.

The cation balance is heavily weighted to calcium and magnesium, with potassium slightly low and sodium very low. Funny how we're told salt is terrible for soil - actually a small amount is very important, but it looks like most of our soils don't even have that much. Sulphur and phosphorus are both significantly low, as are boron, manganese, copper and zinc. The boron deficiency I suspected is shown, but actually it's only very slightly lower than any of the other soils I had tested.

The prescription for this soil is 760g monoammonium phosphate, 414g sea salt, 212g manganese sulphate, 110g sulphur, 40g zinc sulphate, 28g copper sulphate and 20g borax per 100 square feet. I think I might take a cautious approach to making the amendments, considering I'm not confident in the consistency of my soil sample, and just aim to fix the worst of it this time round.

Raised Beds

Now this one was interesting. As I described at length a few posts ago, this soil, bought in to fill my new raised beds about this time last year, gave extremely poor growth last season. I suspected an overabundance of potassium and perhaps a low pH, and added calcium and nitrogen to try to counter those things and help plant growth but it didn't really help.

In fact, this is a calcareous soil with an overabundance of free lime and a high pH which makes trace nutrients unavailable to plants. If I pour vinegar onto the soil, it actually fizzes! This means the test I ordered isn't accurate, as a Mehlich 3 extraction can't test accurately where high lime is present - I should have done the vinegar test first and ordered a different soil test... Doh!

The soil shows a pH of 7.7 but this is likely to be artificially low. There does indeed appear to be a high level of potassium, but the level of lime and high pH is clearly the bigger problem and, save ordering a new soil test and a whole load more mucking about, I think the easiest way forward is to address that first by applying sulphur, which is turned into sulphuric acid by soil bacteria and neutralises the surplus calcium carbonate, turning it into highly soluble gypsum which will then easily leach from the soil. This takes time; a year or more. So in the meantime it will be important to only grow what is happy in these beds; so far garlic, brassicas, lettuces, carrots and beets; and to feed plants with a foliar spray to ensure they get the trace elements they need.

I have real trouble understanding how a soil mix that was obviously so high in manure and woody waste can be so very high in lime, but I guess it looks like my lime application last year may have only made things worse - doh again!

FoodSmiles

The FoodSmiles soil has a pH of 7.3 - right at the high end of a good range - a TCEC of 15.2, and 7.6% organic matter. Its cation balance is not too far from the target, with small excesses of calcium, magnesium and potassium but a deficiency of sodium. Phosphorus and sulphur are both very low. Like the allotment, it has very high levels of iron and zinc, but it is low in boron, copper and manganese.

Amending this soil with mineral applications would be a whole different ball game, since it is Soil Association certified land and we'd have to show a clear need for every amendment and have it approved in advance - and we've got more than enough to do at the moment anyway! But it hasn't had a lot of organic matter added in recent years and I expect applying manure would bring a beneficial pH change. IF I was going to tackle anything else, the priority would be to amend the sulphur and phosphorus levels, but at the moment the soil is growing crops very well indeed.

Some Thoughts

As I write this, I'm wondering about those high levels of iron and zinc... Solomon warns that tiny flakes of rust or galvanizing from the tool used to take the samples can inflate these levels. I didn't have a steel tool I could do it with but I did clean my trowel thoroughly and make sure nothing looked like it was going to come off it... If I do this again in future I'll be sure to be prepared and use stainless steel instead just in case!

All the soils tested require, according to this method, a significant application of sea salt, which feels a bit wrong but I'm doing my best to trust the method and go with it!

I have high hopes that if I correct the sulphur level on the allotment, I might be able to grow onions and garlic there again; sulphur protects against fungus so perhaps the lack of it allows the white rot to thrive.

My next task, then, is to read up on and source the various minerals needed to amend the allotment soil and garden bed, and sulphur for the raised beds. It's quite a bit of work, all in all, but it's absolutely fascinating and I'm really looking forward to seeing the results!Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-80172573636521503532015-03-19T17:13:00.000+00:002015-03-19T17:15:19.370+00:00Teeny Tiny TreesWhen we started out on our allotment we planted three little 'columnar' fruit trees near the pond, in what was supposed to be our herb patch. They were a red apple, a green/yellow apple, and a pear. The green apple mysteriously disappeared, but the other two have done pretty well, despite the red apple taking on a rather dangerous lean in the last couple of years, and the whole herb bed getting swamped with couchgrass... The apples are great and we get a fair few, for a small tree. But we don't really like the pears on the pear tree and we'd rather have more apples, so this year we decided it was time to change things a bit.

First the pear tree had to go, and I gave it to another allotmenteer and friend from FoodSmiles, who planted it on her allotment just a hundred metres away! Next, we had a go at righting the red apple... We loosened the roots on the side it was leaning towards, pulled it back into a neeearly upright position and tied it to a strong stake, and then flooded the ground with water to try to resettle the roots, working the soil back into the loosened area and stamping it down hard. Time will tell how well we did...

We cleared the rest of the bed, digging out most of the lovage and horseradish, which had both got huge, as well as bucketsful of couchgrass roots. And we planted two more teeny tiny columnar apple trees (from J Parker's). It'll be a few years before they match the height of the original one, but they should be producing fruit by next year.

It's funny seeing this area virtually bare again, since it's one of the first areas we worked on when we got the plot eight years ago! I'm a little bit nervous about planting it back up with herbs since it didn't go too well last time... But we're hoping a few years more experience and knowledge - and the fact that the plot as a whole is much lower-maintenance now - will mean that we can keep on top of weeds this time and make sure it doesn't get swamped again.Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-9248182370882333182015-02-26T10:48:00.000+00:002015-03-03T17:42:38.789+00:00An Alternative Fruit PatchThe bottom end of our allotment has never been very productive - unless you count couchgrass and nettles. When we first dug it over the soil was very dry and fully of woody matter and old roots, not to mention half an ancient greenhouse, in small pieces. It's also in the shade of an elder tree and next door's little shed for part of the day.

We grew outdoor tomatoes down here and they very quickly succumbed to disease. We grew artichokes here and they all died. We grew raspberries here, and even they didn't do well! The couchgrass seems to move in here faster than anywhere else but nothing else seems to thrive.

Last year we moved our compost bins to this area - it seemed a better use of land that won't easily grow crops, and it would help to stamp out some of the grass and nettles that kept invading. But that still left our overgrown raspberry patch to deal with. Half the raspberries had died and the rest were swamped in a jungle of grass.

We took out the old raspberry plants and dug the bed over three times to get rid of every last grass root we could find. Then we laid a new weedproof-fabric-and-woodchip path down one side of it, dug a trench along the top where it meets the next (derelict) plot, and put a border of weedproof fabric along the end of the plot too, so it should be much harder for new roots to find their way in.

I was keen to keep the area as permanent planting, since our three main rotation beds are working nicely now and perennial planting has benefits for the soil and wildlife as well as my workload! But I wanted to try some new fruits; I do like raspberries but I'm not a fan of the other usual berries and currants people tend to grow on allotments, and I fancied trying some new things I'd been hearing about. So our new fruit patch will feature... Japanese wineberries, Chilean guavas, and Cape gooseberries!

Botanist James Wong famously promotes a number of unusual crops, and his book 'Homegrown Revolution' encourages gardeners to ditch some of the 'old-fashioned' stuff we've been growing for generations but that is actually quite tricky in our climate (aubergines and cauliflowers, for example) in favour of more exotic crops that actually grow very easily here. I have only just bought the book this week, but the above fruits all feature in it - and I'm rather tempted by one or two others he recommends too - perhaps another year!

EDIT: Whoops, the Japanese wineberry isn't in the book - I think I heard about it in a conversation about unusual crops which centred around the book and assumed it was.

Japanese wineberry is similar to raspberry but with striking red stems and lime-green leaves, and the fruits are surrounded by a spiny calyx that means birds don't usually go for them. It can handle a little bit of shade, so the shed shadow shouldn't bother it. I'm not really sure what its growing habit is going to be like - I'm kind of expecting it to be like a bramble! - but I am well prepared to train it up some canes if need be...

Chilean guavas are small berries that ripen in the winter on a rather attractive evergreen bush. I bought these plants nearly a year ago when I saw them on sale and they have been waiting patiently in pots at home until now! (I have two more in large containers at home too, from which I got just a few berries last year, though I think I picked them before they were ripe!)

Cape gooseberries (or Inca berries, or golden berries) are perhaps better known, and sometimes seen served at wedding receptions and posh restaurants, usually with smoked meats. The fruits are similar to tomatilloes, but sweet and golden yellow, and come in a papery husk. They're grown as an annual in this country, so it's not exactly permanent planting, but it also means I can change my mind easily and try a cocktail kiwi or something here next year instead if I like... I've sown the Cape gooseberry seeds at home (no seedlings yet...) and I'll plant them out here in June or so.

I'm not really sure how big these plants get so that's all I'm putting in for now, but I hope my alternative fruit patch will fill up some more in time. For the moment I've put in some biennial flowers too - foxgloves and wallflowers I had in pots at home - and I might just put in some perennial achillea or summer bulbs or something... The biennials should have been planted out in autumn really so I'm not sure how they'll get on, but the part-shaded spot behind the shed must be about perfect for foxgloves so I hope they will self-seed there and I'll keep a small patch of them going.

I'm very glad this troublesome corner is under control again, and I hope the trenched and covered edges will help it to stay that way!

Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-26892996083861298222015-02-23T20:20:00.000+00:002015-02-23T20:22:31.952+00:00Stevia and OysterleafAfter my chillies, peppers, aubergines and leeks, next on the list to sow this month were two unusual leaf crops; stevia and oysterleaf.

Stevia (stevia rebaudiana) is an extremely sweet-tasting leaf that can be used as a natural sweetener, 150 times sweeter than sugar. I was given some seeds last year but failed to get any to germinate - but ended up buying a small plant at a nursery later on in the summer. It didn't get very big and I didn't harvest more than a few leaves from it, but after its tiny white flowers faded I made sure to save some seeds for another attempt this year.

(Whole stevia leaf isn't approved by the Food Standards Agency as a food for human consumption - even though it's been eaten for centuries in South America and in Asia since the seventies - so it can't be marketed as food in its natural form. You can buy approved stevia extracts (you might have noticed the new Coca Cola 'Life' is part sweetened with a stevia derivative) but watch out for their purity. Truvia, the 'big brand' option marketed as a natural stevia-derived sweetener, has as its main component erythritol, a sugar alcohol similar to sorbitol, mannitol and xylitol, which is fermented from dextrose, a sugar made from corn.)

I haven't managed to find much out about how to sow the seeds, except that it's tricky and they need a lot of light. The seeds are very tiny, so I have sown some under a light sprinkling of soil and some on the surface. It's very easy for surface-sown seeds to dry out, so I've put the whole pot in a plastic bag to retain moisture, and I'm keeping them on a bright windowsill and crossing my fingers... If I have any success, I hope to experiment more with my harvest this year and find some good ways to use it! I'll also try to overwinter a plant (like I should have done last year!) to avoid the tricky germination game next year - I think they grow as perennials in warmer climates...

Oysterleaf (mertensia maritima) or 'sea bluebells' is another edible leaf crop, with round, blueish, fleshy leaves supposed to taste like - you guessed it - oysters. It's not to be confused with salsify - a root crop sometimes known as oysterplant! It's a perennial (you know I'm a sucker for perennial edibles!) and it has really pretty edible purple and blue flowers, similar to borage - it's in the same family. Again, I was given some seeds last year but failed to grow them successfully (I think a snail got them!) so it's round two this year, with seeds purchased from Pennard Plants. There were only five seeds in the pack, so again I'm having to be careful with them! The seeds are relatively big so I've sown them a few millimetres deep and I'm keeping a close eye on them to make sure they don't dry out. They're not going in a plastic bag, as they grow wild in the Hebrides so I don't think they want to be too warm. But I will be keeping them safely indoors, away from snails, this time! (Until they're bigger, anyway.)

In other seedy news, I've also now sown some stock and snapdragon seeds for my new flower patch, and my first aubergine seedlings popped up on Thursday, just five days after sowing, closely followed by the chillies and the leeks after seven days. It's all go!

Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-21808231592584388252015-02-20T12:17:00.000+00:002015-02-24T11:45:26.187+00:00Chitting PotatoesAt the beginning of the month I bought my seed potatoes, and it's that time of year again when the pretty coloured bottles and candles on the bathroom windowsill get packed away...

...to make room to chit my potatoes!

Chitting potatoes makes them develop nice strong shoots so that they start growing faster when you stick them in the ground. Just lay them out in a bright place. Too dark and they'll grow long spindly shoots that break easily, but put them in direct sunlight and the delicate new shoots might shrivel. This north-east facing windowsill is perfect. They get damp whenever someone has a shower, but they dry out again and don't seem to mind. Here's what they look like after nearly three weeks. You can see tiny rolls of new green leaves starting to form, and the little-white-bump beginnings of new roots.

Some people like to debate whether chitting is a good thing to do or a waste of the potatoes' energy which creates a risk of shocking the spuds when you put them in the cold ground. Some major gardening organisations have run tests to see how much difference it made, and found it generally didn't. But I mainly do it because, well, they've gotta go somewhere, right? And I do like to buy them early, so I can get the varieties I want and I'm not left with the shrivelled up manky ones, and it does help to check that they're all healthy and find out which eyes are strongest (I'll plant those facing upwards), and it's good to feel like I'm making a start on the growing season nice and early, even if it is just putting potatoes on a windowsill... I've also read somewhere that chitting stimulates production of solanine in the spuds, which makes them less appealing to any hungry rodents that might eat them after planting, and stops them rotting in the soil. Some people like to sit their seed potatoes in the cups of egg boxes, or even buy special chitting trays, to keep them all neat and tidy with their best eyes standing straight up. I just cram them all together, eyes up-ish - they take up less room that way, they don't mind touching each other and the chits will always grow upwards...

We've grown Kestrel potatoes for a few years now - they seemed to do best on our plot and they taste delicious, especially as mash and roasties. But when we tried Pentland Crown on a quarter of our potato bed last year in the search for a better jacket potato, they did really well too, and suffered much less scab and took longer to soften and sprout in storage, so we decided it was time to branch out and see what we were missing with some more new varieties...

So our maincrop spuds this year are a third King Edward, a third Sante and a third Pentland Crown. We bought them from our local independent garden centre, Aylett Nurseries, where you can select individual tubers and fill a bag for a set price. We got 60 tubers for £3.95! Much better than buying online!

We did buy some seed spuds online too, though. At FoodSmiles last year I was really impressed by a particular first early potato called Accent, which gave huge yields and tasted lovely, so I sought it out and found it at Tuckers Seeds. They arrived last week too, and are chitting on another windowsill. They'll be grown at home, in sacks.

I've also found some leftover seed potatoes from last year which I left in the summer house when we didn't have room for them. I can't remember what they are and I'm not sure I'll grow them, but you can see, even a year after buying them, they're still raring to go, having been kept in the right bright but cool conditions!

Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-7186662437334203332015-02-14T13:42:00.000+00:002015-02-18T14:35:51.662+00:00Seed Sowing!At last! The day is here! I've been itching to get starting with this season's seeds since, ooooh, about the second of January, but there's really not much point starting that early and seedlings grown when days are short can end up leggy and weak. Instead, I've taken on board a tip from veg-growing guru Charles Dowding, who advises waiting until there are ten hours of daylight each day before sowing seeds. This happens in mid February, and I've certainly noticed the evenings lengthening these last two weeks so hopefully it will make all the difference.

I like a good clear rule like this - it means no umming and aahing about whether or not it's the right time, no 'well I'll do a few now and a few later and see if there's any difference', no worrying.

Setting myself a clear day to get started - and making it a bit later than perhaps I'd like - has also meant I was far more organised than usual beforehand. I'd cleaned and tested the electric propagator in advance. I'd sorted out all my pots, and I've got a big bag of surplus ready to give away. I'd even written out my plant labels - I usually put the seeds in first then find myself writing labels with grubby fingers while trying to remember which pot's which - not clever!

I've also written up a sowing and planting plan for the whole year, which I'll use to keep records of the dates I actually sow as well. I can see at-a-glance what needs to be sown and where each month, so there'll be no forgetting things or puzzling over when to sow things for winter. I'm sure it'll get tweaked a bit along the way, but you can see it here if you like.

I sow all my seeds in peat-free compost - usually New Horizon organic peat-free. Peat-free seems to have a bad rap in the press - they'll tell you it's not suitable for seed-sowing, or that you have to sieve it and add vermiculite and water more, as if it's somehow more complex or more dangerous - but I've never, ever had any trouble with it; it's really very good stuff. And digging up peat is destructive, unsustainable, and totally unnecessary.

So here they all are. Tucked up in the electric propagator are three sweet peppers (Marconi Rossa, Lipstick and Kaibi Round), three chillies (Ancho Grande, Jalapeno and Big Jim Numex), and one aubergine (Bonica F1). They all need a bit of extra warmth to germinate well, so the electric propagator is really helpful, and I hope to be able to pot them up just in time to sow my tomatoes in the same propagator sometime around mid-March. On the windowsill are cape gooseberries, two pots of leeks (Autumn Giant Porvite and Lyon 2 Prizetaker) and some celeriac (Monarch). I've sown these things first as they are all slow-growing crops that need an early start in order to crop in good time, or to reach a good size.

Hooray! Getting these seeds started is a really good feeling and makes the spring feel that much closer. There's nothing else quite like the promise of big beautiful plants and tasty harvests just from putting a seed in the soil.Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-60247739538316825592015-02-09T10:43:00.000+00:002015-02-09T10:55:07.761+00:00The Food Shortage is a LieIt's easy to be confused by the current opposing issues of world hunger and food waste. We seem to hear them everywhere now: Hundreds of millions of people are going hungry! We need to grow more food for our fast-growing population! 30-50% of food produced is not eaten! Huh?!

But this article - How the Great Food War Will Be Won - clears things up thoroughly, and I'd like to urge everyone to read it.

The fact is, we produce an overabundance of food; the stats show it and the World Bank Institute admits we produce enough, globally, for 14 billion people. This isn't exactly new news; I've argued before that we could already produce more than enough food for the global population. But yet industrial agriculture and its supporters - from the UK's National Farmers Union to CropLife International to, of course, Syngenta, Bayer and Monsanto - want us to believe we do not - perhaps cannot - produce enough. The article points out;

The strategic centrepiece of Monsanto's PR, and also that of just about every major commercial participant in the industrialised food system, is to focus on the promotion of one single overarching idea. The big idea that industrial producers in the food system want you to believe is that only they can produce enough for the future population.
It's a lie. An industry lie, to promote industrial agriculture over small-scale agroecological growing. An industry lie to make money, at great cost to the earth.

...in every single case where industrial agriculture is implemented it leaves landscapes progressively emptier of life. Eventually, the soil turns either into mud that washes into the rivers or into dust that blows away on the wind. Industrial agriculture has no long term future; it is ecological suicide.
The article goes on to describe how the ecological food movement needs a new strategy; one that involves dismantling this lie and changing perception. Do give it a read:

How the Great Food War Will Be Won

Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-84382309684625099442015-02-06T10:53:00.000+00:002015-02-06T18:06:02.262+00:00An ExceptionI've always tried to avoid growing F1 hybrids - well, mostly. If I'm sent free seeds with an order or magazine it seems rather churlish to reject them, and a few others have slipped through the net over the years for one reason or another. It's not that there's anything 'wrong' with hybrids, but you have to support the things that you want to thrive. It's a bit like buying British or local. I want to see biodiversity and food security thriving, and hybrids undermine these by drastically reducing demand for traditional open-pollinated varieties, and because they're not genetically stable and can't reproduce to create another generation the same. I also like to think I can save the seeds of all my crops, although my seed-saving operation has a long way to go yet... And F1 seeds can be pretty expensive too!

But this year I'm making one deliberate exception, and it's this:

Aubergines are a luxury vegetable for us - something that we could easily do without, but something I'd love to eat more. I rarely buy them, simply because I'm buying less and less veg anyway - my priority is to eat what I grow and I'm far too busy eating all the courgettes and French beans and tomatoes and peppers and leafy greens coming out of the garden when they're in season. So the only way I'm gonna get to eat them is if I grow them myself!

But aubergines, lets face it, are just not really suited to the British climate - they need lots and lots of warmth and sunshine - yet I know many gardeners have moderate success with them, especially under cover. Not me; I've managed to grow just two small aubergines in five or six years of trying, and one of them went bad on the plant. There are only really two open-pollinated varieties of aubergines widely available (not counting fancy-coloured ones or mini ones, which I'm less interested in for now) and I've tried them both, without success. So when I read a recommendation for this variety, Bonica F1, on Nicky Kyle's great blog I thought well, why not have one last bash? Better to grow an F1 hybrid than not to grow them at all! Hybridisation brings the best traits together from other varieties to create new varieties that are (generally) more productive or earlier, more consistent and more reliable - the easier (though pricier) choice for any gardener, and in theory they will crop more readily where traditional varieties have failed. The plastic greenhouse we're putting on the allotment this year means we'll be able to provide them with a bit more protection than at home, too, so I'm crossing my fingers and looking forward to a bountiful aubergine harvest for once!Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-61340910073495557352015-02-01T12:23:00.000+00:002015-02-01T12:23:26.645+00:00Patience...Despite having a long list of jobs I need to get done before the growing season starts again, very little is happening on the plot at the moment; a week or two of bitterly cold and wet weather has made digging unpleasant at best and impossible at worst. I wouldn't mind so much if it would just snow properly, like it has in much of the country, and make the place look pretty for a while! But all we've had is yucky icy sleet and lots of rain.

I've also been very busy with preparations for our first FoodSmiles AGM last week, and the FoodSmiles seed order this week! If you think figuring out what to grow on your own allotment can take a while, try figuring out what you need for a giant veg plot for 25 families using strictly organic seed only!

There's still plenty to harvest from the allotment and this week we brought home these carrots, leeks, parsnips and the last two (very small!) swedes.

We have made some progress on what is to be our new 'alternative' fruit patch, shown above. It's always been a tough corner of the allotment, this, and the couchgrass has really colonised it again, so we've dug it over once and we're halfway through a second go to pick out remaining roots. I was hoping to finish it off tomorrow and start planting it up, but if the weather is as cold as forecast I won't even be able to get a fork in the ground, and we'll have to settle for a trip to the garden centre instead - I think I have finally sated my seed-buying urge now, but there are still seed potatoes and compost to buy. Now it's February I'll be counting down the days to sowing my first seeds in the middle of the month... Better get the propagator out and clean up some pots!Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-54027925240311147722015-01-23T11:57:00.000+00:002015-01-23T15:47:16.227+00:00Year of Flowers!Allotmenteering wouldn't be much fun if you did all the same things every year, and this year, with things on the plot really starting to settle into a pattern, part of me has obviously felt the need for a new challenge. Two, actually.

Cut flowers, and cauliflowers.

I know that I've sown cauliflower seeds before, but I don't remember what happened. I expect they met an untimely end at the beaks of pigeons or the jaws of slugs (okay, not really jaws...), or drowned in couchgrass and nettles. I've tried those perennial cauliflowers too, but never had much luck.

Cauliflowers are tricky to grow; they're fussy about their soil, they have a lot of potential pests, and they sulk if anything at all goes wrong. But we eat loads of them at home and it only makes sense to start trying to grow them, even if it takes me a while to master the art... They also take up a huge amount of room; just six or eight cauliflowers on the plot will use the same amount of space as four rows of parsnips, beetroots or carrots, which hardly seems economical... but I've just got to give it a try.

They can be grown all year round, so I've picked an autumn variety to sow this spring, and a spring variety to sow later on in the summer for next year.

Wish me luck, because I'm going to need it...

Now to cut flowers... Cut flowers! I never, ever thought I'd find myself growing cut flowers. I've grown edible flowers, and medicinal flowers, and flowers to attract predatory insects, and flowers to help pollinators, and flowers to deter soil pests - marigolds, borage, nasturtiums and sunflowers are all regulars on my plot - but never flowers for fun and frivolity. But there's a movement going on... British florists are popping up all over the place, The Big Allotment Challenge has got bouquets on my brain, more allotment-holders and home-growers seem to be embracing the benefits of growing flowers, and it's swept me right up. And as I spend more and more time out there growing and being with plants, the more all kinds of plants appeal to me. And I had to buy flowers a couple of times last year, and they were expensive, and it kind of hurt to know that they were flown in from Columbia or wherever and drenched with pesticides and treated with chemicals to keep them 'alive'. And I bet they'd bring looooads more insects to the plot. And I'm always impressed and a bit envious of the few vases of flowers on display at the allotment association summer show. And anyway, wouldn't it be really nice to have flowers in the house more and some to give away whenever the occasion arose, or just to put a few smiles on faces?

I'd sown a few foxglove and echinacea plants last year anyway, for the bees and just because I think foxgloves would love the shady spot behind my neighbours' shed. I also picked up some little wallflower plants in the autumn. For one reason and another I wasn't able to plant them out before winter came, but I'm hoping to get them in early enough this spring for them to still do okay. I also sowed some scabiosa last spring which got planted out late and are yet to flower, but overwintering well... I was obviously leaning slightly flowerwards even last spring!

I got some early seed-sowing done in October too, and now have healthy calendula, corncockle, clary sage and sweet pea seedlings safe in the plastic greenhouse at home until the weather's good enough to plant them out.

And I've bought a load more seeds to sow this spring and summer, mostly from the lovely Higgledy Garden, whose fabulous blog and website (and twitter feed) is enough to tempt anyone to take up flower-growing!

The full list is vipers bugloss, cosmos, cerinthe, rudbeckia, calendula, corncockle, ammi majus, achillea, bupleurum, cornflower, clary sage, snapdragons, scabiosa, sweet pea, sunflower, and to summer-sow for early next year, more wallflowers, sweet Williams, and hesperis or sweet rocket. I don't think I have room for them all... The old strawberry patch is set aside for them but it's only about three metres square. The sunflowers will go among the perennials as usual, calendula will be dotted about, and I'm sure there's room for a strip of something next to where we'll put the greenhouse - and I haven't exactly decided what to do with the old asparagus patch yet, either, though I really shouldn't give up too much of the plot to non-edibles... We'll see what happens!Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-26071455489449046142015-01-18T09:31:00.000+00:002015-01-18T11:31:13.549+00:00A Tale of Three Raised BedsWhen we first moved into the 'granny annex' at Mum and Dad's house I could only grow vegetables in pots and grow bags on and around the patio - their shrubby, woodlandy garden didn't have any space for vegetables and most of it was too shady anyway. That was okay by me - we had the allotment too, after all. But plant pots have a funny way of multiplying, don't they...? And with Mum and Dad moving toward organic food more and more (100% now I believe!), last year they gave me some more space to grow food for the whole family.

We planned three new veg-growing areas; one garden bed in a rare sunny spot where the shrubs weren't thriving any more, a large raised bed just in front of the patio which was occupied by a multitude of pots and tubs, and two smaller raised beds at the shadier end of the garden, where a small lawn was becoming overrun with moss and weeds and I had already put some moveable growbeds and containers for leafy crops (pic below). We decided against growing straight into the ground mostly because the garden soil is extremely heavy clay - not much fun to work with, but it'll make an excellent nutritious subsoil!

The timing was perfect; early spring when it warm enough to work outside but I'd still be able to sow everything in time. I cleared the garden bed, re-edged it to a slightly higher level and topped it off with the previous year's growbags and tubs. I hacked back the honeysuckle and snowberry that keep moving in from under the fence and planted strawberries round the edge, and it became a nursery bed for young plants for a while, while I worked on the other areas...

The big raised bed was to go on a slated area, so my first task was to scrape back all the slate chips.

We drew up some plans and ordered half sleepers (from UK Sleepers) cut from oak - a naturally long-lasting hardwood that doesn't need treating with chemicals to protect it.

I enlisted the help of my friend Dave (and his power tools!) to cut the wood to size and build the beds, using long outdoor-use 'green organic coated' timber drive screws from Wickes...

And a day and a half later all three were done and ready for filling!

I ordered the four tonnes of 'Veggie Gold' compost to fill them; a "ready-to-use" peat-free mix of compost, topsoil and manure, recommended for raised veg beds, which promised to be from sustainable sources with no added chemicals. I had to wait a while for it to arrive, which was a tad frustrating, but eventually it did...

...and the next two days were spent wheelbarrowing compost from the front of the house to the back (by myself, I'd like to add!). The larger bed has a weed membrane beneath it anyway, but in the two smaller beds I laid cardboard at the bottom to provide a barrier against weeds (until it rots, by which time they should have died from lack of light anyway).

Not a bad job, I think, and certainly a lot tidier than a jumble of containers. Hurrah! I got sowing right away, planning a row of peppers and chillies along the back of the big bed, some dwarf beans in front of them, and square-foot patches of different salad veg and small root crops along the front, with a few herbs and flowers dotted around as well. The two shady beds would take leafy greens - mostly kale and chard.

A few weeks in, I realised that all was not well... Things were growing rather strangely and inconsistently. Along a row of mustard seeds, the seedlings had grown large in patches and stalled at a tiny size in others. Some had bolted. A poached egg plant and some tiny spring onions I'd transplanted had yellowed very badly and become stunted. Spinach plants and radishes had bolted extremely prematurely, before reaching anything like a usable size.

A few weeks later still, little had changed. Those things that were growing were growing painfully slowly, or running straight to seed, while my crops on the allotment and in the garden bed in the corner were doing just fine. I began an experiment which confirmed my worst suspicions...

The two pots on the left contain the same 'Veggie Gold' compost that I filled the raised beds with; the two on the right contain old multipurpose compost out of one of the previous year's containers. The bottom two also have Complete Organic Fertiliser added. I sowed spinach seeds in all four pots at the same time, and thinned to three seedlings per pot after germination. The results are pretty clear I'd say - wouldn't you?

The company I had bought the stuff from - Compost Direct - didn't want to know. After three emails to them they finally replied to say that they only ever had good feedback about this compost and I should just add some more nitrogen or general-purpose fertiliser. I did, in the forms of chicken manure, chicken manure 'tea', and a commercial liquid feed. Nothing helped. I sent them the picture above. They didn't care. Just keep adding extra feed, they said. My blood boiled... All that sweat and hard work and money and anticipation and I couldn't even grow anything in my raised beds!

Luckily there were a few things that did seem to grow okay in the soil; little gem lettuces were slow but getting bigger, the carrots and beetroots didn't seem to mind, and the kale and chard down the garden was not too bad.

After giving it some thought, I suspected perhaps the problem was an excess of potassium; that would explain why adding more nitrogen hadn't helped leaf growth, as potassium blocks it. Potassium also encourages fruiting (perhaps hence the early bolting), and is prevalent in woody matter and straw - there had been loads of partially-composted woody stuff and strawy manure in the compost mix. I try not to consider myself a soil mineral expert after reading just one book but I still feel this is pretty likely the problem! And how do you get too much potassium out of soil? You wait for the rain to leach it out...

Growth improved very gradually throughout the year. I did get a couple of handfuls of beans even though the plants were more dwarf than ever, and the perpetual spinach got going after a while. I took to planting lots of spare plants and more lettuces in the bed - the more plants grow in it, the more potassium they use up, right? Nothing really thrived. I even let the weeds grow! I got a few nice peppers, though again the plants were small. The lettuces, it turned out, tasted starchy and bitter. My cucumbers, which I'd planted in a large container filled with the same compost, yellowed and died.

Happily, however, my bed in the corner of the garden was doing wonderfully! Two huge courgette plants gave us more than six of us could eat from June to September, and from all around them we had strawberries, lovage, tarragon, parsley, mangetout and drying beans. Calendula filled in all the gaps and brought bees buzzing to that corner of the garden. What a delight! I haven't grown courgettes at the allotment for years since we don't go there often enough to pick them, so I've made do with small courgette plants confined to pots and sulking. To see them going crazy like this - like they're meant to - was great!

The growth in the oak beds has continued to improve slowly and I am feeling quietly confident that I'll get better results this year. At the moment the large one has that same perpetual spinach (though it's rather slug-eaten just now!), some new and healthy garlic shoots, a tangle of old carrots and beetroots and a few sorry-looking herbs. The compost level has sunk a lot - nearly 25% - which will give me an opportunity to top it up with something better (though I still have nearly a half-ton of the 'Veggie Gold' sitting around...). I also plan to get the soil lab-tested at the same time as I get the allotment soil done - that'll be interesting... The kale in the bottom bed never really got very big - though caterpillars can be blamed for some of that - but it's okay, and I'm looking forward to a bit more growing success in the months ahead...

Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-61457987322343906882015-01-14T09:45:00.000+00:002015-02-20T14:39:40.184+00:00Dining in the DarkAt the weekend I got to tick off an experience that has been on my foodie 'to-do' list for some time – 'dining in the dark'. There are a few restaurants all around the world now that offer this unique experience, and I went to 'Dans le Noir' in London with a party of ten for a friend's birthday.

On arrival our orders were checked – everyone is served a fixed surprise menu but we had pre-ordered our choice of fish, meat, vegetarian or 'special' mixed menu – and we were instructed to leave all our belongings in secure lockers in the bar area – no phones or cameras allowed in the dining room! The ten of us were lined up with our hands on the shoulders of the person in front of us, led into the dining room, and 'shown' our seats one by one.

Our waiter was blind; in fact all the waiters were – a no-brainer when you consider the implications of training waiting staff to do everything in pitch dark, but it added an unexpected poignancy too. And it really was pitch dark, even after two hours at the table when some of us thought our eyes might have adjusted enough to see just a little!

It's obviously extremely disorientating sitting in an unfamiliar room in complete darkness with the hubbub (din!) of a dozen other dining tables filling your ears, and without visual cues it was not at all easy to communicate with anyone except those closest to me, but it didn't take too long to get sort of orientated; there was Eddie on my left, the end of the table on my right, my glass of wine, cutlery, glass of water. (Pouring glasses of water from the jug provided was a challenge!) And then the food arrived...

We all very quickly realised it was virtually impossible, without seeing, to approach a plate of mystery food with a knife and fork, and most of us ate with our fingers most of the time – a common choice, apparently. Again and again, conversation turned to the challenges blind people must face.

My expectations of eating in the dark had been split: on one hand, they say that when one of your senses is taken away you experience the others more acutely, but on the other they say you eat largely with your eyes...

I certainly experienced the textures of the food more acutely. As a child I was very squeamish about strange food textures, and without any visuals to anchor my idea of what I was eating I felt perhaps even more so. There was some sort of cold pastey stuff, firm on the plate but squidgy and melt-in-the-mouth, and salty to taste. Paté, it must be, but is paté always this slimy? What does it taste of? Is it really paté? What if it's something else? I found some toast on the plate, and manoeuvred the slice of paté-or-whatever-it-was onto it. Ah, that was better. There was some salady stuff on the side too. A few leaves of rocket and a cherry tomato... an onion, roasted just enough to mellow the flavour, but what a strange feeling when the layers all slipped apart between my teeth... a baby carrot... and something else I couldn't identify at all! It was round... firm... with the texture of a cooked radish perhaps, but the flavour...? I couldn't tell. And what was this left over in the corner of my plate? Oh. There I was eating chutney, on its own, with my fingers.

The main course followed, as main courses do, and in the spirit of a taster menu we were each served three different dishes – three small piles on each plate – and a little taster of each told me one was fish and two were meat. (This was the 'special' menu.) I tackled the fish first, and texture-wise it was a real struggle, with a few lumps of firm fishy stuff – I thought perhaps squid – in some kind of sauce or dressing, and then underneath a big squidgy lump of something I couldn't identify at all. I told myself it was a big piece of cooked tomato and it went down... The two meat dishes were much more enjoyable; on the right, tender chunks of stewed meat and veg, full of flavour. It tasted like beef, but richer... Venison perhaps. On the left, a meat I couldn't identify, on a pile of vegetable shreddings that I also couldn't identify. I thought at first the meat might be very well-flavoured chicken or pork, but no, the texture wasn't right for either (though it was very tender and soft) and it seemed rare in places. I enjoyed it though!

Dessert was easier to identify; something creamy in a ramekin – passionfruit pannacotta, I thought – and a side of mixed berries topped with a blob of chocolate moussey stuff. Thankfully it was much easier to use a spoon when the food was contained in a ramekin, with no chance of inadvertently pushing it off the plate!

Throughout the meal I was constantly shocked that I couldn't identify more flavours. I usually consider myself to have a pretty sensitive sense of taste, and I can often pick out subtle flavours that others can't. In the dark, the most prominent flavours by far were simply salt, sweet and umami, with a few notable aromatics (carrot, rocket, some of the fruits), and there seemed little complexity to any of the flavours at all. Was it just bad food? Are my tastebuds way less sensitive than I think? I think it was down to a sort of stress and overwhelm; the room felt extremely noisy (whether or not I was merely more aware of the noise), sensations of texture definitely overrode sensations of taste – arguably touch is the more important sense, I suppose – and the primary challenge was just getting the food eaten at all! Forced to eat clumsily, without being able to distinguish the different components on the plate (and many of the ingredients, it turned out, unfamiliar or less familiar) I was virtually unable to analyse what was in my mouth properly. I was interested (and relieved) to read in another blogger's account of dining in the dark (by Helen Barnard at Bomboloni) that this was her experience too; she wrote "This far out of my comfort zone, my sense of taste was not heightened, as expected, but rather went into a kind of emergency mode whereby only basic senses such as sweet, salty, bitter and savoury were registered, along with vague temperature differentials." A confusing and unsettling experience!

Back in the lit bar area we retrieved our bags and coats and were shown the menus, with photographs of what we'd just eaten. My starter – that slimy, salty paté – had been foie gras, and apparently there had been a fig on my plate. How had I missed a fig?? The fishy main was lobster and oyster – both a big surprise (I love lobster, but didn't think I'd ever find myself eating slippery, gooey oysters – ugh!) – the stewed chunks had indeed been venison, and the mystery meat was delicious bison! The shredded vegetable I hadn't recognised was celeriac – something I'm not very familiar with at all. The 'passionfruit pannacotta' had actually been mango and cardamom pannacotta (Cardamom? I hadn't detected that at all!) and the chocolate mousse had been white chocolate – I'd never have guessed!

I felt cheated! I'd eaten foie gras and not been able to savour it properly?! I never thought I'd find myself eating foie gras at all – I certainly wouldn't have chosen it (though I was relieved and encouraged to find, in this fascinating article, that foie gras production may not be nearly as bad as we think these days) – and I certainly hadn't thought it as wonderful as people say it is. I'd eaten lobster and not enjoyed it because I hadn't been able to identify the texture? Those who chose the meat menu, incidentally, had unknowingly sampled wagyu beef – supposedly some of the finest beef in the world! I realised I probably paid more attention to the bison than anything else, because both the texture and taste were very pleasing and because I couldn't recognise it and wanted to figure out what it was.

I think I can safely say that food is more enjoyable when you can see it!

For £52 I'd actually eaten surprisingly little food, though £13 is for 'access to the experience' and they do obviously use some premium ingredients in the dishes! I felt the experience could have been greatly improved by reducing the sound level in the dining room, with more space between tables and perhaps booths or something to deaden the noise.

But despite my reservations, it was a thoroughly fascinating, unique and powerful experience, and something I would recommend as I'm really glad I've done it. As I left the restaurant I said I wouldn't want to do it again, but after mulling it over I think it would probably be less stressful a second time and I might be able to relax and enjoy it more.

You'll have to pardon the pictureless post, for obvious reasons, but there are lots of pictures of past menus on Dans le Noir's website here if you'd like to take a look!

Now, this wouldn't be a complete or honest review if I didn't tell you that 30-40 hours after our meal in the dark (and just after I'd drafted the above), four out of the five of us who chose the 'special' menu developed food poisoning. I try not to judge a place - or anyone or anything - on a single incident, and accidents will always happen occasionally, but I can't quite get over the irony that this is the one dining experience in which we had to put complete trust in the chefs and staff to serve us food that was acceptable in every way, and food poisoning is pretty much the ultimate betrayal of that trust. A great shame, which has dampened my recommendation for the restaurant somewhat. But let the recommendation for the experience still stand. It will remain a memorable and fascinating one.

UPDATE: The restaurant refunded the cost of our meals. They said they'd had quite a few complaints that night and investigation showed it was a bad batch of oysters *shudder*. They have since decided never to serve oysters again!
Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-74652623035169028772015-01-10T10:45:00.000+00:002015-01-10T10:47:08.863+00:00Allotment TourWe finally made it to the allotment this week, after having not managed to go at all during December, and did some much-needed catching up.

Here it is:

Of course, it doesn't look like much at the moment, but there's plenty going on, and considering what a battle we've always had with couchgrass and other perennial weeds we're pretty pleased with it. But it's been a long time since I took or shared any pictures of it, so let me give you the tour...

It's split roughly into seven sections, more by accident than design, with woodchip paths in between them, lined with bricks and some cheap weedproof fabric that isn't quite doing the job any more.

Section one, above, is where our compost bins are. We built them last spring to replace our old ones, in another spot, which were falling apart, and we relocated them here because it's under the shade of an elder tree and the soil is full of roots - everything we've grown here in the past has struggled a bit, so it's a good spot to use for something other than plants! The area covered in weedproof fabric over there has also been problematic, but we're determined to get it under control this year and plant a new fruit patch here, mulching heavily between the plants to try to beat the couchgrass!

Section two is the first of our three rotation beds. Last year we grew potatoes here - now the near half is covered in a phacelia green manure (and quite a few annual weeds) and the far half has rows of spinach and chard (again with the weeds...) There's also a row of scabiosa I planted out too late to flower, but it seems to be coming through the winter a treat! After we clear this patch in late spring we'll grow squashes and pumpkins here.

Section three (our second rotation bed) is where our root crops were grown, though it's beginning to look a little sparse now. The spring cabbages in the foreground are at a variety of stages - we picked our first this week but others are not ready yet, and one has rotted! :-( Beyond that is a small row of calabrese which should produce in the spring, some carrots, parsnips, swedes, celery and leeks. We've just finished the beetroots. When this patch is clear in early to mid spring, we'll plant our potatoes here.

Section four (our third rotation bed) was pumpkins and squashes last year, but now it's bare, which is pretty disappointing because I sowed most of it with field beans (a green manure) and broad beans in November. (The cardboard is there to protect a patch I left unsown, intending to make a second sowing in March.) I guess I left it just a little too late; they say early November is the latest you should sow but we did it near the end of the month. Still, never mind, there's plenty of time to sow more broad beans, and our root veg and leeks will go here from March onwards.

Section five is what we call our perennials bed, though it's not the only one! We planted it last year with asparagus (along the left hand side) strawberries (in the raised beds) and globe artichokes (far end, under little mounds of woodchip mulch and black plastic to protect the crowns from frost), as well as some parsley, sage, lavender and lemon balm. It's done okay so far but the plants are still getting established - hopefully they will be even better this year. I'd also like to plant some perennial kale among the sage - supposedly sage keeps cabbage white butterflies away, but we will see!

Section six is home to our pond (far end), two columnar 'spur' fruit trees, and our old strawberry patch (this end) which is now under a mulch of thick cardboard until we can dig it over. There used to be a really nice herb garden planted around the pond and the trees, but over the years it's become swamped with couchgrass and very few plants are left, so this area is up for redevelopment this year... We will replant the herb garden - perhaps through a membrane to keep the grass down - and the old strawberry bed will become a flower patch! We'll also be giving away the pear tree - we don't like the fruit! - and we need to right the very wonky apple tree before it goes over! We'll have to do this soon while the trees are still dormant - they won't like having their roots messed with.

Finally, section seven is where we keep our tools in our storage bench, and it's where our old compost bins were (on the right). That spot is now a lovely fertile patch where we'll put a plastic greenhouse this year for a few tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. We've also got a little comfrey patch here which we use to feed the compost and make plant feed, and at the far end is a little bed which used to grow asparagus, though it's almost all been choked out by grass - another redevelopment project for this year. I think it's just big enough for a couple of bean teepees... or I might decide to grow the beans at home and grow sweet peas here instead, or some more fruit! I'd also like to narrow this path a bit to maximise the growing space in section six on the left.

You'll notice there's not much space here for summer fruiting crops like French beans, courgettes and tomatoes, nor salads or brassicas. A few years ago we decided we were better off only growing reasonably low-maintenance veg at the allotment, since we struggle to get here enough to look after them. It's working out really well, and we can still grow those things at home where we can keep an eye on them and pick them regularly! We don't grow many brassicas simply because we find them so problematic (what with flea beetles, whitefly, rootfly, slugs, three kinds of caterpillars and pigeons all wanting a share!) but we are adding them to our repertoire gradually. And we don't grow onions or shallots because we have dreadful white rot in the soil which destroys the crop, but we manage a bit of garlic and plenty of spring onions at home, and I'm sure we'll return to onion-growing at some point...

During our trip on Monday we pruned the apple and pear trees and made a good job of weeding and tidying the perennials bed, cutting down last year's asparagus ferns, herb flower spikes and sunflower stems. Here's a 'before' picture!

There's much more weeding to be done before things start growing again in spring, and we need to make a start on that digging very soon too. We're all crossing our fingers for no flooding this year, so we can keep at it!Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-3621901533744950592015-01-07T16:29:00.000+00:002015-01-07T16:29:22.219+00:00Celeriac fail!Last year we tried to grow celeriac for the first time. I raised some lovely healthy little 'Prague Giant' seedlings at home, planted them out in a row on the plot around the end of May, they produced some really healthy and vibrant plants with a delicious celery-like aroma and classy purple stems and... nothing. I watched those roots, I waited, I watered, I waited some more, and they never swelled. I'm pretty sure they can't have wanted for water (especially with mycorrhizal fungi applied) and they should have had plenty of nutrients too (and everything else in the same bed certainly did well).

I cleared the row in disgust in mid-November, and there was nothing but a tangle of roots beneath those lovely thick stems. I've read since that they do all their swelling in the late summer and autumn, so maybe, just maybe, they were about to surprise me just as I gave up on them, but c'mon... mid-November? Surely they should have shown signs of growth by then?

I'd like to try again but it seems sort of futile unless I do something differently - but I really don't know where I went wrong, and it's a popular variety that plenty of other folk succeed with. This year I will make sure to sow them early and plant out as soon as possible, and make sure they always get plenty of water, but if you have any other ideas or suggestions for better success, please do tell! Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-19121729313369850742015-01-04T21:15:00.000+00:002015-01-04T21:15:36.589+00:002014It's easy to think that winter is a quiet time for gardeners, but there's plenty to be done. Between harvesting winter crops, checking fleeces and stakes, winter digging, construction projects and maintenance, nurturing overwintering plants and looking after little seedlings in the greenhouse, there's also plenty of planning to be done, and it inevitably involves a good look back over the past growing season to see what worked and what didn't.

2014 was a pretty bumper year for us, but there are always lessons to be learned. Our plot was under a couple of feet of floodwater for a week early on in the year, but thankfully it didn't do any real damage or set us back - we just had some extra clearing up to do, and to be patient in waiting for the soil to dry out again. We've settled on a new 'structure' for our plot, with three main beds in a rotation plus a number of perennial areas, and we made several new paths. We failed to cultivate the difficult far corner of the plot or our old strawberry bed, but we did clear them and cover them up to stifle the weeds and make the job easier later. We planted a new perennials bed with asparagus, artichokes, strawberries and herbs - hopefully some perennial kale will go in here too. We built new compost bins in a new area, and grew beans on the super-fertile patch where the old bins were. We also upped our growing game in the garden at home, converting a shrub bed to grow vegetables and adding three raised beds - more on all that in another post.

2013, compost bins. 2014, French beans. 2015 greenhouse!

We tried a new way of adding fertility to our plot; the 'Complete Organic Fertiliser' recommended by Steve Solomon for rebalancing soil nutrients for maximum plant health and nutrition. Though I can't quantify the results or compare to a 'control' area, I have to say everything on the plot just grew better than ever with virtually no problems, and I am quite sure the COF helped that happen. I will be going one step further this year: sending some soil samples off for laboratory analysis and creating a custom mix to balance it even better.

Another thing we trialled was 'Rootgrow' or mycorrhizal fungi, endorsed by the RHS; a mix of natural fungi that forms symbioses with plant roots and gives plants access to more nutrients and water. It's primary recommended use is in planting trees and shrubs, to help them establish quicker and more easily, but it is supposed to help any plant so I used it under every single crop to see what happened. In theory it should drought-proof plants and help fruits and roots to swell more steadily and evenly. In practice, though we had great growth almost everywhere and the new asparagus and artichokes established without a hitch, my container potatoes gave identical yields whether I used the Rootgrow or not, the newly-planted strawberries didn't establish well for some reason, squashes and swedes came in a huge mix of sizes, and my celeriac completely failed to swell, so I'm not entirely convinced...

Potatoes did wonderfully - we managed to grow a kilo for every week of the year. (If only I had somewhere better to store them - they are now sprouting and turning soft). Scab was very bad on our old favourite Kestrel, but we also tried Pentland Crown this year, which makes a much better baked jacket spud, seems to store slightly better, and doesn't suffer as much scab, so we will be growing more of these in 2015! On reflection I wondered if I should have left the lime out of the COF applied to this area, as it probably made it worse.

Carrots were our best ever, even though we couldn't find our enviromesh in time to protect our first sowing so we lost some to carrot fly - our later sowings did brilliantly and they even won a first placing in the allotment association show! We have only succeeded with carrots since we added lime to our soil - perhaps they need the extra calcium.

Pumpkins and squashes did brilliantly too; we brought home 18 lovely fruits and many are still sitting around happily on windowsills and doormats waiting to be eaten. Arguably we might have expected even more squashes from our eight plants - some plants only gave us one or two fruits - but they suffered from quite a lot of weed competition... Turns out it wasn't such a good idea to undersow them with clover; clover actually gets quite big and unruly when it wants to!

Leeks, parsnips, swedes, broad beans and beetroots all got along just fine. Beetroots really are just THE easiest vegetable to grow - nothing seems to stop them. I only wish Eddie liked them better as I'm eating them mostly by myself. The leeks are suffering from some allium leaf miner and I think we should cover them with mesh next year. We only grew one variety of French beans - a local heritage variety called Ryder's Blue Coco - and I sowed them rather late due to a lack of space earlier on. They were delightful - really tender - and we were eating them long after our neighbours' beans had finished, but we couldn't save any seeds from them because they didn't have time to mature before the first frost, which was a great shame. I do have just a few seeds left so I MUST do better at this next year!

Our chard and winter spinach, planted out in late summer, suffered a bit of neglect due to an extremely busy autumn, but though we lost a few to slugs and snails, they grew superbly and we really should have harvested more from them before the winter. We will still be able to pick from them when growth starts again in early spring though. Our first attempt at fennel suffered the same neglect but also grew very well indeed, and again we failed to harvest it in good time. It's certainly one to try again this year though. We also have a few spring cabbages nearly ready which have done really well - a nice compact variety called Pixie which, assuming it tastes good come spring, I will certainly grow again.

2014 was our first year growing both celery and celeriac. The celery did okay, though it was a bit thin and stringy (I don't usually eat it raw much anyway - just use it for soups, stocks and stews - so that doesn't really matter). The celeriac was a huge disappointment; no root to speak of at all, and I'm not sure why or what to do differently next year...

The importance of beneficial insects really, properly hit home to me last spring when scores of ladybirds descended on our blackfly-infested broad beans and cleared the whole lot up for us. I'm pretty sure there were more ladybirds around than before because I'd grown phacelia in the next bed over winter - ladybirds seem to be attracted by lacy foliage and as we cleared it up in the spring there were loads of them among it. I always grow a few flowers here and there, but now I will grow more!

In the home garden, our courgettes and tomatoes were just fabulous and kept me busy finding new ways to use them! The tomatoes succumbed to blight in the late summer, as they always do. We tried a local heritage variety of tomato - 'Ryder's Midday Sun' - but sadly didn't find them up to a good standard; the plants grew slowly, the tomatoes were watery and lacked flavour, and they were first to succumb to blight! Maybe they'd do better in a greenhouse... But while I'm very glad to have had the opportunity to try them, I'm not sure I have the space to persist with them. Cucumbers and salad greens in our new raised beds did not do well at all and I'm sure there was a problem with the soil - more on that in another post... Peppers did okay but gosh, they take so long to ripen! We were disappointed in a new variety we tried - 'Hebar' - which had very thin flesh and not much flavour at all. The seller described it as "particularly sweet and tasty" so I'd love to know what anyone else thinks of them! We have bought a plastic greenhouse to put on the allotment this summer, which should be just big enough to grow a few tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers in. This way we hope to have blight free tomatoes and earlier peppers! We'll still grow some at home too though...

Kaibi Round, Ancho Grande, Hebar, Lipstick

The enviromesh over the kale bed got torn in high winds early in the year, and by late summer caterpillars had stripped the plants as I was too lazy to do anything about it... Thankfully some of the plants made a surprisingly good comeback though! Another mistake I will not repeat next year is planting French beans behind courgette plants. After the courgettes had been growing a month I couldn't reach the beans at all, and had to leave them all to pick for drying instead! The mangetout was great - we could hardly keep up with it - and we were really impressed by variety 'Carouby de Maussane' with giant pods! I have never grown ordinary peas, as frozen British peas are extremely good and convenient, and all the podding seemed like too much of a faff, but last year we did grow a multipurpose mangetout/podding pea - 'Ezeta's Krombek Blauwschokker' - and when they got too big to eat as mangetout I was forced to pod a few... They were so lovely that I might just add a few real podding peas to my garden this year...

Carouby de Maussane mangetout - still gorgeously sweet and tender at this size!

The 'perennial salad mix' from Suffolk Herbs turned out to be a mix of chicories and radicchios, which have grown well but... I just don't really like the taste. Admittedly I should have read the back of the pack more carefully, but this picture is a bit misleading I think!

All in all, we will do much the same this year as last, but here are the things we plan to do differently:

Grow more flowers - to include a cutting-flower patch!

Do even more to balance our soil nutrition according to Steve Solomon's great book 'The Intelligent Gardener'

Add a plastic greenhouse to the allotment to grow a few summer veg under cover.

Don't plant anything behind courgettes!

Improve raised bed soil.

Buy more enviromesh, to replace torn piece and cover leeks too.

Keep squash bed weed-free - perhaps mulch beneath plants - and grow fewer plants so they don't get so tangled.

Grow some proper peas, perhaps.

Try harder with celeriac.

Grow more Pentland Crown potatoes and less Kestrel - and try another new variety too.

There are always new varieties to try; this year new ones for us include oyster leaf, beefsteak plant, pink banana squash, skykomish tomatoes (supposed to have some blight resistance), marconi rosso peppers, and we're going to attempt to grow cauliflowers for the first time, since we buy them quite a lot...

We also plan to plant a new fruit patch on the long-neglected and difficult far corner of the allotment, and clear and replant our overgrown herb bed.

Frosty radicchio

Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-12639574145869425122015-01-01T19:46:00.000+00:002015-01-01T19:46:00.053+00:00Starting AfreshI'm not usually one to make new year resolutions, but here's one for 2015: to get back to posting regularly on this blog - even if it's just a quick update, a picture or two, or what-I-did-on-the-plot-today for the record. And as everything out there freezes over and readies itself to start afresh, I plan to start afresh too, assuming you know nothing about my plot, and not worrying about repeating myself. Last year's posts were mostly theory and rants anyway - it's been a long time since I actually wrote about the day-to-day stuff of growing my own.

So this is me. I'm Naomi, and my wonderful husband is Eddie. We've had our allotment in St Albans since 2007, and it's had its ups and downs and we've learned an awful lot along the way. We very nearly gave it up once - what a lot has changed since then! We also grow veg in our garden, which is really my parents' garden. I passionately believe that we must all grow more food at home and in our communities, for the good of our health and the planet. (To this end I also help run a Community Supported Agriculture initiative where I live.) We grow sustainably, which for us means organically, often guided by permaculture principles, and supporting wildlife, soil health and biodiversity. We don't dig unless it's absolutely necessary. We don't grow F1 hybrids, which harm diversity and self-reliance. I love the great outdoors, I love food and I love to cook. I plan big and I dream big. I tweet a lot. I long for a smallholding of our own someday, with chickens and pigs and beehives and perhaps a little market garden business. I don't have a regular job at the moment; I have three casual ones and a few that don't pay - and I like to think of growing food a lot like growing money anyway, though it's a real shame you can't buy a house with it...

So happy new year and here's to a great growing - and blogging - season in 2015! Thanks for reading, and I hope you'll drop by again along the way.

Nomehttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-8221032428937703036.post-68979274952898728462014-09-23T12:18:00.000+01:002014-09-23T17:24:59.236+01:00Crop Rotation Confessions...I have a confession to make. Crop rotation on a small plot has always rather baffled me. On a big plot it makes sense - on a big plot you can afford to leave a patch of ground empty in preparation for a later crop, or to sow a green manure in the middle of summer just for the heck of it - but on a small allotment where you want to make the most of every space all year round, it can be a real juggling act trying to get your potatoes out early enough for your purple-sprouting broccoli to go in, or clearing your onion patch in time to sow beans and corn, or figuring out what on earth to grow after you've harvested your squashes as late as October - and who uses exactly the same amount of space for every crop group anyway??

Traditionally, the main groups in a crop rotation are potatoes and roots, brassicas, beans, and 'other veg'. The potatoes are manured to enrich and slightly acidify the soil (preventing scab), heavy-feeding beans follow in the nicely broken-up ground after the potatoes are dug, then (often after an application of lime,) leafy brassicas to make good use of the nitrogen the bean roots accumulate. Then, presumably, you throw sweetcorn, cucurbits, tomatoes, leafy greens and everything else in together after that. Sounds simple enough, but questions abound. Do you grow swedes with the root crops or the brassicas? Aren't tomatoes in the same family as potatoes? Cucurbits take up way more space than anything else! And aren't you supposed to avoid manuring carrots?

I don't know, maybe I overthink these things - maybe I'm just too keen to abide by all the rules and to do it "right". But I think, after eight years on our allotment, I've finally cracked it!

This is partly thanks to slimming down the number of crops we grow on the allotment anyway - we don't grow onions and garlic due to white rot spores in our soil, and we prefer to keep salad leaves and quick-ripening summer crops like French beans, courgettes and tomatoes at home so we can pick them more regularly. On the allotment we grow the lower-maintenance stuff: potatoes, squashes, root veg, broad beans, leeks, and a limited amount of winter brassicas and spinach-type leaves (plus some perennials in a permanent area). We've grouped broad beans, leeks and root veg roughly together: together they take up about the same amount of space we use for more space-hungry crops (potatoes and squashes), and it means we can follow our broad beans (which finish around midsummer) with winter brassicas, thus keeping our earlier-sown swedes in the same area as our other brassicas.

Ladies and gents, I give you our brand new crop rotation plan! (Click pic to enlarge.)

This rotation also allows for two squares to be sown with green manures over winter to add high-nitrogen organic matter to the compost heap, shelter wildlife and protect the soil. Phacelia and field beans are my two favoured green manures since field beans add vital nitrogen to the soil and can be sown as late as November, and phacelia attracts lots of insects and can be sown as late as September. Following squashes with winter-hardy beans means the timing for sowing is perfect; likewise with the winter leaves following the potatoes, and the winter brassicas following the broad beans. And even though we grow most of our beans at home, our allotment soil still gets a nitrogen injection thanks to the broad and field beans. Of course, this rotation doesn't include everything and I should do my best to efficiently rotate our crops at home too, but those on the allotment are the most important ones to rotate: beans for nitrogen, potatoes which are prone to damage from buildups of slugs and eelworms, and brassicas which are susceptible to clubroot, a very nasty fungal disease.

So far it's all going swimmingly. The potatoes are out (an awesome 28kg of Kestrel and 19kg Pentland Crown!) and the winter leaves are in; two rows of chard, two rows of winter spinach and a row of fennel (there's room for more, actually - I must do that). The squashes have finished a little earlier than usual, which means we have plenty of time to clear the soil for winter beans. The leeks, root veg, celery, spring cabbages, kohlrabi and pak choi are coming along nicely and we will slowly harvest them all winter long, making the most of all our space. Brilliant!

There is one complicating factor looming, in that we are planning to clear our old strawberry and asparagus beds (not shown in the plan above) over winter and put them to new use next spring. These two areas don't really fit into the plan so I'm a bit puzzled about what to do with them (and I rather wish we could move our pond and our apple tree into one, which would help us make better use of the other!). Should we grow runner beans or courgettes on the plot again after all? Shall I expand my collection of perennials? Is it time to give in and plant some fruit bushes? Good job I've got all winter to think about it...Nomehttp://firstname.lastname@example.com