Allotment 8/3/10

The sun has remained visible so I have continued to get things into the ground. I’ve been removing stones from the soil and adding my own compost. It all looks lovely. The problem is you have nothing to show for all of your work except for some lovely bare soil.
Here for instance are my carrots,



And here are my parsnips,



And today I put my onions.



Yes that is just 3 pictures of soil but it is lovely soil.

The bare-for-a-long-time soil problem is the reason I advise people who are starting out to grow salad crops (Yes, I know that it’s odd that people ask me for advise as I know nothing but they do) because they grow really quickly. I planted my parsnip seeds last week and I will start digging them up some time in October but radishes only take about a month. You don’t get that nothing is happening feeling if you are picking some leaves after about 6 weeks.

There is some life on my patch, here, for instance, is my garlic bed,



I am pretty sure that onions are the easiest things in the world to grow; well they are if you use onions sets (little onions). If you grow your onions from seed then you are just showing off. And if you grow them from seed you saved yourself from last year then you about to be hit in the face with a shovel, smug git (I am aware that I am growing so stuff from seed that I saved last year but this is different. Why? Because I say so, alright.)

I do hope that this lovely weather continues.

Allotment 1/3/10

Quick! The sun is out! Get outside and do stuff!

 As you may have guessed I got to the allotment and, finally, got those seeds in that I wanted to last week. Just to remind you, this is my attempt to grow early salad leaves and radishes under plastic cloches. I think it will work just fine as a few plants that were covered have survived the winter here. Yes I know that my winter wasn’t as bad as yours, I had much less snow, but it was cold so I am happy about the survival. Let’s see if it works.

 That is not all I’ve done today either (I love not working on Mondays) oh no. Off to the allotment shop to get onions sets (because they sell out really fast) and seed potatoes. I also got a little over excited and bought some early peas and some sweet corn seeds (yes I know I am supposed to be using ones that I save last year but I didn’t store them in correctly. I put them in a plastic thingy, so they were mushy when I looked last week, which was less then nice). I popped them in a mini-greenhouse thing as well.

 So now it is not just seed trays in the garden, oh no. On the windowsill of our dining room are 2 egg boxes that contain 3 types of potato that are “chitting”.

Chitting is one of those odd things that we allotment types do but we are not sure why. Basically you pop the seed potatoes somewhere sunny and warm until they start to sprout a bit. The theory is that this gives them a better start in life but there is some debate as to whether this makes the slightest difference. I am agnostic on this point.

  The 3 types of spud that I am going to try and grow are Pink Fir (a salad type), Duke of York (first Early) and Valor (main crop). Last year (and the year before) I tried growing them in bags but that wasn’t super successful so this year they are going in the ground. Let’s see if this works better.