Sprouts

... not the Brussels kind, but there are definitely some sprouts in the greenhouse from the 'Purple Queen' dwarf French beans, the lettuce/salad leaves and from the sunflowers (I forgot to mention them last time - we're finishing off a packet from last year; I also forgot to mention the chives.). Now, providing I keep remembering to water everything, I'm sure it won't be long before we see even more signs of life!

Digging and sowing

Nat's parents are up for a couple of days, which means that there have been enough spare hands to look after David and also do some allotmenting. Nat's dad has dug over lots more of the ground, particularly the first bed, where the brassicas are going.



He also filled up loads of seed trays and cellular pots with compost, ready for planting seeds in. We then went from this ...




... to this, this afternoon. The trays are now all back in the greenhouse, which has been wonderfully tidied, thanks to Nat's mum. There's just about enough space for all the trays on the greenhouse staging.


So, planted/sown today were: French beans, dwarf French beans, courgettes, squashes, basil, coriander, oregano, celeriac, lettuce, tomatos and sweetcorn (in toilet roll inners).

There's a separate pile of seeds to be planted directly at the allotment: rocket, spinach, peas, carrots (2 varieties) and parsnips.

And finally, the seeds to be planted in seed trays next month are: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, more tomatos, chinese cabbage, pak choi, celery and goji berries.

Spring flowers

Spring is finally here, and the allotment has responded with the bulbs starting to come into bloom at last after the long winter. On the left above are the first row of tulips to come out, and the hyacinths. On the right, you can see the rows of daffodils just coming out as well. Another week or so and it'll really look wonderful, especially when the small multi-headed daffodils are out.

Nat and Jeremy have been hard at work for the last few weekends digging over the various vegetable beds ready for this year's crops. It's really looking good now - here's the bed that the potatoes are going into, along with the onions , carrots and parsnips. As photos go, it's not very exciting, but the soil is looking lovely and clear, which is the main point. :)

Now, unfortunately, there are rumours afoot that the parish council may have some plans that will affect the allotments - details are non-existent at the moment, but there's a meeting a week on Thursday about it, so watch this space...

Digging

Something has been digging on our allotment, and it hasn't been us! I went up today to have a look round with the intention of starting off with the allotment again this weekend. In the first bed, the daffodils are coming up nicely; although, as I heard on the radio this morning, the cold winter is delaying the spring flowers, and we might end up with the daffs and tulips coming out together! No sign of any growth at all from the tulips yet, though, so I'm not quite convinced yet.

However, in the bed where we planted the onion sets back in the autumn, there are definite signs of activity (see picture). It looks rather as though something has been digging a few inches down all over that area. I didn't have the tools to investigate much, so I'm not sure if some of the onion sets have been eaten, but even if they have, there are fewer holes that there were sets, so we should get at least some crop. Very odd, though - is it rabbits?

New Year

Well, we didn't get any Christmas sprouts after all, but mostly because we got halfway to my parents' house before suddenly remembering that we hadn't picked them after all. I went up to the allotment the week after we got back, though, and discovered a reasonable sprinkling of sprouts on the plants, although some had clearly been nibbled, despite the netting. Having checked over the brassica cage, I discovered that one of the layers of netting had come undone, leaving a huge space that hungry animals could get through to eat our brassicas. I tried to make it good again, to prevent further incursion, but haven't checked again since to see if it's lasted. Hopefully I'll get up there again this weekend, and actually pick some sprouts this time!

Despite the snowy, frosty weather we've had for the past few weeks, the daffodils are starting the come through - here's a picture of some of the larger shoots. It was lovely last year when we had a riot of colour between the daffodils and the tulips, and I'm really looking forward to that again this year.

I had a look over the rest of the plot as well - weeds pretty much under control, unsurprisingly, given the time of year, and no signs of life from the onions yet - but it's still very early for them.

Not long now before I need to start thinking about what we're planting this year. I'm waiting to be told that the seed potatoes have arrived at the allotment shop in town - I should probably chase that up to make sure they're not sitting waiting for me! Other than that, I think we have all the seeds we need already, from last year's packets.

This will be an interesting year for our allotment, as we're expecting a baby in early March (peak seed sowing time!). On the other hand, I'll be off on maternity leave for a few months, and I'm sure the baby can just sit and watch me on the allotment sometimes, can't it? Watch this space...

Planting onions

It's been a few weeks since we've done much on the allotment, but Nat's parents kindly brought the last of their onion sets with them last weekend for us, so we went up this afternoon to plant them, just before the light faded. We got there at about quarter to 4, and were very pleased to find quite how easily the ground was digging after all the rain over the last few weeks. In half an hour or so (with some help from Angela), we'd dug over the 'carrots, onions and parsnips' area and planted 5 rows of onions (2 varieties of white onions, and one of red in the middle, plus 5 leftover onions from this year that had started re-sprouting). We learnt from this year that, if you you're planning on having rows of carrots between rows of onions, you need make sure you leave enough space to hoe in between, or the carrots get overrun with weeds and stay small. So we spaced the onions out much more than last year.

Reviewing the rest of the allotment, the brassicas are doing reasonably well - we may even get some Christmas sprouts at this rate! The 'spring' onions are also looking very good, although they probably need harvesting really. A few daffodils have started to make an early appearance, and the garlic is looking healthy. As for the rest of the beds, it's not been warm enough for weeds to take over since we last dug them over, so it'll be an easy job to keep them clear over the winter.

Time to plan...

Well 2009 is drawing to a close and winter approaches, so it's time to start planning where things go next year. So here's my first draft of a plan, based on some discussions with Mary-Ann, some thoughts of my own, and the cycle from my book which is basically:
Hungry crops (beans, peas, onions) & salads -> Brassicas -> Root crops

I need to go up and measure properly at some point, so this diagram isn't quite to scale. It's based on drawing round an image from google maps :)

Anyway, going through section by section:

1. Nearest the gate, brassicas and maybe something else as well, covering where the beans, onions, and carrots have been this year. But not digging up the daffodils.

2. Next in, is beans and things, where potatoes have been this year. Maybe aim to have a couple of full rows of beans this year, with more robust infrastructure, but we'll anyway have more beans in the 3 sisters patch. The 3 sisters are sweetcorn, beans and squash: the idea is that the beans grow up the sweetcorn and the squash fills in the gaps on the ground. This is a square area, as it helps the pollenation of the sweetcorn. In the rest of this area we're aiming to go for smaller (and neater!) beds than last year. :)

3. Finally we've got the root crops. The aim here is to grow lots of potatoes, as they're yummy and useful and easy to grow. But we want some carrots, onions and maybe parsnips too. Any thoughts on this?

I think that generally we thought that lettuce needs a tad more attention and is best grown in back gardens, as it has been going to seed somewhat.
So anyway, how does this seem to people?