Beetroot and radish

Our second raised bed contains beetroot and radish.

The beetroot are just showing through, but radish are as speedy as ever. They have a very short growing period of three to four weeks compared to most veg.


The strange thing is, most allotmenteers grow them, but none profess to enjoying them... us included!

Carrots and parsnips

One of the raised beds is devoted to carrots and parsnips. The parsnips were pre-chitted earlier in the year and then grown to seedling size in toilet roll centres. These were then planted into the raised bed a couple of weeks ago.

At the other end we put an extra layer of compost and sprinkled it with carrot seeds before lightly raking them over, known as broadcast sowing.

Well today they are all doing quite well.

Beans and peas

Most of the plants are currently sitting at home in cold frames waiting to be planted. Although this weekend we were preparing the beds for where the broad beans and peas were going to go.

Luckily a fellow plotholder was on hand with his Mantis tiller rotovator and offered to let Sparkly have a go...


What a timesaver, easily done in 20 minutes, here you can see the broad beans and peas, we have planted some peas as well along the whole line, so hopefully they will grow at staggered intervals so we don't get a glut.

Here you can see the fine tilth produced by the rotovator, our compost dalek, a gooseberry bush and just where the spade is will be where we set up a bean wigwam.

Raised beds in place

After clearing the area the other day, the first two raised beds were put in place. The second is double height as we are planning on growing the root veg in there.

The raised bed in the background isn't level, but I am going to wait until the soil has settled a bit before I attempt to get them fairly level. There was also a load of bindweed under there, I spent two and a half hours clearing as many roots out as I could find!


In the background you can see the preparation for the area where the greenhouse will go.

Companion planting

Over the last few days I have been reading up a little on companion planting. As the name suggests this is planting things that are beneficial to one another (not lonely, although you never know).

I already knew that planting garlic and onions in amongst carrots could help deter carrot fly, and that marigolds were pretty much good with most things. Certain varieties of plant or flower even had a fairly specific task, for example Mexican marigolds are supposed to inhibit the growth of bindweed and mares tail. If that turns out to be correct that could be a bonus for people with bindweed infested plots like ours.

Whilst reading the forum at www.allotments4all.co.uk this morning, someone had linked the following companion planting guide that they had found.

A Basic Guide to Plant Companions

Very handy indeed and has been saved in case the site ever vanishes.

Clearing space for raised beds

After yet another rainy week we managed to get down on Sunday and dig the remaining potato trenches.

We have also started to turn over the area next to where the greenhouse will go, the raised beds from an earlier post will be going in here and used to grow parsnips amongst other things. This area has been dug over once before and weeded so shouldn't need too much work.



Unfortunately, due to rain, it is still too wet to be working the soil and short of breaking up some big clods with the rake, nothing much got done.

However, we did finish the path! Just for a little inspiration, this is what it looked like before and after.

Potato trenches dug

Most of the work this week has been the continued forking over of the middle of the plot and the removal of the ever present bindweed.

However, this weekend it was time to dig and prepare our potato trenches, yes it is a bit late, but with the weather forecast for most of the UK being snow (and it was correct), we weren't too worried. At this rate our earlies will be going in about a week later than they did last year.

One bonus this weekend was a volunteer (yeah, right). My friend Mark had offered to come down and help out. This was much appreciated and at least there was something interesting for him to get stuck into rather than the endless weeding.


After a brief debate about which way the potato trenches were going to go, we got to work. Sparkly was offering much advice and pointing, which prompted Mark to comment that her GAP top actually meant "Gaffer At Plot".


Hardened allotment veterans will use string to mark out where trenches or lines of veg will be, we didn't have any, the dogleg second trench gives this away.

The weather was interesting, one minute sunny, the next bitterly cold wind and snowing, then sun again!

After a couple of hours we had our trenches. They then had a layer of manure and a layer of straw placed in the bottom. We will also put some newspaper in when we actually plant the spuds.
Two of the trenches are the full width of the plot, one is half and the other two-thirds (stops before the apple tree). There is still some room for another couple of small trenches, but for now we have more than enough space to plant our early spuds.