spuds planted along with a few early seeds...

Yesterday we took advantage of a dry day to get the potatoes in. We have opted for 5 varieties. 'Kestrel' has been very reliable for us, so 40 seed potatoes of these. In addition, last year 'International Kidney' (Jersey Royals) produced a huge crop. Surprisingly, these early potatoes when left were really tasty large maincrop spuds - so dual use. We also have done well with 'Anya' and 'Rooster' .

Pictured below is some of last years Anya crop as part of a sunday lunch pickings.



In a tester raised bed (6'x3') we are trying a small bed of 'Blue Danube'. These tubers have a deep blue/purple skin and have some alleged blight resistance.

A plague for all potato growers this disease is caused by a the fungus 'Phytophthora infestans'. The fungal spores spread in warm and humid weather - hence the typical British summer! This is the pathogen that was behind the 'Irish potato famine' and blight is a huge problem on our site. The fungus can lie dormant in any potatoes that are left in the soil overwinter. It is near impossible to remove every potato and on an allotment site this problem is compounded. A blighted potato crop can be destroyed in a matter of 24 hours. In reality it is a matter of 'when' rather than 'if' blight sets in across our site. If you are quick enough them cutting back the halms to ground level, letting the skins set and then digging up the tubers can save the crop. The main issue is that blight tends to rear it's head by the end of July. Maincrop spuds are often not well developed by this point, hence the reason the majority of our crops are 2nd earlies. We have found 2nd earlies can store well into spring.

I still haven't found room for the 20 Rooster tubers. These will have to go in over the next few weeks on our 2nd (shared) plot.

The potato crops have gone into four 10'x4' beds. Each bed has 20 seed potatoes in; packed in two rows of 10.

The Blue danube have been planted in our 'test' area. This is a series of 5 beds new for 2010 situated behind the flowerbed. These will be used predominately for a mini-rotation of new varieities we wish to test in small quantities. This year the blue danube will be joined by crimson broad beans, an unknown variety of garlic from our allotment shop and swedes which will trial planting from plug plants. For the root section of this rotation we are sticking with the firm favourites 'Boltardy' beetroot and 'Early nantes' carrots. The carrots, beetroot and broadies were also planted yesterday. Hopefully the weather will be favourable for germination!

What's for dinner tonight?

This afternoon we harvested the broad beans. From a double 5ft row we managed to crop 3lb of beans.

For dinner we have some charlotte potatoes, broad beans, along with peas and baby carrots.

It's full steam ahead in the growing season...

The climate of rain followed by sun is suiting many of our crops. The early potatoes planted on plot 4 are now ready. Today we harvested the first few 'charlotte' plants and the remaining 'rocket'. Below you can see some of our charlotte harvest.


The rocket are larger in size.


Earlier in the week I decided to 'bite the bullet' and plant out some of the chilli plants in the raised bed on the patio. The patio has full sun all day and chillies have previously done well in pots here. Time will tell whether we will get a good outdoor chilli crop. The remaining chilli plants will be staying in the conservatory.

The tomato plants, planted in pots on the patio, are doing very well. Shown below is an unsual looking tomato flower. These are a 'brandywine' variety.




Yesterday we also harvested our 'over-wintered' onions. We have about 30 large onions.

First potatoes lifted

We had a patio barrel with Red Duke of York potatoes in it. They flowered about 3 weeks ago and we decided to lift them.


From just 5 seed potatoes, we got 5lb 4ozs of spuds. Not too bad really.

More peas

Tonight we decided to plant yet another row of peas. While Sparkly got on with that, I watered and took some pictures.

One of many rows of peas.
A pea pod, we tried one and it was very sweet, it's no wonder most peas don't make it to the pan when being picked and podded.
Another row of peas with runner beans in the background.
In between the peas we have a block of sweetcorn.

After picking most of the strawberries the other night, this one was looking a little lonely.
The raised beds are doing well, I have labeled the veg in the picture: leeks, sweetcorn, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, lettuce, French dwarf beans.

There is green stuff growing, and its not all weeds

I'll let the pictures do the talking on this one....

Our first peas

Onions starting to swell up nicely

Summer cabbages
Sweetcorn
Aubergines
Potatoes
The shed

our first strawberrya view down the plot from the shed
French dwarf beans
Leeks
Beetroot and Radish
a peep at the parsnips

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.

A busy Easter weekend

Over the Easter weekend we planned to get some hard graft done on plot 4. Although the weather has been disappointing, we have managed to get quite a lot done. Firstly, we were able to finish preparing our first plot for the upcoming planting season. In Autumn, we had covered most of the beds with manure. This has now been dug in, leaving only 1 bed without manure. This will be for carrots and parsnips. You can see in the picture below that we have some overwintering onions and garlic growing. They both seem to be doing well.


Our first plot also has 3 rhubarb crowns. These are just starting to show, behind most other rhubarb growers on the allotment site. We are unsure of the variety. They are most likely a late variety, or have taken a while to sprout through the huge pile of manure we placed over them in autumn!


With the first plot prepared, we moved back to plot four. With the top third almost clear we have started to tackle the rest.

Here you can see the how bottom third of the plot is covered with black plastic. We will be planning pumpkins, squash and sweetcorn through this and not clearing this area fully until next season.



We set to work on the middle third of the plot. We simply do not have the time to clear this area of weed roots before the planting season starts, so we took the decision to rough dig, remove the roots we can see and plant potatoes. This is in hope that the potatoes will help break up the soil, allowing us to fully weed the area in September when we dig the spuds up.


Even the snow did not dishearten our project! Although strangely enough I was doing the digging whilst Sparkly was taking pictures...

Bindweed is still the main problem perennial on the middle third. Here you can see the typical state of the plot when rough-dug. This area did have some couch grass, but the glyphosphate seems to have done a good job of controlling this. Unfortunately, the bindweed roots still feel fleshy and alive!


In some areas the bindweed is beginning to sprout.


Here you can see the result of our Easter effort - 30x30ft of freshly dug ground. The task of removing all obvious perennials and putting in the potato trenches lies ahead for the rest of the week.