Major sowing sessions

Last Sunday and this Sunday have been our major sowing sessions for green-house raised crops to plant on LottiePlotFour. A few of these crops are a little later than what is ideal, but with the recent cold spells even the perennial plants are at least 2 weeks behind last year. With this in mind, I am not too worried! Things catch up!

Last Sunday I sowed:

climbing french bean - cobra
dwarf runner bean - hestia
dwarf purple french bean - purple teepee
sweetcorn - f1 sundance
runner bean - enorma

This Sunday:

Courgette - F1 Orelia
Butternut squash - F1 cobnut
pumpkin - invincible
pumpkin - jack of all trades
Sunflower - giant red single
winter squash - pottimarron
sunflower - giant single
brussels - maximus F1
lettuce - lollo rossa
black kale - palmizi senza testa
lettuce - webbs wonderful
calabrese - belstar F1
red cabbage - drumhead
lettuce - little gem
summer cabbage - greyhound
dwarf sunflower - dwarf mixed
french marigola
cucumber - picolino F1
iceberg lettuce - mini green

Ready to be hardened off we have a good few sweetpeas in root trainers and the tomatoes, chillies and peppers sown at the beginning of the month are ready to be pricked out.

I also potted up the dahlia and cala tubers to give them a head start before going out on the plot.

The plan is to sow some more tomatoes this week and that will be the main spring sowing session complete!

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!

Green leaping friends welcome...

Slugs are a major problem in every garden. They say that these slimy creatures are the gardener's number one enemy and this is very true. In a bid to encourage wildlife on lottieplotfour we decided to add a small wildlife pond. We are hoping that we will eventually have a small frog population. No miracle solution is expected, but every little thing helps!

A 3'x3' bed in a central location was choosen.



Ant dug a hole to fit our 'pond-liner'. We have choosen to use 2 plastic gardening trugs. This is an experiment and probably not a permanent solution. If we are successful this temporary pond will be replaced with something a bit nicer!



The trugs were added. There are quite strict restrictions on the size and depth of ponds on our site for safety reasons.



We used broken paving slabs to create an edge to the pond with plenty of platforms at different levels to allow any frogs easy access.



The only dissappointing thing is that it was very difficult to cover up the edges of the trugs. One idea is to add a couple of plants around the edge of the pond, which would improve the appearance.

Hopefully the pond will be functional - only time will tell!

The second project for today was to build a herb bed. We are pleased with the design and, once it fills out, it should add a bit of colour and help attract beneficial insects and pollinators.



Spring is definately here. The plot is beginning to show the first signs of growth.


We have expanded our strawberry crops with a new strawberry bed. These plants came from runners from our existing stock.



The rhubarb bed seems to be enjoying it's mulch of half-rotted leaves and within the space of 1 week has gone from not showing to this.



The other fruit bushes are starting to form leave buds. Here is a redcurrant.



The overwintering onions and garlic are growing well.

Pick a parsnip...

We have had a bumper harvest of parsnips, which we have been pulling since around Aug. After attempting to locate the 'snips christmas eve with a nearly a foot of snow, the lesson has been learnt to put a cane in to mark the rows!

One of the important jobs at this time of year is to make sure you dig up the remaining winter crops.

The number that was left in was quite a suprise. We only thought there were a couple left!

This bounty harvest will be hitting the freezer to last until this seasons harvest starts at the end of the summer

The growing season has started!

Today I planted some chillies, sweet peppers and a few early tomatoes.

The tomato is 'balconi yellow' and is a patio bush type. These little yellow toms are very sweet and did great for us last year planted in Nov and overwintered in the conservatory. Hopefully this years attempt at an early crop will also do well!

In terms of chillies, we are going for a few tried and tested favourites and some new varieties. Praire Fire and Ring O Fire have always done well for us and produced a good crop for general use. Hot pepper 'purple' is such a pretty plant that it is on the list again. These tiny dark purple peppers have a real kick, but the folliage is a nice deep colour. Hot 'patio sizzle' were on offer at Wilkos and they look very similar to praire fire so they have promise. In addition, we are trying 'chenzo' and 'cheyenne' which caught my eye when searching online.

I have never done well with sweet peppers, but refuse to be defeated. 'Gypsy' come highly recommended so I will cross my fingers that they will do better this year. In addition ' mini bell mixed' produce small peppers and 'big banana' produce very large ones. Here is hoping that one of these will give us a decent crop!!


All the above went in a heated propagator in the conservatory.

I also planted some sweet peas ' early fragrance mix' 'high scent' 'heirloom jaunita' and 'cupani'.

On lottieplotfour we have made some good progress on preparing for the main season.

Ant surveys the progress.



Some of the smaller beds have been piled up to be moved to their new location over the next couple of weeks.



We have increased our raspberry stocks (autumn bliss)





We purchased a new stainless steel burning bin.





Today's progress was the addition of these 4 beds

From jungle to full cultivation

here is a video to summarise our progress on LottiePlotFour over the last 2 seasons.
Hope this inspires any new allotment holders :)