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!