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!

Almost half a plot sorted...

Today we levelled the area for 2 more raised beds, put them in, levelled the paths, got a few barrows of woodchips to cover the paths. Argued a bit, drank tea :p

Photo from shed end.

Next job will be to clear the pile next to the oil barrel and build three 3'x3' compost bins.

Time on plot: 6 hours
Barrows of woodchips: 8
Tea drunk: 1.5 litres
Biscuits eaten: not enough, tin ran out :D

A busy Valentines day

There isn't much going on at the allotment in winter. The onions and garlic are growing well and there are still some cabbages left.
It is pretty much the time to get ground prepared, dug over and weeded.

However, it was also time to construct a few more raised beds :)

The large one is 6'x6' and will be our strawberry patch. The small one is 3'x3' and will have rhubarb in it. The others are our standard 6'x3' beds and will be for various veg depending on time of year/crop rotation.

This is our raspberry frame, the raspberry canes are Autumn Bliss and as their name suggests they crop later in the year and are quite a heavy cropper :). Just behind the raspberry frame is our bramley apple tree. The end of the plot towards the shed is a bit too low, so over the course of the year is will be raised up slightly. Tomorrows job is to level the ground to get the foreground bed sorted.

We rolled back a strip of the weed suppressant fabric that last years pumpkins were growing through and found a load of bindweed roots, because it was covered, the roots have risen quite close to the surface and are quite big so should be easy to weed.
Looking quite pleased with myself here as it is Sparkly who will be weeding tomorrow.

and just a reminder, when we got the plot in September 2007 this was a photo from roughly where the basket is in the picture above looking towards where the shed is... Brambles, bindweed, the apple tree is hidden in there!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The new beginning...

In late summer 2007 we were offered a new plot, in addition to our half plot. This is the story of plot four...



Plot four had been standing derelict for around 4 years. The previous owner had used the plot to grow fruit; including apples, brambles and blackcurrants. As the plot had been left untended for so long, this is a long-term project. Plot four was a mass of brambles, bindweed and couch grass. About half the plot was approximately 6ft high in brambles and, hidden by bindweed, there were 4 apple trees in the area of the plot photographed.

The plan is to cultivate the full plot using a system of raised beds. The area to the right of this photograph is a large compost heap. This is 7ft tall, and although infested with perrenial weeds, should be an excellent source to fill our raised beds.

The compost heap fills half of the area which is normally used for a shed. Between this area and the main plot should be a path approximately 2 feet wide. As you can see from the photo the weeds have taken over the path!

Here is a 2nd photo showing the extent of brambles and bindweed on the top half of the plot.


Over the winter period we set on clearing plot four. During September we used glyphosphate to try and get a hold on the couch and bindweed problem. Although this is not ideal, plot four was in such a bad state that this seemed the best solution to help us get the area under control.

Here you can see the whole of plot four, taken from the bottom end in September, before the glyphosphate spraying. The bottom half of the plot did not have many brambles. but still had a problem with with bindweed and couch grass.


After spraying we purchased a bulk lot of black plastic and used this to cover about half of the plot. You can see the effect of the glyphosphate on the top growth of the weeds. This photo was taken in late October 2007.


During November we began clearing the top third of the plot. We used a mattock to dig out the bramble roots and by hand worked to remove the perenial weed roots.



The extent of the bindweed problem was quite daunting. We were, on average, filling this basket out of an area of 1 metre square.


We have now, in March 2008, nearly cleared the top 1/3 of plot four. The image below shows the same area as the first photo in this post! This area will be used for the greenhouse and 4 raised beds.


We have started to level the path which will be made from 3x2ft flags.





The raised beds for this area are 6x3ft and made from decking.