The last few remaining daffodils bulbs left unsold from the members’ shop were planted around the notice board and in the raised beds at our North Road Site in December. Hopefully they will make a lovely display of colour in the spring!
We planted the daffodils about 4 inches deep, or double the size of the bulb, and about 4 inches apart. Daffodils can stand some crowding, but it’s best to keep them at least 3 inches apart. Planting daffodils too shallow will cause floppy stems that will break in the wind and too deep will cause the bulb to not flower or surface.
Planting daffodils at North Road
We will show you the flowering bulbs in Spring and I’m sure they will brighten the allotment site up.
I started to garden organically when I had my first plot in 1972. I was inspired by buying a copy of the book ‘Grow your Own Fruit and Vegetables’ by Laurence D Hills. Laurence was the founder of The Henry Doubleday Research Institute, which is now known as Garden Organic.
The great advantage of organic growing to me is that I know there are no herbicide or pesticide residues in the food I grow. I do, of course get bug and fungus attacks, but by and large nature sorts these out with a little help. I grow comfrey and use this to make a liquid feed. This is the only fertiliser I use for tomatoes etc. I do use chicken manure pellets, as well as horse manure and homemade compost. If I have serious bug infestation, I use garlic spray, click here to find out more.
Generally, I do not use fungicide. I used to use Bordeaux Mixture, but that is no longer accepted as organic, except by French wine growers! My only exception is when potting up and planting out courgette and squash plants, as they are susceptible to damping off, a fungus issue. However, my solution is just to water well with fresh tap water, which has just enough chlorine in it to kill the fungus.
There is plenty more information as well as tips and advice on organic gardening on the Garden Organic website.
I also belong to the Heritage Seed Library, part of Garden Organic, and have been saving seeds for many years. Some seeds, like peas and tomatoes are easy to save because they do not cross. Others, like squashes cross readily, so you are never sure what will grow from saved seed. I always have surplus tomato seeds, so if any BALGA member wants to try a heritage variety, click here to send me an email.
Spring is here with warmer days, lighter evenings and daffodils and tulips blooming. April can be a busy month with seeds to sow and jobs to do around the plot. The lighter evenings also help as there is more time to work in our gardens or plots! April is also a good time to cut the grass and weed regularly and plant perennials for the summer months.
If your daffodils or tulips have finished flowering, now is the perfect time to deadhead the old flowers. This is important so all the energy can go in to the bulb to produce good flowers next year. You should also allow for the stems and leaves to die back naturally. Once the foliage has died back naturally, you can lift it and store it dry and plant it again in the autumn. Of course, if you would prefer, you can leave them in the ground. I plan to lift mine to make more space to grow other crops.
Now is a good time to plant out second earlies, salad and main crop potatoes. Some seed companies suggested waiting to plant main crop as there is no rush to plant them out. You can dig a trench 6 inches deep and place the seed potatoes inside the trench about 12 inches apart and 3 ft between the rows. Main crop potatoes should be spaced at least 18 inches apart to ensure larger potatoes. Or why not try the no dig method? To do this use a dibber to make a 6 inch hole and drop the seed potato into the hole. Click here to find out more information about no dig potatoes. Potatoes are hungry plants and it’s best to plant in well-rotted manure or compost. It might be a good idea to add fish blood and bone, which can be found at our members’ shop for £0.70 a kg. Click here for more information on the fertilisers we sell in the members’ shop and how to use them.
Potatoes
Sweet peas can be planted out in the middle of April. Sweet peas like rich soil, so it’s a good idea to plant in rotted manure or compost and provide them with support to get them off to a good start and you will be rewarded with many flowers.
Sweet peas about to be planted out.
Now is a great time to harvest the first of asparagus. We’ve had some cold nights, especially at North Road allotment site and its important to protect the asparaus spears by covering it with a fleece. If you want to plant asparagus, April is the last month you can do this. Dig a V shape trench about 8 inches deep and 30cm wide. Create a mound of compost about 7 inches high along the bottom of the trench for the crowns to rest upon. Cover the roots with soil and press firmly and water well. April is the time to harvest spring cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, kale and any remaining leeks you have.
Grass paths or lawns will need to be mowed this month. Resist the temptation to cut quite low, like you would in the summer. It’s much better to mow the lawn quite high to even the grass and when the weather warms up next month, you can cut lower. This will result in a greener and healthier lawn.
Now is a good time to prune cherry and plum trees as they’re growing. You should do this once the leaf buds have opened. Click here to find out how to prune plum trees. Click here to find out how to prune cherry trees.
You should also harden off young plants before planting them outside. Bring the plants outside in the day when it’s warm outside and bring it back in again at night. This will allow young plants to slowly accustom to lower temperatures. Alternatively, cold frames and cloches can be used by opening them in the day and closing them at night.
Seedlings
Now is a good time to plant flowers such as lilies, gladioli and dahlias. Make sure you have good drainage, especially if you’re putting the bulbs in pots or containers because they may rot. Bulbs are usually planted down three times their height and one bulb apart, but it’s best to check the instructions your bulbs came with. Make sure you plant in compost or well-rotted manure. Why not stagger your planting to enjoy blooms all summer?
April is a good time to get ahead and start your seeds. I’ve already sown courgettes and pumpkins indoors and chard and spinach outdoors. See a list of seeds you can sow this month. Click here to have a look at the sowing and harvest chart.
Sow indoors
Cucumbers
Courgettes
French beans
Marrows
Melons
Runner beans
Squash
Pumpkins
Tomatoes
Sow outdoors:
Beetroot
Chard
Carrots
Lettuce
Leeks
Radish
Peas
Turnip
Spinach
Click here to see a full list of seeds you can sow this month.
Finally, winter is beginning to recede, we can now begin to sow seeds and plant outdoors. However, we must take in to consideration the weather we had last year. With the freezing temperatures and snow from the Beast from the East! Traditionally, March is a good time to plant out your first early potatoes that have been chitting away. It’s best to do this at the end of the month but check the ground is not too wet and take in to consideration anything Mother Nature has in store for us.
Chitting potatoes!
If you have bought some onions and shallots from the members’ shop, now is a good time to plant them out. Make sure that you cover them with netting to protect your onions and shallots from the birds. I have learnt the hard way! They love to pull them out of the ground! If the ground is too wet, it might be better to plant onions or shallots in small pots or seed trays with multi-purpose compost in a greenhouse or in a cold frame to get them started.
If you have not bought your onions or shallots sets yet, we still have some in stock that you can buy any Sunday 10am-12pm at the members’ shop. Click here to find out more information on our current stock.
If you have over wintering brassicas, it’s a good time to give them a feed of sulphate of ammonia. Sulphate of ammonia is a fast-acting nitrogen fertiliser which encourages leafy growth. This is particularly useful for the brassica family as well as lettuce, spinach, rhubarb, leeks and onions. I added one handful (45g) per square metre, mixed it in to the soil and watered it.
Sulphate of ammonia is available in the members’ shop for £0.80 per kg.
Seedlings can get quite leggy if there is not enough light at this time of the year. It’s good practice to wait until mid-March to start sowing your seeds, unless you have a grow light.
In March, you can sow the following seeds outdoors:
Broad beans and peas (available in the members’ shop)
Cabbages, sprouting broccoli, cauliflower and calabrese
Leeks, onions and spring onions
Lettuces and spinach
Parsnips
Sow undercover:
Beetroot and radishes
Carrots and turnips
Cucumbers
Lettuces, oriental leaves, rocket, salad leaves
Sow indoors
Aubergines
Chillies
Tomatoes
Cauliflower Aubergine
March is a good time to prune your roses. Roses can be pruned quite hard to promote vigorous growth. You can find some good advice on how to prune your roses here. Once you have pruned your roses, give them a feed with rose fertiliser to give them a head start. We sell rose fertiliser in the shop, click here to see more information.
As the start of the new growing season approaches, we thought we’d start a new monthly round up of jobs you can do on your plot; starting with suggestions from some of the seed companies.
Whilst it is always tempting to sow seeds because the seed packet tells you to, local knowledge and keeping an eye on what Mother Nature has in store, are much better barometers for knowing what to do and when.
We’ll start this month with Marshalls Seeds’ monthly update, which you can read here. Do bear in mind all the seeds companies are giving us advice…but also trying to sell us their products! However, you can usually pick up some useful tips…and a recipe or two!
Kings Seeds’ blog post for February includes several flower-based jobs including getting your dahlias ready for re-growing if you dug them up over the winter. While Thompson & Morgan’s post is nicely split into the various categories of gardening, including jobs for your fruit garden.
If you’re looking for a useful website with lots of monthly tips and recipes, you can’t go wrong with Allotments & Gardens. See their list of jobs for February here.
Most will agree though, that veg plants like chillies, peppers and tomatoes can be started now. All these need a good amount of heat to help the seeds germinate, so a warm room or heated propagator is what’s needed. I’m about to get mine started as soon as I’ve warmed up my seed compost which has been stored outside. However, I’ve also been lucky enough to overwinter a pepper plant which is already flowering and producing fruit!
Overwintered banana pepper
Whatever you are sowing, most companies recommend you sow your seeds in a seed compost rather than multi-purpose and we have two types in stock in the members’ shop – Clover Seed Compost and Levingtons F2 Seed Compost.
There hasn’t been too much going on down the allotment for the last couple of months …… even been too cold for weeds and just a bit too wet to work!
In the meantime I have been puzzling over no-dig potatoes. How does that work? My initial solution was to avoid the problem by not growing potatoes this year. However the gardening fraternity are a generous lot and by April I had been asked to grow a row of spuds for a friend.
Up in Weston, the farmers also use no-dig but on a far larger scale. As it happens they are trialling no-dig potatoes this season, so of course I wanted to know how they went about it.
Translated into allotment terms, we start with some levelled ground and place our chitted potatoes on the surface at the usual spacing.
Level ground for potatoes
Next comes a layer of manure or compost or both.
Add manure on top of chitted seed potatoes
On top of this is a layer of straw. This will benefit from a good soaking once it’s in place.
Add a layer of straw
The top layer is grass cuttings – obviously not from grass treated for weeds & moss & such like ! The grass will rot down, and whilst its doing that, it stops the straw blowing about. Thinking ahead to pigeons etc. picking through all those layers, I covered the whole lot with some pea-netting.
Cover with grass cuttings
Apparently this method will produce potatoes that are a better shape and more regular sized that traditional cultivation. It also avoids stabbing your crop with the garden fork, because you don’t dig them up to harvest and should mean that rogue tubers don’t get left behind in the soil.
It feels like it’s happened a lot on our plots this spring, maybe more so than usual, but quite a few rhubarb plants have sprouted flower stalks. Poor rhubarb, it’s only doing what comes naturally and that is to ensure it’s own propagation, but seeing a flower head sprout in your rhubarb patch is not something an allotment gardener wants to see.
Flower stalk emerging from the centre of a crown
There are several possible reasons for this. Firstly it is more like to occur in more mature rhubarb plants where the crowns are at least three years old.
Some traditional, old-fashioned varieties are more prone to bolting but if there’s one plant you are likely to inherit on an allotment, it’s a rhubarb and unless you plant a crown yourself, or grow one from seed, you are rarely likely to know the variety of the plant you have inherited.
As it is a spring vegetable (yes rhubarb is classed as a vegetable even though it’s most commonly eaten as a dessert), rhubarb does prefer cooler weather. This last winter has been cooler than some recent ones, particularly with the amount of snow we have had, but combine that with the warmer temperatures we’ve had this month, and it might just confuse a plant enough to think ‘Hey! I need to produce some seed!’
The main reason why allotment gardeners want to avoid their plants producing flower stalks is that in doing so all the plant’s energy is diverted towards producing that flower stalk and away from producing leaf stems. And when the only reason you are growing a plant is to harvest its leaf stems, that’s not what you want to happen. It will also weaken the crown as a result.
So what can you do if you find your rhubarb has bolted? The first thing is to cut out the flower stalk straightaway and do so as close to the base of the plant as possible. Use a knife as the stalk is thicker and harder to remove by twisting and pulling as you would do when harvesting the leaf stalks.
Ideally you want to remove those flower stalks as soon as you spot a seed pod forming. Again use a sharp knife to cut it.
Flower stalk and seed podSeed pod emerging
If your crown is a few years old, dividing it when it’s dormant over the winter will ‘reset’ the maturity clock and should ensure it doesn’t bolt again for a few years. In fact dividing your crown every five or six years is good practice anyway.
And if you’re too late and you have a lovely long flower stem? Cut the stalk out as before. Apparently rhubarb flowers last a long time and make an unusual flower arrangement!
It may seem strange to be writing a post about what to sow in April, when April has nearly been and gone. However, this year has been a classic example of allotment gardeners needing to be guided by the weather and not by what it says on the back of a seed packet.
Normally, you would be able to sow most things from the end of March and into April. Generally the ground has warmed up sufficiently for seeds to be sown outside on our plots if they are being sown direct. However, if you remember, mid March saw a blanket of snow here in Hertfordshire which put paid to any idea of getting the season started for several weeks. The weather has improved greatly since, to the extreme of having a mini heatwave a week ago.
So what can you do when the weather is so up and down? Fleece or mini polytunnels can be used to warm seed beds and areas where direct sowing is going to be taking place, and can also be employed if the overnight temperatures plummet.
Root crops such as beetroot, radish, early carrots and parsnips can be sown this month. Make a narrow drill and sow the seeds thinly, cover up, water and hope! I often feel my first sowings don’t take. Beetroot can be started off in modules if you prefer and then transplanted once they have put on a bit of growth. Some people sow radish and parsnips in the same row. Radish will germinate quickly and can often be harvested before the parsnips (which are particularly slow to germinate) get going. I like to sow my parsnips in groups of three. The seeds are quite large and relatively easy to handle and if you get a little cluster of similar looking ‘weeds’ growing, you know it’s the parsnips!
Brassicas can also be sown now either in a seed bed or in modules. Whilst they are quick to germinate, they can be a bit high maintenance after that and don’t like being moved too often and then there’s the constant battle against the dreaded cabbage white butterfly and white fly.
If you are growing flowers, many of these can be started now. Some require direct sowing whilst others prefer to be sown in modules.
BALGA tenant, Annie, updates us on her progress with experimenting with going no-dig. This month….paths!
‘Of course, no-dig doesn’t mean no work! The digging is delegated. You may do this already of course – you may have a co-worker or partner who loves the exercise! However you can still gain benefits from no-dig and find these heroes other important jobs on your plot.
With no-dig, the digging is done by the worms. Hopefully you have plenty, but you will certainly get a big influx with the arrival of all that lovely compost. The worms will draw the organic material into the soil and aerate it at the same time. As the soil is not being continually hefted around, an environment is gradually created that allows beneficial insects, microbes and fungi to thrive and prosper. As this happens, it gives the perfect soil structure for your fruit and veg.
However, there is still work to be done….plenty of compost to produce and distribute, but we don’t want to compact the ground so some paths would be useful.
There are several options for paths.
1. Grass paths. These look nice if well maintained. A grass path is fairly permanent though so perhaps other more temporary solutions would be useful to give flexibility year by year.
2. Walk on top of the compost.
CompostTrodden path
The mulch underneath should stop weeds and the compost layer should not get muddy for a long time – not until the mulch has been broken down by the worms. This should take much longer than on the beds since you are walking on it and compacting it more than the beds.
3. Woodchip path. If you have a source of woodchip this is great. It shouldn’t get muddy and when you want a change, the woodchip will just rot down and add organic matter to your soil.
Clear ground for woodchipLay newspaper layer for woodchip pathWoodchip path
4. Gravel. The weed-proof layer here is black plastic (old compost bags work well!). Clear the ground, lay the plastic with a few drainage holes to prevent pools of water developing, cover with a layer of gravel. Cost of gravel may be an issue but it is re-usable when you want to take the path up and re-lay it elsewhere.
Before gravelGravel path
You will notice that the emphasis throughout is to try to stop the weeds growing thus saving time on weeding. We shall see!’
Everyone loves sweet peas don’t they? A quintessential British summer scent that wafts in the air as you pass their blooms, they also make great cut flowers to bring that scent into your home.
There are two schools of thought as regards sowing sweet peas; they can be sown in the autumn and overwintered thereby allowing you to plant out stronger and bigger plants in the spring, or they can be sown later in spring itself either in pots, or if you are really late you can direct sow them in the ground as late as April.
If you are sowing them in the autumn, the growing tip will need to be pinched out to encourage secondary growth and to stop the plants getting too leggy.
As I forgot to sow mine in the autumn and with my sowing fingers starting to get a little twitchy, I have sown mine in mid January this year. I have a selection of colours and varieties. I’m pretty sure I had some lovely red ones too somewhere, but can I find them?
The seeds themselves are quite large and round and are easy to sow as a result. I filled some pots with compost the day before I needed them and brought them inside so the compost warmed up a bit. No one, not even a tiny seedling, wants to dip their toe or first shoot into cold compost!
Sweet pea seeds
I sow mine five seeds to a pot spread evenly over the surface, I then just push them in about a fingernail’s depth and then cover them. Water and place the pots somewhere fairly warm to help germination.
Hey presto! A week later the first seed has germinated!
Germination!
We’ll do an update in a month or two once the seedlings have got going a bit more.
