allotment | Baldock Allotment Association

March 12, 2019November 5, 2020

What to do on your plot in March

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.

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

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.

March 8, 2019February 22, 2020

Potatoes, Onions and Shallots Availability 2019

After a successful few weeks of trading, we have sold out of some varieties and we have limited stock with some of our first early potatoes. It’s not too late to buy your potatoes, onions or shallots. Order your potatoes as soon as you can to avoid disappointment, as some varieties are nearly sold out.

We have sold out of Golden Gourmet shallots, but we still have plenty of Red Sun shallots. Why don’t you try Red Sun shallots instead because they have a tasty distinctive flavour with red skin and will store for months.

We have sold out of Desiree and Setanta is a good alternative to Desiree because it’s blight resistant, high yielding, has good drought tolerance and they’re ideal for roasting and mashing.

It’s not too late if you have not bought your seed potatoes. The shop is open every Sunday 10am-12pm or click here to take advantage of our pre-order form. Click here to see a full list of available potatoes and more information about each variety.

February 23, 2019February 22, 2020

Potato Weekend 2019

Potato Weekend has proved very successful, with some varieties already sold out. We had an increase of members using the pre-order/click and collect service this year and this has been very successful because members’ orders were ready on arrival! Thank you to all of our members who took advantage of this and supported us on Potato Weekend.

Potato Weekend 2019

After successful trading over Potato Weekend, we have sold out of Abbot, Desiree, Charlotte, Rocket and Foremost. Setanta is a good alternative to Desiree because it’s blight resistant, high yielding, has good drought tolerance and they’re ideal for roasting and mashing. We still have the following varieties available loose at £1 per kg:

First Early Potatoes

Arran Pilot
Casablanca
Colleen
Foremost
Lady Christl
Swift

Second Early Potatoes

Kestrel (available in a pre-packed 2.5kg bag)
Wilja

Main Crop Potatoes

Cara (available in a pre-packed 2.5kg bag)
Maris Piper (available in a pre-packed 2.5kg bag)
Nicola
Picasso (available in a pre-packed 2.5kg bag)
Setanta (available in a pre-packed 2.5kg bag)
Vales Sovereign

It’s not too late if you have not bought your seed potatoes. The shop is open every Sunday 10am-12pm. Click here to see a full list of available potatoes and more information about each variety.

February 3, 2019February 3, 2021

What To Do On Your Plot in February

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!

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.

January 23, 2019February 22, 2020

Compost Sunday 2019

The traditional curtain raiser to our trading season is Compost Sunday when our members’ shop is open for members to stock up on composts and kick start their growing year.

This year we have several new composts for you, including a fully peat-free compost in response to requests from members.

The full list of what is available below.

Members will note we have two types of seed compost for this year. Kings Seeds recommend growers use seed compost in their seed trays because the fertiliser in multi-purpose compost can kill seeds.

We also have a small number of Jack’s Magic left over from last year’s stock.

The shop will be open from 10am to 12 noon.

December 22, 2018January 11, 2021

Grant Success!

BALGA are delighted to announce we’ve managed to secure grant funding to replace the allotment signs at both sites.

You can read more here. [Link removed at NHDC January 2021]

The grant money will be used to purchase new noticeboards which are used for BALGA members and members of the public alike, as well as updating the old NHDC noticeboards to reflect the fact that the sites are self-managed.

BALGA would like to thank both the Baldock and District Committee of NHDC and Cllr Michael Muir for their continued support.

July 22, 2018February 19, 2019

Allotment Security

Sadly it is a fact of life that allotments all over the country are easy targets for both vandalism and theft because of the nature and location of allotment sites and often the summer months are the more likely time when such attacks occur due to the long light evenings. Security has been improved at our North Road site since last summer, not only with the addition of a higher (padlocked) gate at the main entrance but also with the repairs to the rear fencing on the site, including the addition of barbed wire.

There are two schools of thought on how best to keep any property you keep on your plot safe and secure.

Of course, not keeping any tools or items of value, particularly power tools, on your allotment is the most secure way of ensuring they are safe. If kept at your home address they are covered by your home insurance. Unfortunately, your home insurance cover does not extend to covering your tools on your allotment. If you do keep tools on your allotment, it is always a good idea to get them marked with your postcode; tool marking is something the local police offer at various events throughout the year, including our Open Day during National Allotments Week.

The first school of thought, if you have a shed on your plot, is to not lock it with a padlock thereby hoping less damage will be done to the shed if someone is trying to break in. However, that may also encourage trespassers to get in anyway.
The second school of thought is to secure your shed with a padlock or other lockable device. This may well protect the contents of your shed more but may result in more damage being done if a break in is attempted.

The golden rule in all cases of crime on allotments, be it criminal damage, theft or just nuisance damage, is to report it to the police. Without these crimes being reported, the police are unaware there is a problem. If they are aware of repeated attacks or damage, they can increase patrols in an allotment area.

Any cases of vandalism or theft can be reported by telephoning the police on the non-emergency number 101. They can also be reported online via the Herts Police website here.

May 4, 2018

The No-Dig Diary May 2018

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.

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.

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.

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.

We shall see!

Annie

April 28, 2018

Why has my Rhubarb Flowered?

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.

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!

April 26, 2018August 4, 2018

What to Sow in April

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.