Seed for 2013 and October photographs

Late October and the leaves are beginning to turn.

I keep loosing this list so I will write it here so that I know where it is:

Wodan Beetroot *

Perpetual Spinach

Rainbow Chard

Curly Kale*

Broad bean*

Broccoli Red Arrow*

Brussel Sprout Trafalgar*

Cabbage Bruswick*

Cabbage Stonehead*

Red Cabbage Red Drumhead*

Calabrese Green Magic

Cauliflower All the year round*

Carrot Flyaway *

Carrot Sweet Candle*

Carrot Autumn King*

Celeriac Asterix

Celery Victoria*

Cauliflower Aalsmeer*

Claytonia

Courgette Jermore*

Cucumber Crystal Lemon*

Cucumber Bedfordshire Prize*

Florence Fennel Rondo

Florence Fennel Romanesco

Good King Henry

Garlic Wight

Kohn Rabi Purple Delicacy

Leek Mammoth Blanch*

Leek Pot *

Leek Blue Solaise*

Lettuce Web's Wonderful*

Onion Mammoth Improved*

Onion Armstrong*

Onion Santero*

Parsnip White King*

Pea Douce Provence*

Pea Early Onward*

Pea Progress No9*

Pea Lincoln*

Pea Onward*

Asparagus Pea

Runner Bean Liberty*

Squash Metro*

Pumpkin Kills Atlantic Giant*

Sweede Tweed*

Sweetcorn Early Extra Sweet

Shallot - my own*

French Climbing Bean "Trail of Tears"*

The ones with large asterisk will give 12 points and the ones with small asterisk will give me 8 points.
The early potatoes this year will be
I am only going to grow Latah tomato this year.
I will be planting several of the saved seed including Cobra French Bean, Broad Bean, Telegraph Pea, Runner Bean and Trail of Tears climbing French Bean. I would have liked to collect and keep a lot more seeds but I haven't had the time this year.
Potatoes for this year will be;

Earlies:

Sherine

Rocket

Red Duke of York

Premiere

Arron Pilot

And the second early will be:

Kestrel.

I have finished off sowing green manure.  Experience shows that planting it this late in the year does not really give it time to thicken up very well.  I will probably not plant any more now until the Spring. I have used quite a bit of pigeon manure this year because it was free and left by my allotment.  Having said that I have been careful to use it sparingly digging it in now to allow time for it to decompose a lot more before the spring.  It does produce quite a bit of ammonia and this could burn the roots of plants.  However, it does not seem to have done my green manures any harm.  Maybe this is due to the care I took not to put too concentrated amounts in any area.

I have quite a lot of well rotted compost now but I am not too sure where I am going to use it yet.  There is a rat in this compost heap and I want to make sure that it does not stay there during the winter.  I keeps on throwing out the compost when it digs its burrows and the compost is being banked up against the shed.  This might make the shed rot.

The comfrey bed is not very tidy at the moment because I have been taking the pigeon muck and the compost out and trampling over the plants.  All of the pigeon manure has been dug in now.  The remnants have been put along the rhubarb plants.  I am going to give the rhubarb some of the well rotted manure next.
These comfrey leaves will be taken off now and put into one of the big water butts to rot down together with the nettle tops.  I will probably keep this until next year and use it to water in the seeds and seedlings for next season.  Some of the comfrey bed is covered in horse manure which is mostly wood shavings.  I will spread this out a little better when I deal with this area a bit more systematically.

The green manure on the new onion bed has really grown thickly covering the soil and blocking out light to weed seedlings.  The rye grass and tares were sown directly the potatoes were taken out and have had plenty of time to grow large.  I am hoping that the later sowings of green manure will fare so well.  It is producing lots of carbon and nitrogen to dig in next spring. All this will be dug in just before Alliums are planted next year.  As I have planted all this green manure, I have not got any room for my garlic so I have started them off in pots in the greenhouse.  I have the room because I am sowing sweet peas in early spring this year.  I usually sow sweet peas in autumn but I have not even got the seed yet.

The worm bin is still on the go.  I have virtually filled it with dock and bindweed roots.  Hopefully the worms will devour them with relish, however if they don't then bacteria and fungi will do an equally good job.

If you look carefully you can just see the green manure beginning to germinate.  This area will probably be used for broad beans next year.

I dug in some pigeon manure and I am hoping not to have to put much more onto this bed because the green manure should add enough nutrient for broad beans.  I am hoping that the green manure will take up nitrogen from the pigeon muck but at the very least it should prevent nitrogen from the pigeon manure from leaching away during the winter.  

This is where next year's runner beans and a few rows of sweet peas will be put next year.  I like to grow the green manure in lines so that I can weed between the rows.  They close over and form an impenetrable canopy eventually.  I have got two plants of oca in here somewhere and they will have to be taken out soon. They did not flower this year but I still hope there will be some tubers.  I will not eat any of them though because I am trying to build up a stock.  Last year I lost a great deal because I did not store them properly.  This year I am going to put them into paper bags and keep them in a frost free shed.  

 Some of the leeks are quite big but others are a little ropy.  You cannot tell when they are in soup or stew.  They will be used over the winter.  

This will be where the new summer cauliflowers will go.  This soil has had the sweet pea tops dug in and compost and pigeon manure added.  The green manure will protect the soil until next spring.  Hopefully it will grow much bigger and form a canopy.

The rest of the new brassicae bed which will be limed fairly soon.  I did get some club root this year and I would like to avoid it for next.  The cauliflowers and cabbage seem to be particularly susceptible but the brussels, calabrese, winter cauliflowers, kale and broccoli seem to be more resistant to it.

 These are the old runner bean plants ready to be dug in and which has now been done.  Guess what, I planted green manure here as well.  You can't have enough of a good thing.

Winter cauliflowers in the background with the remnants of the cabbages.  I have sown rocket and lambs lettuce here but they do not seem to be germinating very well.  It might be because this area of the allotment is a little shady.

A rather atmospheric photograph of the Trafalgar Brussel sprouts.  In other words the low Sun is making a mess of the photograph.

The strawberry bed looks a little untidy at the moment even though I have  hoed through it and raked it.  I dug in quite a lot of comfrey leaves and, when these decompose, the soil level drops unevenly and leads to undulating soil.  It might not be very aesthetic but why worry if they produce lots of strawberries.

The blackcurrants have been mulched with pigeon manure and horse manure.  The horse manure does not have very much body in it so I fortified it with the pigeon manure.  Blackcurrants are very hungry plants and withdraw lots of nutrients from the soil so I like to mulch them really well in the winter.  They are loosing their leaves now and I will keep an eye out for any sign of big bud.  I tend to cut out any branches that show signs of this mite.

This is the new roots and leaves bed.  In the background are the climbing French beans "Trail of Tears".  They have been taken down from their supports and the supports put down by the store shed.  The beans were dug into the soil here and green manure sown.  The carrots will be planted where the beans were next year.

This is the new potato bed.  It looks very untidy in the picture but I have just finished digging it over adding pigeon manure and sowing green manure.  The carrots, parsnips, beetroot, Hamburg parsley, salsify and scorzonera will be harvested during the winter so they were left.  They will help to cover the soil and keep the rain from washing away too many nutrients.  The asparagus pea, which I have now dug in, has been quite successful and would be a good candidate for sowing after the potatoes or onions have come out.  You have to be careful only to harvest the very young pods because they get very tough and inedible when they get a little mature.  Believe me cus I was there.

So the allotment has been put to bed for the winter.  The only things now that I need to do are to empty the compost bins and to construct new ones opposite the store shed with new fence panels I have acquired.   After I have done this I can take off all the comfrey leaves and then dig over the comfrey bed.

Then all I will do is harvest the leeks and the roots and use up the stored pumpkins, potatoes, onions, squashes and marrows.

Not bad for a poor year.

Allotment photographs May 2012: Finished planting ...almost.

Remember this blog is mainly to remind me what I did in the allotment and in no way is it a "this is how you do it".  It is how I do it and, if it helps anyone else that that is a great pleasure.  Also it is a completely "organic" allotment which means I only add fertilizers that were once living and do not use any pesticides or herbicides.

As the weather slowly warmed through May, it meant that the vegetable seedlings that were languishing in the cold greenhouse could be planted out in the allotment.  Looking back at  photographs from a year ago, the plants are about three weeks behind last year's.

Comfrey

  Due to planting and keeping the allotment weed free, the comfrey has been allowed to get big and flower.  This is the wild comfrey and will set seeds and colonise the whole allotment.  They are not a pain to remove unless they are left long enough for them to develop their deep tap root.  Most of them were cut down today and put into the green bins to rot down into the rich black liquid manure but some were left because they were covered in bumble bees.  Most of them were Bombus lucorum  and Bombus terrestris.  The nettles were cut down as well but  small tortoise shell butterflies have been flying around them and possibly laying eggs so most of them were left to grow on.

I found an apple tree that was grafted onto M27 root stock and could not resist buying it.  It is a good apple tree and the fruit last for a long time.  And for the life of me, I cannot remember what it is called. I hope I left the label on it.

It has quite a lot of fruit on it which will be thinned out later in the year.

Vine up against the pallet

I am going to train the vine up and along the pallet.  It was cut back hard in the autumn and I am hoping it will give some good grapes this year. It is in a hole because I have raised the rest of the bed by adding compost, turf and manure.  I did not want to move the vine so I just put slab curbing around it and left it growing at the same level.  I have put some of the large stones from the bed around the stem.  This keeps the weeds down and reflects some light up onto the vine.

Rhubarb

I have cut the vine back very hard this year.  Only one of the stems will be allowed to grow on and be trained in.  The Victoria rhubarb has been producing some great petioles this year.  They have been a bit thinner than usual but this has to be down to the very cold April weather. I put a large amount of manure on the rhubarb as a mulch and they seem to like that.

All the potatoes are growing well.  If nothing else grows, it seems that I can grow potatoes.  I think that they might be affected later in the season by blight because it has been quite wet.  If this continues throughout the summer then we will definitely get blight.  I ridged them up quite high during the cold April weather to protect them from frosts.  I don't think we had any frosts but the wind was very cold and from the north east.  As you can see, it did not affect them except to slow their growth down.  All this growth has occurred in the past week or so.

Kestrel potatoes

The raspberries have produced a lot of flowers and they are attracting the bumble bees.  Should get a good crop of berries off them.  These are Glen Prosen which crop in July and August.  At the other end are the 'old' raspberries I was given when I first had the allotment.  I don't know their name but they produce sweet small raspberries during July and August.  The canes have grown over 6 feet tall and were whipping about in the wind so I cut them down to about the top of the supports.  I could have curved them over and attached them to the top of the supports but I will have enough raspberries in any case.  

Raspberries Glen Prosen

Raspberries

I planted the tomato Latah very early.  They are in ring culture pots on cow manure.  Latah is supposed to be a very early fruiting tomato and the flowers are on them already.  They have done well to get through the very cold April weather.  Latah are a very scraggy bush tomato so I am not expecting beautiful plants. I am hoping that the cow manure will give them a little heat as it decomposes.

Latah tomatoes

I planted out the left over tomatoes that I could not fit into the greenhouse.  They might produce some tomatoes later in the summer.  I am not really expecting them to do very much and the area they are covering will probably get covered by the pumpkins.  I have put the cucumbers in an old cold frame.  Some of the glazing is still there but I have covered the sides with an old fleece to protect them where the pains of glass are missing.  I have put some old wire frames into the cold frame for the cucumbers to climb up because they seem to produce much better cucumbers from climbing plants. The outdoor cucumbers, I usually let crawl over the ground without supports.

Left over tomatoes

I have finally got all the leeks in.  There are several varieties Oarsman, Mammoth Blanched' Musselburgh and Bleu de Solaise.  Some of them are under the enviromesh.

Leeks

All the other alliums are under the enviromesh to try to protect them from the onion miner fly (Phytomyza gymnostoma ).  I still think that  the fly has got to them but it should not be laying eggs now and I could remove the mesh.  The mesh does give them a little protection from the elements so I will leave the mesh on for a while.  I can water and feed through the mesh so I will only remove it to weed.  I looked closely at the onions today and there were a few that were looking a little worse for ware.  Also some of the leeks look decidedly off colour.

Enviromesh over the alliums

Garlic, shallots and Vision onion

I have planted the sweet corn, pumpkins, squash and marrow but they are still a little small.  They will grow very quickly now that the weather has warmed up. Five squashes and one marrow will be more than adequate for me. I am only growing the marrow for the competition because I don't really like eating them any more.  Marrow was the only one of the Cucurbita that I could successfully grow outside. As the climate has warmed, I can grow more of them outside without too much worry.  The only real problem they have is with slugs and snails.

Squash and marrow

I think that I have reduced the slug and snail population to a degree that the squash and pumpkins can survive without getting eaten.

Pumpkin

I have put in four pumpkins quite close together.  I might have to thin these out.  They will easily cover this area of the bed... and more.  Just as long as they don't shade out any of the other vegetables, I will not worry where they go.

Sweet Corn

The sweet corn is doing much better than last year.  It has doubled in size just in a few days.  It is on a north facing slope on the bed and I was wondering if this was going to affect it adversely.  I have planted squashes between the sweet corn plants and I might put some of the 'Trail of Tears' beans around them to see if I can get the three sisters to grow together.  Usually the beans grow a lot quicker than the sweet corn and it is not very successful, however I will pinch out the growing tips of the beans this year to make them bush and slow their growth down a little.  Some might say that the corn is too close together.  These plants are about nine inches apart.  I have planted sweet corn this close together for several years now.  They are planted with inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi and this seems to work well giving them a good boost.  Although I have considered thinning the sweet corn plants out, they will be left as they are just to show that you can get big cobs even when they are this close together.  I will emphasize this is the way that I do it although the  books say 30-45cm.appart.

Courgette and marrow

Four courgettes are more than enough the way they produce fruit.  They are growing remarkably quickly because they were sown at the same time as the squash and pumpkins.  The bits around the corgettes are not weeds but cuttings off the thyme.  I have just given it a short back and sides to keep its lovely bushy appearance.  This gave me far too much to take home and use so I left the sweepings under the courgettes.
The sweet peas have grown a lot in the last few weeks and now some of them are flowering. Honeymoon was the first to flower with White Supreme coming a close second.  They will all be flowering in the next week or so.  

Honeymoon and White Supreme

Gladiolus between the sweet peas

I am trying some gladioli this year.  I want to get some really good flowering spikes for cutting.  I am going to get some Alstroemeria pelegrina later in the year and put them out some where on the allotment.  I have to be careful though because they do tend to spread.  

Restormel

Eclipse

There are 11 varieties and they all look more or less like this at the moment.   I took the first bunch of sweet peas off them today June 5th.  There are buds on all the plants now so soon they will be giving a great display.  

Keeping the slugs and snails off the climbing french beans is a full time job.  They seem to be surviving and may be beginning to grow and climb the canes.  They are very slow at growing thought.  

Cobra Climbing French Beans.

The runner beans on the other hand have shot up and are climbing the canes.  I have given them quite a bit of protection though and this may be what the climbing french beans need.  

Runner beans

There are two varieties at least in here.  Scarlet Emperor, painted lady, Aintree and maybe another unnamed one.  They all seem healthy enough though.

The blackberry has certainly given a fantastic display of flowers this year.  I hope that the flowers are converted into fruit.  

Blackberry in full flower.

The sweet cicely has grown back after I had cropped it but I am going to leave it a while to get its strength back.  It looks even better from the south facing side.  Needless to say I forgot to take a photograph of the other side.

Some of the brassicas have been devastated with slugs and others by flea beetle.  The flea beetle has been particularly bad this year.  They are recovering now but it has put them back a few weeks.  

Broccoli and Kale slug eaten

I have covered the whole of the brassica bed with netting to keep the pigeons off. This has been quite successful, however the slugs and flea beetle do not seem to respect the netting and have devastated some of the plants.

Brussels flea beetle eaten

Also two of the calabrese have been killed by cabbage root fly. So not a very successful year for brassicas.

Winter cauliflowers flea beetle eaten.

I have put some enviromesh over the summer cabbages and cauliflowers to keep the slugs and cabbage white caterpillars off them.  I am hoping that it will keep cabbage root fly off them as well.  It seems to be working up to now.

Cabbage and cauliflower under the mesh.

The Hugelkultur trench under the
cauliflowers 

This is where I made one of my Hugelkultur beds. Under the cauliflowers is a lot of brushwood and logs.  However, it is producing some really good summer cauliflowers and cabbages.  I don't usually grow summer cauliflowers because they get full of green caterpillars, however I think that the enviromesh might keep the worst off.  It also keeps off some of the slugs and snails.

The swedes and the kohlrabi have suffered from slugs and snails during April but they have now recovered and are growing on well.  

Swede and kohlrabi.

I am going to sow some American land cress along the slabs where the turnips have been taken out.  One or two of the turnips were very good but the most of them were eaten by cabbage root fly.  I don't think that I will be planting any more this year.
I have weeded the brassica bed now and planted the American land cress. Hopefully there will be room for rocket as well.  While I was weeding I hoed up the plants and this seems to have given them a new boost of life.  

Strawberries are growing and flowering well.  I should get a fair crop of berries if the weather stays fairly mild now.  

Strawberries

Strawberries

Although the black currants are small because I cut them back very hard, they are still producing a good crop of berries.  I have put a net over them but I don't think that it is very effective because it has big holes in it.  

Peas are doing well but I am a little put out that I have to grow them in succession.  I would rather plant them all  at once.  I may not have to pod  so many at once but this will just drag it out over the whole summer.  These are second in the succession.  I am planting in succession for the allotment competition.  

Oskar peas

Onward peas under the cloche

The Early Onward are the third in the succession. They are growing so slowly because of the very cold weather in April so I have given them some protection to boost their growth. 

More Early Onward peas and fourth in succession.

They are being a little overshadowed by the winter cauliflowers that have not headed up yet.  Actually they are now forming quite big flowers but the cold weather in April really affected them and put them back  more than a month.  I am harvesting them now (4th June 2012) and they have produced some really good cauliflowers.  The should have cropped in April though.  

Winter cauliflowers should have been harvested in April!

Maybe the succession is a good idea because I have had to wait for the ground to be cleared of cauliflowers before I could plant the last line of peas.  These will be Hurst Green Shaft.   It used to grow really well on the allotment until a few years ago but now does not perform as well.  I will give it one more chance this year  but will be planting Onward as a main crop next year if the yield is poor.

Douce Provence peas

These are already forming pods so I will be cropping them in the next couple of weeks.  It is true what it says on the packets.  This is a very early producing pea.  I think that the Oskar will be early too by the looks of it.  

First succession of peas Douce Provence 

Trail of Tears Climbing French Bean

The heritage climbing french beans Trail of Tears is growing well now that the slugs are leaving them alone.  This is where the other Hugelkultur raised bed is.  Under the beans is a lot of brush wood. See the photographs below.

This is the Hugelkultur trench made during
the winter

Lots of brushwood put into the trench.  

I put weed turfs on top of the brushwood and these had some bindweed in them.  I had an inkling that they might and it has been confirmed because a little of it has started to poke through the soil.

Weed turfs

Now once you have bind weed it is a devil to get rid of but I am not too worried.  This bindweed has had to push its way through some lawn turfs and leaves so it will be quite weak.  I have just hoed it off at the moment because I don't want to disturb the Trail of Tears beans.  I will keep on pulling it out as I see it.  This worked when some found its way into the raspberries so it should work here.  It just shows you that couch grass will not reappear but mares tail and bindweed will.

I have had to resow both the carrots and the beetroot because they failed to germinate during the cold April weather.  They are coming now but are much later than last year.

Beetroot with protection

Carrots under the enviromesh.

Still battling with the carrot root fly Psila rosae but the carrots are growing on now.  They will need to be thinned and weeded in the next few weeks which can be done by taking the mesh off. However, you need to get it back on as soon as you can to avoid the fly.   It is amazing how much research there is into the antics of Psila rosae.  I just leave the mesh on and tuck it into the soil all the way round until the autumn so that whatever the fly is doing I will avoid it.  

Spinach, dill and more lettuce

I am growing quite a lot of herbs this year because I like them in salads.  I have a whole section of this top bed devoted to the "leaves"

Parsnips and lettuce

The parsnips are thinned out already and growing on well.  I sieved this soil during the winter so I am expecting some good long parsnips and carrots.  The tarragon and chamomile I am going to use in teas.  I do like chamomile tea.

Tarragon, lettuce and chamomile

This has been the first time in many years that I have tried to grow celery.  It is growing well as you can see but now it is going to seed.  It is a very contrary vegetable and I would rather have celeriac.

Chard, Celery and celeriac 

A  succession of lettuce

There have not been many slugs and snails on the lettuce and this may be due to the Nemaslug nematodes I put on earlier in the year.  I also used beer traps between the lettuce when they were under the cloches.  The cloches kept the rain out of the beer cups.
Where the large lettuce have been taken out I have planted a row of bulb fennel.

That is how the allotment looks at the end of May.