More seed planted.

I put in the rest of the Lycopersicum esculentum seed.  They are tucked away in an airing cupboard to give them a little more warmth.  They should be through in about a week or so.  I planted some more celery Apium graveolens var. dulce; lettuce Lactuca sativa; Cabbage Brassica oleracea capitata "Golden Acre".  The Celeriac Apium graveolens rapaceum were sown in a small pot and put in the airing cupboard with the tomatoes.

I have pricked out onions, celery, cauliflower and cabbage into trays or pots using the New Horizon's general purpose compost.  I have put all of these onto the shelves inside the polythene "greenhouse" I have put into the big greenhouse.  Not only will this keep them a little more protected from frost but will bring them on a little.

I went down the allotment yesterday and continued to tidy the comfrey bed.  I don't know if I have straightened all the lines of comfrey because they have died back and I could not find all of the plants.  They are more or less straight now though.  I have constructed the sundial here as well.

I put some black dustbins over the rhubarb, Rheum rhaponticum,  to force it a little.  This will mean that we can get some good petioles at the end of March and the beginning of April.  The skill is to remove the bins before the rhubarb becomes too weakened.  I heaped some of the horse muck around the bottom of the bins to heat them up and bring the rhubarb on a little quicker.


I have taken out the black currant cuttings because they have some big bud on them.  I think that the severe pruning I did on the main bushes has cleared off the big bud,  Cecidophyopsis ribis, from them. They look quite healthy.  I replaced two that died over the winter with cuttings that I had potted up.  I think that I am going to bury the plants that I took out.

I wasn't going to dig this area over; just hoe and use the three pronged cultivator to rake it over.  However if I am going to bury these blackcurrant bushes, I might as well dig the rest over as well.  I will have to bury the blackcurrants quite deep to avoid them depleting the soil of nitrogen and to prevent the big bud mite from escaping into the top soil.

I have started in earnest on the celery bed.  I dug out a trench and then sieved horse manure and pigeon muck into the next spit down.  I dug up the remains of the beans and peas that I had dug into this bed but they broke down and sieved into the soil just as the manure did.  There are some plane tree leaves Platanus x hispanica which are a little thick and rubbery in the horse muck.  I didn't think that they would go through the sieve but they did and you cannot make them out now because they are mixed in so well with the soil.  I am trying to keep this trench lower than the surrounding soil so that I can keep the celery damp throughout the year.  

We may have major problems with drought this summer because they are saying that the water table is very low now.  I hope that I have added enough organic matter to take up any rain water that we get and provide a reservoir which the plants can tap into.  I am going to try to use mychorrhizal fungi on all the plants that form associations with it because this may help in lessening the effect of drought.   

Planting out brassicae seedlings

Cabbages like good firm soil. If you dig in some horse manure they will like this too. They are a leafy veg so like nitrogen. I don't use any fertilisers for Brussel sprouts though because that makes the buds 'blow' or open out.

When I plant, I like to dig a trowel hole just big enough for the root ball. I put the seedlings into the hole and then go along the row 'puddling' in the plants. This means that I fill the hole with water - well I use dilute comfrey liquid. This washes soil into the hole and begins to cover the roots. You have to be careful not to wash the plants out of the hole. I hate to see my brassicas keeling over after I have planted them and doing it this way means that they stay upright and healthy.

Finally, I will go along the row scraping the soil back into the hole with the trowel.

After planting I cover the seedlings with plastic netting to keep the pigeons off the plants. 

Planting the brassicas

Two rows of winter cauliflowers were put next to the Trafalgar Brussel sprouts.  They were spaced about 2 feet from each other and the rows were two feet apart.   They were watered in with dilute, comfrey liquid.  The ground was very firm because I had been walking on it to gain access to the sweet peas and to hoe the brassicae bed.

There are several reasons why the brassicas should have firm ground.

• They are less likely to get cabbage root fly.
• They are more likely to stand upright and not lean over.
• They are less likely to keel over if they get club root. 

I also like to hoe them up during the summer after giving them a good feed.  I hoe them up for similar reasons.  I have enough room to squeeze in a line of Jan-April flowering brocolli and a line of April-May flowering brocolli.

In order to keep the pigeons off the seedlings I covered the whole area in plastic 1 inch mesh netting.  If the pigeons are determined enough they will be able to get to the plants and eat them but it is all in the perception.  If they consider the netting prevents them from getting to the seedlings easily, they will look for some where they are can get a free meal with less effort.

I planted the lettuce in the onion bed where I had watered on the anti slug nematode worms.  They will be past their best in a couple of weeks and I will have to decide whether to get some more.   I would be happier  using  nematodes rather than slug pellets organic or not.  I still have the option of using beer traps though and this might be the most economic of solutions.

I put some Florence fennel seed into the ground next to the lettuce.  It did not germinate in the greenhouse so I am going to give it a go sown straight into the soil.  The Florence fennel seed did not stretch right across the bed so I planted some celeriac seedlings to make up the row.  I will need to prick the rest of these out into 3 inch pots and grow them on   because they are a little small.

I removed the side shoots and the tendrils of the sweet peas and then tied them up.  This is going to be a regular job for the rest of the season now.  I am hoping to get some really  big blooms this year.

The Woden beetroot and some more spinach were sown on the roots bed.  They were watered in with comfrey to give them a good start.

The allotment too far is being ignored at the moment because I have so much to do on my main allotment.  However, today I went down and did some more digging.  I have cleared right back to the black bins.  There is a damson tree in the middle of this area and I don't know what to do with it.  I will probably cut it off at the roots.

Now I only have the latest sowing of leeks, a few more brocolli and the curbits to plant out in the allotment..