It’s time for a July 2024 allotment update. Things seem to be growing ok; some plants are loving this weird weather while others are taking their time to get going.
Here’s the latest video:
It’s nearly the end of February and I’ve got an itch that I simply need to scratch. Seed sowing.
I see a lot of people sowing their seeds as early as January. While some plants take a long time to grow, such as chillies and peppers and need to be sown early, I personally think January is too early for most veg plants.
Sowing seeds early can lead to spindly or leggy growth, poor germination rates and generally, in my opinion, a weaker plant. That said, you can use growing lights and heat mats to combat this. But once the plants get to a certain size, you need to move them on and if you haven’t got the space indoors, means moving them into the garden or greenhouse. The weather might be a little too cold for them and shock the plants.
I prefer to start sowing my seeds from mid-February.
I started some broad beans in little pots a couple of weeks ago and these have just started poking through the soil. I’m growing my broad beans in two beds and will get around 8 plants per bed. So far, I’ve sown 12 plants in total and will sow another 12 in a couple of week’s time. This will give me some extra plants in case some fail to germinate, or they don’t survive.
I’ve also sown some spring onions into seed trays. These will go out into the salad bed when they are large enough and I’ll harvest these in clumps.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll start sowing most of my seeds in the greenhouse. The less hardy plants such as sweetcorn and runner beans will be sown Mid-April. My tomatoes will be started indoors around Mid-March and once big enough, will be moved into the greenhouse.
I realise we’re at the end of January, but I thought I would take the time and reflect back at 2022, and look at our successes and failures.
After moving plots in autumn 2021, 2022 was the first year growing on the new plot. We managed to clear a large bed in time for spring (in fact it covered almost half the plot) and gave enough growing space for what we needed. We kept to our core veg; potatoes, beans, onions, sweetcorn, pumpkins and courgettes.
The potatoes started off well and we managed to harvest all our first and most of our second early potatoes. However, we left the main crop in the ground for too long, and when it come to digging them up in the middle of winter, they had rotted away.
The beans done extremely well, but started to suffer a little during the heatwave. They soon bounced back in late summer.
Our onions were fantastic, in fact probably the best crop we’ve ever had and we’ve still got some left in the cupboard.
Sweetcorn started really well, but we had a few succumb to smut, a fungal disease which affects sweetcorn. Smut thrives on hot dry summers, so it’s no surprise we had it considering the temperatures we had.
There’s one major issue that cropped up in late autumn and that’s rats. Rats have moved in underneath the chicken coop and while we are keeping them at bay with traps, they are still a problem. Fortunately, they seem to be leaving the chickens alone and more interested in digging holes everywhere.
Here’s some pictures from last year.
