planting plan 2013

Today I have added the planting plan for 2013 I have tried to keep it simple this year and grow less varieties and this year I will only grow what I know will do well.

I am going to do a trail with a giant pumpkin for my children because they want to grow a “massive” pumpkin so they can use it at Halloween as a coach to take them trick or treating (oh to be 5 again!). Plus daddy wants to enter the pumpkin contest at the allotment and try to grow the largest, just for a bit of fun really.

the plan is on the tab at the top of the page

Any way let me know what you think of the plan and what are you growing this year???

Compost Plot 58 Style…..

I want to talk compost in this post, like most plot holders, I make my own compost recycling all my waste materials from the plot, but I also compost at home, and have dome for a number of years now, but there is one big difference with what I do with my home compost.

When I clean out my chickens I add there waste. Chicken poop and straw mixed together. I also add Percy’s (my children’s Rabbit) hutch waste the sawdust and rabbit poop.

It makes fantastic compost and my allotment crops love it because I mix it in with the compost from the plot to make a mix that’s rich and full of great things for the vegetables. I also mix in lots of crushed down egg shells to some of it this adds a calcium boost to all my brassicas to get off to a good start. I collect the egg shells from work and dry them out and crush them down to almost like a powder, admittedly you need a lot so working in a hotel that does hundreds of breakfast helps this cause!

I add it to all my plants that I grow in pots and when planting out I put a little in each hole.

I leave my mix a full year to do its thing but it’s normally ready in 3 months but I like to leave it to really turn black and crumbly. I take the top layer off, that has not composed down yet then you reach the good stuff.

If you use chicken poop you must not use it fresh as it is too rich and will kill off your plants you have to leave it to compose for a while normally about 3 months. I don’t have enough chickens to make a pile of just poop and straw so that’s why I add it to my compost it turns my good compost into Super compost.

This year is going to be a bumper crop of compost I would say when it’s all mixed up together and ready to spread on the plot I would have about 40 wheelbarrows full!

Thanks for reading……

what's your new Season Resolution?

This time last year I had begun in earnest with sowing and getting things ready for the coming season on the plot. Potatoes were chitting, broad beans sown, onion seeds had shown their heads and I had planned what I was going to grow for the year… this year I haven’t done anything yet apart from flick through a few magazines to find what I want to grow. This had lead me to ask myself what is my new season resolution?? Last year I had some big plans for the plot but my change of job and the weather put pay to some, so this year I want to keep it simple because as a chef we don’t lead a “normal” working life. The stereo typical Monday to Friday 9 to 5 job is a myth in the catering industry, and some weeks, it’s just imposable for me to get to the plot. So I am just going to grow what fits round my life style, vegetables that need water every day will be off the list and things like baby corn will not be grown, as I typed that it saddened me because that was one of the reasons I took the plot on to grow the things I love, but the truth is baby corn needs to be picked quickly and if left even for a few days they become too big and turn woody, as I found out last year.

So back to my question what would my new year’s resolution be?? Well the answer is keeping it simple. Grow less but give the less more attention don’t get me wrong I am still going to have a full plot but a full plot of what I love that fits in with me.

I read a lot of blogs from people that have taken on their first allotment plot and I know the tendency is to grow it all but what I have learnt is unless you can be at your plot 3 or 4 days a week it simply is not achievable. So my advice is, grow what fits with you.

I also what to keep my promise when I started my blog and that was to share some recipes from time to time with the things I grow on the plot so this year I will do more to share this.

So my question to you dear reader is what is your New Season Resolution?.................

Don’t forget you can follow me on twitter @plot58 or on Facebook.

Raspberry Care

I just been looking back at my blog post “Fruitilicious” last year, it’s about how I don’t really have any success with soft fruit or any fruit for that matter!

I was looking back because over the last week I have tied up the raspberries & Tayberry bushes. I have summer and autumn fruiting raspberries and they have to be treated different, as summer fruiting varieties produce there fruit on last year’s new growth and autumn fruiting varieties produce there’s on this year’s growth,

So summer varieties have to have the fruiting stems removed from last year and the new shoots from last year left. How can you tell the difference this time of year?? I hear you all shout… Well I have a simple system really, I tie a peace of garden twine loosely round the stem of the new growth that appears throughout the fruiting season and these don’t get the chop whereas all the others do, you can also tell the difference as the stems that are older don’t look as green but instead look much more woody.And my Tayberries are also treated like summer fruiting raspberries and the old growth chopped back.

    

        Before                                                             After

The autumn fruiting varieties are a lot simpler to sort them all just get chopped back every year.

2012 was a funny year for my raspberries as they were not producing fruit when they should be; I have 6 varieties of raspberry’s ranging from Very early to very late giving me a long season. Indeed I was picking raspberries in mid-November last year! But the season didn’t start when it should in fact all the raspberries were a good 5-6 weeks later than they should have been my first raspberries were not ready until mid-July I had quite a good crop though except from the very early variety’s as I think it was just too cold for them to do anything.

My Tayberry was a big flop though I just had 1 berry but my, it was a big juicy one. I am hoping this year will be better.

My strawberries were absolutely brilliant last year the best I have ever had I would say I had 5-6KG in total and that’s being conservative! I put it down to the preparation I put in the year before I dug them all out and dug in a load of my homemade compost (with my chicken’s poo in it)then put them back only selecting the healthy plants and the young plants also. And I netted them from the start to stop the birds.

I had no joy also with my new pear tree I planted it was looking magnificent in early April but we had a cold snap and all the blossom fell and thus no fruit! Hopefully this year will be kinder to us allotment growers.

Plot 58 seed Give-a-way 2013

The last 2 weeks have been very frustrating for me this cold weather has scuppered my plans on a number of occasions to get to the plot so I have had to find other ways to get a few jobs done for the plot without actually going! I decided to have a clear out in my shed at home this is also where I keep all my seeds for the plot, I discovered I have a lot of seeds, no scrap that, I have tonnes of seeds! So many so, that I have decided to give some away here on my blog.
Pretty good idea I thought, so if you fancy any of the seeds listed below then all you need to do is follow these simple steps:
First you have to be a follower of my blog that's the simple bit then comment below with which seeds you would like.

1. Email me your request using the link on my blog page (top right) with the seeds you would like and your user name you follow me with ( only 2 packs per person) it’s on a first come first serve basis once there gone there gone.
2. I will email you back with my postal address
3. Send a Stamped addressed envelope along with your name and seeds selected to my postal address
4. I will return your seeds in your self-addressed envelope
5. Happy sowing!
The following seeds are available:                                    
Courgette Black Beauty 4 packs
Runner bean Goliath 25 packs
Dwarf Borlloti beans 13 packs
Crown prince squash 5 packs
Parsnip white Gem 3 packs
Chilli pepper Hungarian Hot Wax 2 packs
Aubergine Black Beauty x 1 pack
Sweet pepper California Wonder 2 packs
Basil Sweet x ALL GONE
The seeds are made up of what I have gathered over the last year and what I have collected from my allotment plot
These all being given away on a first come first serve basis and I will update the blog with the availability only 2 packs per person
you can also follow me on twitter @plot58
thanks for reading…..

The first visit of the new year……

It’s been a while since my last visit to the allotment, about 4 weeks to be exact, I went on a scouting mission today to see how bad the soil is and boy its bad, my allotment site is on a slight hill and I am at the bottom of it so all the water runs right down to my plot, good if we are in a bit of a dry spell I don’t need to water as much, bad if it’s done nothing but rain for 4 weeks. Working on the soil was a non-starter so I did a few other jobs that needed doing around the plot.

Firstly I covered over the Purple sprouting broccoli (PSB) as it had been attacked by the pigeons, most of the leaves had been stripped but the precious heads of broccoli are still intact so I swiftly covered them with netting, last year my PSB was a complete disaster completely covered in white fly and I planted them far too close together. This year I have given them plenty of room and picked out the bottom large leaves to allow air to circulate and I think (fingers crossed) I am going to get a good crop.

I also dug up one of the best crops I have grown to date on the plot…. my parsnips, I used some great advice from sue over at our plot at Green lane allotments. She told me to dig the soil over and rake it as fine as I can get it then add a layer of multi-purpose compost as I could not get the soil fine enough to sow direct on my clay soil. I did this and they have been amazing I had nearly 90% plus germination from my parsnips and they tasted so sweet and they were the talk of the table on Christmas day so thanks for the advice sue. I also put down more bark on the paths on the plot as it was starting to get a bit thin in places and    weeds were starting to poke through, it made such a difference to the place made it look a lot tidier! I didn’t do anything to my January kings(cabbages) today they look a little messy but the cabbages themselves are in good shape, just can’t get on the soil to tidy up cause if I step foot in the beds I am liable to lose my welly! I am planning on another visit this week as I need to prune my raspberry bushes ready for the new season but that will have to wait now…..

Swede Sucsess......

I know most people all year have been banging on about how bad this year has been for growing veg and how they can’t wait for next year to come, but I just want to tell you about my poor showing this year of my celeriac & swedes.

Last year was a great year for my celeriac all 12 of them produced a good root  but this year it was all foliage and when I dug up the root it was a tangled mess of small twisted roots .

My swedes had got off to a good start and started to produce a nice swollen root but the wet weather all summer just made most of the rot off, but one just one little swede managed to combat the awful summer. I didn’t even notice it at first as I was clearing out the bed pulling up all the celeriac and the fennel that had bolted and gone to seed but to my surprise I saw it sitting there looking ready to be dug up.

It’s my first ever swede grown, I am very proud of it, I did the honourable thing and gave it to my mother she simply adores swede and thought she was the best judge on the eating of it and she told me it’s the best she has had, so hopefully next year I can grow them again and this time like my onions this year will protect them from too much rain if we get it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Tomatoes anyone?.........

 This year’s challenging weather has thrown another of my normally reliable crops into chaos, my tomatoes, normally one of my best crops which start from mid-July and runs (weather permitting) into October. I even in an attempt to get a really early crop sowed some tomatoes in January and they were at the fruit bearing stage by May but still didn’t ripen until end of July.

My tomatoes have been that bad this year that I have only had 20ish tomatoes so far I had 4 varieties growing, (check my Feburay posts for the full list or my plan for the allotment)all with the promise of a wonderful bounty but this weather has been rubbish not enough sun to ripen and not consistently warm enough throughout the summer.

I had a bit of success with the Yellow pear shaped cherry tomato it cropped ok-ish but I found them to be “fluffy” in texture rather than crisp like you would expect a tomato so although they had great reviews I didn’t really think much of them and will stick to the good old Gardeners Delight for my cherry toms next year

Tomatoes are the only crop now I don’t grow on my allotment, purely because I don’t have a green house on the plot but next year I am thinking of moving my greenhouse up to the plot giving me more room in the garden and the green house will get better sunlight on the plot as it won’t have a fence blocking out the light.

So what to do with my Green tomatoes?, I will try to ripen off some but I find they are not as sweet hanging them upside down, I am not really a fan of Green tomato chutney, but I did see a great recipe for Green tomato soup, I may give that a bash.

I also know a wonderful recipe for pork cider celery & green tomato hotpot which would be great for the family gathering on bon-fire night.

 

Are Carrots worth the Hassle??

Although I have only had the allotment for 2 seasons now, I have always grown carrots at home in tubs or in my old veg bed.

Each year the same results carrot fly get to them in some way shape of from. Last year the crop was ok I would say 60% of my crop had carrot fly larvae damage the rest were ok, this year however nearly the whole crop has been affected. It’s really frustrating because you can’t get that home-grown carrot taste anywhere and to me that’s the main reason why I grow them. My plan this year was to protect them from the off, I had fleece to help stop the carrot fly I companion planted with parsley and marigolds, I even tried to sow some really early before the carrot fly shows up but all to no avail. Even when I grow them in tubs that are 2ft above the ground I still get carrot fly.

It would be interesting to find out what everyone out there thinks what lengths do you go to, to get that perfect carrot? Or are you like me and think are they really worth it?

Next year I am going to try them in some really large pots that are 4ft off the floor and if that don’t work then I may give up on them for a few years…  

 

Strawberries, squashes and a good old cup of Rosy Lee

For the first time in ages today I spent a whole day down the plot, but boy will I be paying for that tomorrow!, as I strike the keyboard, I can already feel my arms and legs stiffening up with the anticipation of tomorrow morning drawing closer, when you get out of bed and think toyourself, “actually I don’t feel too bad” then SMACK it hits you like a hot chilli as you try to stand up to walk to the bathroom!.

Anyway back to the action down the plot, I had help today in the form of my farther, he no longer works due to bad arthritis in his hands he can’t do much heavy work because of them but he can help with all the other jobs plus it’s nice to have someone to talk too whilst working.

Today was clear up day; lots of beads had to have thelast of the crops harvesting and removing and some like the squashes need moving to a dry place to harden up and be cleaned ready to be stored overwinter.
I do love a squash, in particular crown prince, I use tocook with it a lot in many restaurant’s I have worked in it great for stuffing ravioli with or roasting and makes a magnificent soup.
We also worked on the strawberries because they had basically taken over the plot with runners going everywhere I could have made 300 plants today with the amount of runners that had set roots in the freshly laid bark onthe paths this year. I did keep some ready to replace old ones for next year,after a good cull they looked a little “shaken up” but will settle back down in a week or two.

The main topic of conversation today was about Tea, and where the best place to have a cuppa is. I think that having a brew on your allotment is hard to beat, particularly if it starts torain and you take 5 in your shed and stick the kettle on. Sitting in the shed with the rain lashing down, with an old cup that the wife doesn’t like you drinking from at home, so it makes its way to the allotment. There is something quite “British” about it but I love it.  
I also chopped down all the sweetcorn today, this year I grew mini corn and normal sweetcorn, last year I had great success with them both but this year due to the fact I could get to the allotment more than once a week the baby corn all got to big before we couldget to it thus rendering it no good because it becomes very bitter and the core becomes inedible.
We did have some very tasty sweetcorn but we planted more baby corn than normal corn so next year it will just be normal sweetcorn all the way.

 

Enjoy your week folks andthanks for reading.
Don’t forget to check out my Facebook page for more picturesand you can also follow me on twitter@plot58