let the chitting Commence…..

Well were off, yesterday saw the first action for the new growing season, I went to my local garden centre and selected my seed potatoes for the coming season, I am being a bit more conservative this year as last year I conducted a trial into old heritage variety’s selecting 10 different potatoes but the weather was not the best for it really but still ended up with a decent crop.

I am not bothering with First earlies this year, the last few years I have been disappointed with the yield from them so I am opting for just a single Second early and 3 main crop varieties. I am going with what has produced well for me over the years this year to try and guarantee a good crop (if there is such a thing as a guaranteed crop)

The variety’s selected this year are:

British Queen, second Early this produced a great crop last year and tasted wonderful

Santé, main crop grow this every year really reliable and good cropping

Cara, main crop great for the allotment blight resistant and can cope with lack of watering

King Edwards, main crop this has been a reliable crop for me in the past.

I Really wanted to grow Dr Macintosh again this year but cant find anywhere that stock it so may have to keep a look out because if i find it i will grow some because they were the best crop by far last year for taste and yield.

That’s it for this year just the 4 types hopefully I will get a good yield and should see us through the year for potatoes and that’s a goal of mine to not by potatoes for a whole season and just use what’s produced at the plot.

Let’s hope the weather is better this year for the allotment.

Thanks for reading…

My first Purple Sprouting Broccoli

It was a big day this week down the plot, as I knew my purple sprouting Broccoli would be ready to pick; I got a bit excited on the drive to the plot! Last year my PSB was a disaster firstly I planted them far too close to each other, then they were struck down by white fly LOTS of white fly and to crown it off the didn’t produce any broccoli heads.

So I did a lot of reading on the best ways to grow them and I had some great advice from my friends on twitter and other bloggers, so armed with the knowledge I really went for it last year.

I started with 7 plants but 2 were killed off with the wet weather (rotted) then the birds got to 2 of them so I ended up with 3 which I nearly lost at the turn of the year because I forgot to cover them and the pigeon’s stripped all the large leaves but thankfully they didn’t get to the heads before I covered it over.

PSB I feel is a special vegetable as it’s only available in a short window of 4-8 weeks. I know you can get it all year round but to be “in season” in this country it’s a short window.

To me PSB is a real treat to have and when I have it I like to do something special with it. Be it a flavoured butter or topped with Bacon lardons, but my favourite thing to do with PSB is to make a cheese sauce with Gorgonzola and drizzle it over the broccoli it’s a match made in heaven! And it’s a classic you can’t beat broccoli with blue cheese.

To make it you need:

25g salted butter

25g plain flour

250ml milk

Salt & pepper

Nutmeg

English mustard

100g Gorgonzola

50g Bacon lardons (optional)

Warm the milk in a pan but don’t boil. Melt the butter but don’t colour it then add the add the flour cook for 1 min then add the milk a little at a time use a whisk to stop it going lumpy then season with Salt & pepper and add a small pinch of nutmeg and ½ teaspoon of English mustard cook for 5 mins to cook out the flour then add the Gorgonzola save a little back to sprinkle over the top at the end.

Then just cook your broccoli brain off all the water and pour over the cheese sauce.If you want to you could add some crispy bacon lardons to really make it.

Thanks for reading…

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.