Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments: April 2019

Monday, April 29

Cauliflowers coming out of our ears

The week before last we planted our first lot of broad (fava) beans and sowed our first lot of peas and I wrote that I would post about this later.

If you pop over to our vlog, I have posted videos of planting the broad beans and sowing our peas. If you watch the videos you will notice that we are rather cavalier in our approach to planting and sowing.

As is usually recommended we sow two bean seeds to a cell, but then we part company with the recommended technique. If, as is usually the case, both seeds germinate we don't discard one of the seedlings but plant both as if it was just one plant.

It seems a sin to reject one of the seedlings when it has done its best to germinate, and we haven't found that planting the two seedling together affects their growth. Of course those leaves don't remain perfect for long as the weevils move in almost immediately as the telltale notches indicate.

Fortunately, as long as the beans grow away at a reasonable rate the weevils only spoil things aesthetically and don't affect the harvest.

As for peas we buy a large bag of peas and scatter the seeds liberally in a shallow trench. Some would say this is overkill but it works for us. There are plenty of seeds to share with any hungry wildlife and we usually have a good harvest - oh why did I tempt fate by saying that?

Only last year a fellow plot holder asked how it was that we had such a lush row of peas. Our attitude is that the only right way to garden, is the way that works for you and these methods have served us well over the years.

Last week we planted the last of our seed potatoes. These were left overs from earlier planting, and the intention was to use them up. We had some Nadine, one or two Winston and, as the tubers were small, quite a few Osprey.

It's a good feeling to complete potato planting. The first lot of Rocket and Casablanca planted in open ground are just starting to push through and the container planted potatoes in the greenhouse are growing quickly.

I also planted some All Year Round cauliflowers to fill up the brassica bed started earlier.

Sowing is now well underway and our sowing and planting list is growing far too quickly to list everything here.

On the allotment more beds have been prepared and the grass paths cut.

This was managed before the weather turned unfriendly at the weekend. The winds will no doubt have shaken the apple and quince blossom to the ground but hopefully some fruit will have set.

I've mentioned previously that we are rejuvenating an area of our garden and so we have bought a small clematis and a couple of cornus to add to the bed.

I'm hoping that one cornus will develop red stems and the other yellow but one thing that I am unsure of is, should I cut them back or has this already been done?

If you're interested in taking a walk around our garden, I've posted a video here

We have managed some harvesting. The overwintered cauliflowers are producing heads and although some were fairly small they were starting to blow and needed cutting.

23 April

Some of the cauliflower went into a turkey and cauliflower bake.

26 April

Although the PSB is starting to flower, I managed to pick enough for a helping.

The overwintered cabbages are also starting to look rather shabby, but I managed to get enough from the specimen above to make a batch of coleslaw.

When I was sorting out the cabbage patch, I came across these twins but they lived for another day.

At the moment a weekly harvest isn't complete without featuring rhubarb.

28 April

Some of our clumps of rhubarb are becoming crowded so, Martyn split some and planted up a new bed.

Our complete monthly harvests are listed here.

This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

By the way, thanks to those who responded to my invitation to make a comment. I appreciate you taking the trouble to say hello. I know I get lots of visitors who never comment and I'd love to know who you are - unlike the annoying spammers who can't seem to grasp that their comments go straight into my spam folder and never see the light of day.

You don't have to have your own blog in order to join in conversations. It may seem that everyone who comments knows one another but bloggers always welcome new commenters, after all that is how we all started.

Wednesday, April 24

Spider Alert

Monday, April 22

Making the most of a late Easter

One advantage of a late Easter is that the weather has been unusually warm for a bank holiday. Usually bank holidays in the UK signal to the weather gods that it is time to throw a spanner in the works. In the media there has been much excitement and reports of it being the hottest Easter 'ever', however I remember one Easter when we were first married when we had such lovely weather that we went out and bought a couple of sun loungers. The story would have been completely different had Easter fallen in March or earlier in April this year when the media would have been all doom and gloom. Such is, and always has been the obsession with the weather.

The cardoons have appreciated the lull in the battering that they were being subjected to and so far are still reasonably unscathed.

Instead of daffodils being the symbol of Easter, this year it is the tulip that is the star of the show. I wonder whether the Easter cards have reflected this or, for them, does the daffodil still reign?

Fruit blossom has moved into the next phase with the apple blossom now putting on a good show. The flowers, on the right below, belong to the Tickled Pink apple that, as well as having dark pink blossom, has red flesh right through to the core of the fruit.

Hopefully, the current warm spell will be enjoyed by the plants on the allotment and in the garden.

The onions and shallots are shooting really well now.

The tops of the potatoes that were planted in crates and have been living in our plot greenhouse are also looking really healthy. Finger crossed that the roots are doing as well as the parts of the plants above the surface.

Last week we planted more potatoes. This time we planted Sarpo Mira, Cara, Vivaldi and the remaining Casablanca and Kestrel.

The improvement in the weather gave us the opportunity to plant out our new raspberry plants - I've posted a video about creating our new raspberry bed here.

We prepared and starting to plant up our new strawberry bed and planted out our first lot of broad (fava) beans which I will post about later.

The first lot of peas were sown too.

Last week our harvest was very modest. The rhubarb is still providing rich pick pickings. Or should I say pulling as rhubarb stems are pulled from the plant rather that picked or cut.

We still have some rather tatty looking cabbages but hopefully once a few leaves are removed there will be some good stuff inside.

I picked a couple of meals worth of PSB. One lot went into a pasta bake. The plants will soon be spent but as I keep stating they have done really well this year. I'm just hoping that this year wasn't just a fluke!

As well as working on the allotment we have also spent some time in the garden but this post is in danger of overstaying its welcome so I'll keep that for another day and another post.

Our complete monthly harvests are listed here.

This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

By the way, thanks to those who responded to my invitation to make a comment. I appreciate you taking the trouble to say hello. I know I get lots of visitors who never comment and I'd love to know who you are - unlike the annoying spammers who can't seem to grasp that their comments go straight into my spam folder and never see the light of day.

You don't have to have your own blog in order to join in conversations. It may seem that everyone who comments knows one another but bloggers always welcome new commenters, after all that is how we all started.

Wednesday, April 17

Welcome visitor

Monday, April 15

An unwelcome visitor

It continued to be cold last week requiring us to don several layers of clothing before setting off to the allotment. It was the type of cold that is deceptive, the sun often shone but the biting wind kept the temperatures low. (Unfortunately it wasn't only the wind that was biting, as I ended the week with two itchy bites courtesy of some creature that had no business being out in such conditions).

Clear skies on a night meant that Jack Frost made us glad that we had not succumbed to a frenzy of seed sowing earlier when the conditions were very different.

Martyn posted more details of the weather that we have suffered on his blog

One plant that fell victim to Jack's icy fingers was a kiwi berry - Issai - that we planted the previous week. All the leaves have been crisped and the plant looks very sorry for itself. As it was previously living in a pot in the garden chances are that it would have suffered even had we not relocated it and we are hoping it will recover when the weather improves - I keep telling myself it will improve.

The effect that the frost has had on our fruit trees and bushes will only become evident when the flowers drop and immature fruits have formed or not! The pear trees are in full blossom as is the earliest of our blueberry bushes. I was happy to see and hear that the cold weather hadn't deterred the bees from visiting which seems to imply that all is not lost. Surely the bees would sense that pollen had been killed.

We have continued preparing beds for planting. Martyn has tilled the already hand dug soil as a slight crust was forming due to a lack of rain and the drying winds. Once tilled, the beds were covered with weed control fabric in readiness for planting.

Surprisingly the wind hasn't yet flattened the cardoons. Martyn strimmed all the grass paths, taking care not to strim flowers that had decided to escape the borders and naturalise in the grass.

One bed was prepared for our new strawberry plants, but we decided not to plant them out this week and hope that the weather improves. We had also intended planting out the new raspberry canes but this too has been put on hold.

The last of the red cabbages have now been dug up, as have the Brussels sprouts plants which were amongst last years failures. We left them in the vain hope that the sprouts would swell but this was not to be. There are still some cabbages and Purple Sprouting Broccoli living in the bed shown below and so this couldn't be cleared completely.

Buds were starting to develop on the grapevine growing against the shed and so I pruned it back a little harder to keep it in check.

We did do some planting. We planted more of our potatoes as they won't pop their noses up to be greeted by a kiss from Mr Frost just yet. They are safely tucked up underground. We had planned on finishing all the potato planting at the weekend but in the end we wimped out. (There are limits Margaret).

So far we have planted some of the Casablanca and Athlete tubers. We have planted just four tubers each of our six trial varieties, Jazzy, Elfe, British Queen, Premiere, Apache and Rudolf. We have also planted rows of Vivaldi, Nadine, Osprey and Winston. We still have Sarpo Mira, Cara, Kestrel and the leftovers from the varieties already planted to complete planting.

We had been concerned that the tops of the potatoes planted in the greenhouse would have been knocked back but, at least on Friday when we last visited the plot they were still going strong. They have been covered with enviromesh as some added protection.

As they are hardy, we planted up our shallot sets, Longor, Golden Goumet, Red Sun and Meloine along with more onions sets - Rumba, Red Karmen, Sturon, Centurion and Hercules.

The onion sets planted on 24 March are starting to shoot and will soon take off if the weather bucks up. The autumn planted onions, in the photo top left, are now kicking off their winter lethargy and growing well as is the garlic in the same bed which will be happy to experience a cold spell in order to help with clove formation.

I thought when I planted the garlic in a tub in the garden in February, that I may have been too late to catch a keen frost as it turned unseasonably mild. I needn't have worried.

Again we have managed a modest harvest.

The Aalsmeer cauliflowers that have been overwintering are now producing curds. After quite a few unsuccessful seasons as far as PSB is concerned, this year we have been quite pleased with our harvest.

8 April

As I mentioned previously we dug up the remaining red cabbages and prepared the bed for its next occupants. These cabbages are only small but the leaves are so densely packed that they actually produce far more than you would expect.