The green light on planting

The weather is continuing to be kind enough to allow us to spend a few afternoons on the allotment.

We are delighted to have completed one long overdue task which was to bring a very neglected part of the plot back into production. We've started on this a few times, spread over a few years, and never really got anywhere. Any starts made at clearance, were soon swallowed up by the army of weeds that moved in when more pressing tasks necessitated taking our eyes off the ball, or should that be hands off the spade.

The two photos at the top of the collage below show just what we had to deal with. A daunting prospect, but this year we have knocked the weeds into submission, although doubtless many will regroup and try to fight back.

The area has been divided into two beds, covered with weed control fabric and planted with Rocket potatoes. Martyn picked up the seed potatoes last week, from a local garden centre that had a few left. We are treating these as a sacrificial crop and so didn't want to use any of the seed potatoes that we had already bought. The aim is more to use the plants to improve the ground. If we manage to crop anything half decent, it will be a bonus.

We also planted some of our other early potatoes, one row of Casablanca - a firm favourite - and a row of Athlete which is new to us this year. It was bought on recommendation from a Youtubers that we follow. There has to be a pun there doesn't there Youtuber? We don't plant our early potatoes through weed control fabric, as these tend to be harvested a root at a time, which is more difficult if they are grown under fabric.

Just over a couple of weeks ago, we planted some Casablanca potatoes in crates and all the tubers are now pushing shoots through the compost. They are planted fairly deeply and so they won't be earthed up.

Not only did we manage to plant some of our potatoes, but we also planted the early brassicas that we bought in as plug plants. These had been hardening off in the cold frame, and already had attracted the attention of hungry birds, who had nibbled at some of the leaves. I suspect a wood pigeon was the culprit, so I guess we got off lightly with just a few nibbles. Maybe the wood pigeons are concentrating more on nest building at the moment. 

We have planted, cabbage - Regency, cauliflower - Helsinki and calabrese - Aquiles. We have grown these for a couple of years now and had good result so fingers crossed. The wood pigeons kept an eye on proceedings from the overhead electricity cables, no doubt rubbing their wings in glee. They were to be disappointed as we covered the lot with enviromesh. This should also provide some protection from cabbage white butterflies and whiteflies. It's not foolproof, as far as keeping the insect population at bay, but does help.

Some insects are welcome though.

On Friday there were lots of ladybirds, particularly on the jostaberry, so the sunshine must have tempted them out of hibernation. I'm guessing that most will be the non-native Harlequins which are a serious threat to our native species.

There were lots of bees of various types buzzing about. Many seem to want to explore inside our shed. The one above was caught in some sticky webbing so I gave it a hand to escape. It was only small and very bright red but I've no idea what type it was - any suggestions?

We did manage a bit of a harvest last week. The cabbages below are three types a savoy - Sambrosa, a green cabbage - Kilaton and a red cabbage - Red Lodero.

We decided to clear the bed containing the remains of our parsnips and carrots. The carrots were well past their best and only fit for composting, as were some of the parsnips. We saved some parsnips that looked OK, but until we try them we don't know whether they will be fit for eating or not. We had a really good parsnip and carrot harvest last season. In hindsight, we could have sown fewer but what's the betting that if we had we would have had poor germination and a poor harvest like the previous year.

We want to clear the bed where we had last year's leeks, a few of which are still in the ground. We plan to dig all these this week, as we want to prepare the bed for a row of new raspberries. The leeks below and the rhubarb were destined for my sister. The ones remaining will probably be either used next week or frozen.

Our early rhubarb is growing strongly. We don't force our rhubarb as the early varieties are plenty early enough for us. People always telling us that our rhubarb is much earlier than other theirs and that they don't understand why that is.

There are hundreds of varieties of rhubarb each of which produces stems at differing times. Different varieties also have stems of differing colours. Some are red and others pink or green, so harvesting time and the colour of stems will depend on the variety grown rather than the way that it is being grown. We have several varieties, most of which we have either forgotten the names of or we have inherited. From the photos below, all taken on the same day, you can see the difference in stages of growth.

We can't compete though with Clumber Park which, at over 130 varieties, boasts the second largest rhubarb collection in the world.

Our complete monthly harvests are listed here.

This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on 

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

We produced a few videos last week which included a plot tour, one giving a bird's eye view of our greengage blossom and one showing our afternoon of planting. If you are interesting in viewing they are all on our vlog here. Make sure your sound is on and they are best in full screen and as high a quality as your system can cope with.

By the way, I know I get lots of visitors who never comment and I'd love to know who you are. Why not say hello? 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.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett