A busy week

An improvement in the weather meant that the gardening activity moved up a pace last week.

We managed to spend a couple of afternoons in the garden and the same on the allotment.

First in the garden or more precisely the garden greenhouse.

We planted three crates each with two tubers of Casablanca potatoes. The tubers were planted deeply and will not be earthed up. All we will need to do is give them a drink and when the time is right bring them out of the greenhouse. All very low maintenance. This method produced a good crop last year, although we planted them up in the plot greenhouse and brought them home during the first lockdown.

We sowed some  Sweet Candle carrot seeds into a few containers in an attempt to grow some early carrots.

To give us an early start, each year, we order a collection of early brassicas from DT Brown. Our collection arrived this week and so the young plants have been potted up to grow on in the greenhouse for a while.  In the collection were two lots of cabbages - Mozart and Regency, cauliflower - Seoul and calabrese - Aquiles.

Martyn also sowed  some sweet pea and broad bean seeds.

Martyn, potted up the new dahlias that we bought earlier. The pots have been kept in the garden greenhouse. The older dahlias have been uncovered and placed in boxes of compost and are being stored in the allotment greenhouse.

The garlic that I planted a week or so ago is growing well although we needed to place covers over the trays as mice were digging up the cloves.

Outside in the garden I cut back the ferns in our fern bed.

In the garden, the final task of the week was to sort out the bed in front of the newly erected trellis. The perennials had become worn out and untidy and so we dug them all out and dug over the bed. We then split the perennials and replanted some along with some lupins that we grew from seed last year and a jasmine that was growing in the greenhouse. The remaining plants will be transferred to the allotment where some will be added to the mixed border.

At the allotment it was mainly a case of continuing to clear and tidy up beds.

I weeded and generally tidied the mixed border which is along one edge of our plot. This was to prepare clear areas where we can plant up any perennials that are no longer required in the garden.

Whilst I was concentrating on that, Martyn dug over an old strawberry bed which as you can see from the photo is rough and will need more work to break down the large lumps.

Martyn also uncovered some beds that had been covered over winter with weed control fabric. This will help them to dry out a little quicker before we need to plant them up.

The pace of growth on the allotment seems to have speeded up.

The garlic and over wintering onions are now beginning to grow away ...

... as are the clumps of Timperley Early rhubarb

The Rudolph broccoli is now cropping and providing us with a small harvest.

Last week, at the end of each allotment visit we brought home a very small harvest.

16 March

Our second harvest of the week included the remaining leeks. We needed to dig them up before they started to grow. Most were cleaned, chopped and frozen. Interestingly, the later planted leeks were not spoiled by the brown streaks evident on the earlier ones.

20 March

I slipped up last week and haven't any photos of a couple of the meals where I used our vegetables.

Monday was a vegetable casserole that used leeks, carrot and parsnip along with some green lentils and some leftover swede.

On Wednesday I made a chicken and vegetable casserole in the slow cooker. To the chicken thighs, I added onion, carrot, leeks and some of the very small potatoes that were left in our potato sack. I also added some shop bought celery.

Friday we had a stir fry. I just tend to throw in whatever vegetables I want to use up. In this instance, I had some red pepper and mushrooms in the fridge which were added to strips of carrot and onion. Our frozen French beans, peas and sweetcorn also went into the pan. I added a sweet chilli sauce 'dressing' as we don't use soy sauce. The stir fry was served on top of noodles.

Sunday, I made a turkey pasta bake which used some of the leeks gathered the previous day. I wasn't quick enough to take a photo before it was on the plate.

As always stay safe and well - let's hope all the mass protests and demonstrations haven't affected our battle to get the Covid infection rate down.

This week I'm joining Harvest Monday on Dave's Our Happy Acres blog so I have linked to him this week.

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