Veg mistakes for Beginners

When you get given plants or seeds with no instructions, it's very easy to make fatal mistakes.

The lady I visited yesterday had been given a few left over onion sets (thin of them as baby onions) by a friend and she'd done what seemed logical to her (and I can imagine a time when I might have done the same) - she'd planted them like bulbs, a few inches underground.

Onions don't work that way.  You plant them at surface level.  Dig a tiny hole with your trowel (don't push the onion down into the soil) and then put the onion set in it.  The top of the onion set should be just above the surface.

It's really too late for planting onion sets anyway this year, but I mention it so that you'll remember for next year.  Next year, also consider shallots.  They taste like a mild onion and can easily be grown in a small space.

(Does anyone want an occasional calendar of 'veg things to do at this time of year'?)

today on the allotment

Today, we went down to the riding stables and collected about 20 bin bags of manure. We've long ago learnt to put only about three spadefuls per bin bag (big spadefuls admittedly) as after that the bag gets difficult to carry.  Drove the short distance from stables to allotment.  Weeded the area (having now removed the last of the leeks and cabbages from last year) where the sweetcorn and squashes are going to go this year.  Spread several inches of manure all over.

Note that we used it as a surface mulch, not digging it in.  Although the manure is well rotted (probably at least a year old), it would still be too strong for roots of plants that touch it.  (Think of the brown patches on a lawn where a dog has peed - you have to dilute stuff or let it work into the soil gradually over time).  When we plant the sweetcorn, we'll make sure we leave a hole in the manure several inches wide around each stem so that it won't burn it.

Sweetcorn and squashes are both greedy crops - they like to be well fed.

If you want to grow sweetcorn, plant in little pots now (if it's an early variety) or a couple of weeks from now if it's a maincrop variety.  You can sow maincrop direct into the ground.  The earlies need a head start as this country isn't really warm enough for sweetcorn.

If growing sweetcorn (which isn't the easiest of crops, but is very rewarding to eat), then remember that you must have a bare minimum of a dozen plants and you must plant them in a square rather than a row. They're wind-pollinated, so you have to allow for all wind directions to get them fertilised.  Only grow in a sunny spot.

I also weeded around the perpetual spinich (it's really a biennial, but you can pick stuff at a time of year when very little else is cropping).  I cut off all the flower stalks - if you let it flower, the leaves go all bitter. That tends to apply to most veg. As soon as they bolt (ie. send up a flower stalk) the plant isn't fit to eat.  However, with perpetual spinich, you can often persuade it to produce another crop of edible leaves.

Weeded around the recently transplanted autumn raspberries which are settling in nicely. The grass clipping mulch around them has helped to surpress the weeds, but I didn't have enough clippings to do the job to the depth I'd have liked (two inches of clippings does a really good job and can still be reducing weeds nine months later when it's just an almost invisible thin brown layer), so some annual weeds were appearing.  You don't want to have to do much weeding around raspberries (they're shallow rooted plants for one thing, and life's too short for another), so mulches are very much your friend here.  Be it grass clippings, well-rotted manure or compost, they all do the trick and they all add organic matter and nitrogen to the soil.  Just remember not to apply the mulch too close to the stems.

Cut back the brambles behind the plot. Put a layer at the bottom of the new compost heap.  A layer of woody stuff at the bottom is said to help air circulation and thus make the heap rot better. (In a 'dalek' I just chuck everything in willy-nilly - I tend to cut the woody stuff into smaller pieces - they won't fit in easily otherwise)

We'll need to plant more beetroot as the slugs have got many of the seedlings (it's in the bed next to the hedge this year and that always seems to get the worst slugs).  Beetroot is a very good reason, all on its own, for growing veg.  Yum!

Sowing cabbages

Impressed by the large number of people who would like data on when to plant things and the like, I shall try and do regular postings on this topic.

Cabbages - cabbages and their relatives (cauliflower, kale, brocolli, calabrese, sprouts) grow well in the British climate.  I'm told that the Romans in Britain lived on cabbages, onions and beans as their staple diet, and it seems plausible.  Beans can be dried and stored for the winter and there are enough varieties of cabbage that you can crop them virtually all the year round for fresh greens if you time things right.

So, here we are today, planting cabbage seeds in a seed tray.  Why a seed tray? Well, the allotment is filling up fast and cabbages (unlike some other veg) don't mind being transplanted when they're small, so you can use the space for other stuff while the cabbages are little - our potatoes are there at present.  You could start them in a seed bed or in a tray.  A tray (if you've somewhere handy to put it on a windowsill, in a cool greenhouse/whereever) gives you a slightly better head start against the slugs, but you'd do fine in a seedbed if the soil is okay.

Cabbages like ground that has been well manured, but not recently.  Ideally, when the seedlings are ready to plant out, you'll put them where a previous crop (of something else) has been.  Failing that, manure the autumn before (if you haven't got manure, then use compost. If you haven't got compost, get a compost bin).  Cabbages and their relatives like a deep soil - if you have a really good well dug deep soil, then the roots can do down nearly a metre. Don't think our soil is quite that deep...  (If you haven't got manure or compost, then either buy some, see if your neighbours have got unused compost sitting in a bin, or just go for it anyway and hope for the best)

CAbbages often follow after peas or beans in a crop rotation - they like the nitrogen that peas and beans (or rather the symbiotic baceria that live in their root nodules) leave behind.

NEVER grow the same crop on the same soild two years running. There's a high chance of diseases lingering in the soil and rotating the crops reduces the chance of re-infection.  (One patch of soil in our allotment has club root.  That can linger for 12 years, so we won't be growing any brassicas (cabbage family) there for a very long time...

How can you tell if you've got club root?  Well, the plant looks small and sad, and when you pull one up, you can see instantly where the name 'club' root comes from.  Judith - who composts everything - does NOT compost plants with club root.  Take them away and put them in your bin.  It's very infectious.

Brassics (especially sprouts) like a firm soil.  Don't dig just before planting.  (you can weed, but try not to dig deeply).

We're breaking this rule as they're going in after the potatoes come out (and nothing digs up the soil like digging up potatoes).  Such is life...  So, after the spuds are out, we'll have to break up the soil well and walk all over it to firm it down (which is the ONLY time I approve of walking on soil.  Walking on soil is a bad thing and normally to be avoided at all costs).

If you're keen, you can get two crops a year off most of your soil.

However, trying to be good about dates for you:-

If you want to grow cabbages, find a variety that says 'sow May' and sow it in a seed tray or into the soil. While they're growing, you can weed/dig the area where you will eventualy plant them out.

Think twice before accepting gifts of brasscias from anyone else.  We were warned, and we still accepted some cauliflowers in our first year - that was probably where our club root came from.  (the soil we used last year was okay, so it's only part of the plot that has it)