Judith Proctor's Journal

Weeded around the mangetout peas.  Weeded a row of emerging runner beans.  Cut down some brambles at the back of the plot.  Weeded around a globe artichoke (though it may be too late as the weeds were winning).  I left the artichoke pretty late as the yield last year wasn't really worth the effort.  It didn't taste particularly good and the globe was very small.  Mind you, it's in totally the wrong position, so I shouldn't be surprised.

Things to do:

Plant things like radish and beetroot in a fine seed bed.

the rough rule of thumb is that the smaller the seed is, the finer the soil needs to be.  A great big runner bean seed can be planted almost anywhere (as long as there's lot of manure or compost).  A tiny beetroot seedling won't be able to cope with stones and lumps of soil that are bigger than it is.  It can't lift them out of the way.

You could try growing spinach or perpetual spinach. Perpetual spinach isn't really perpetual, but it's a biennial (lasts for two years) and produces a decent crop about now, when almost nothing else is cropping at all. (and it tastes very nice chopped up and cooked with pasta shells and tinned red salmon - she says, having just had this for tea).

Remember that disasters are part and parcel of growing veg. Don't get discouraged if things go wrong. It's a steep learning curve and we haven't reached the top of it yet.

We've lost loads of seedling spinach and turnips to the birds this year, so netting is becoming the order of the day. Either that or lots of strands of black cotton (about six inches between strands and several inches off the ground. The cotton should be tightly strung between pegs or short sticks.)

I was talking to a new plotholder yesterday. He's a retired chap and spending several hours each day on his plot.  It looks immaculate.  But he hasn't got the knowledge yet.  He told me that his peas had been badly attacked by mice, so he'd dug up the small plants and binned them.

When he described the damage (leaves with neatly nibbled scalloped edges) I knew immediately that it wasn't mice.  Mice go for the pea/bean seed in the ground. You can trace their progress by the neat little hole where your bean was...

The scalloped edges are caused by pea and bean weevils.  They're a nuiscance, but they rarely kill plants. And once the plant is more than about six inches tall, they cease to be much of a nuisance at all. They can't jump high enough to get the top leaves.

It's sad, but if he'd left his peas alone (and given them something to climb if they didn't have that already) then they'd probably have been fine.

My pea plants have lovely little scalloped edges, but they're starting up the netting now and making new growth and before long they'll be well and away.  I'll lose a few of them, but not enough to make  a serious difference.

I've read that hoeing the soil around pea and bean plants reduces the damage done by the weevils.  I don't know why it's supposed to work, but I'm happily hoeing away as it helps keep the weeds down in any case.

Big Tip.  don't put off weeding around seeds and small plants.  The weeds will grow faster than your seedlings and choke them.

If you've planted your seeds in a straight line (Use a tight piece of string as a guide when planting), then you know that anything not growing in that line is a weed.  Furthermore, anything in the line that looks exactly  like something you've just removed is probably a weed also.

After a while, you get to know exactly what small speedwell (gosh, I wonder how it got that name...) and small scarlet pimpernel plants look like.

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)

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'?)

When you first start growing veg, the odds are that your soil will be pretty crap.  Don't worry, all soil can be improved - it takes a couple of years, but you can start with bad soil and know that your crop will get better as the soil improves.

How to improve it?

COMPOST

1.  Get a compost bin (or compost heap if you prefer). Some councils sell cheap compost bins made from recycled plastic - it's worth asking.  If they have them, they'll often be cheaper than from a garden centre.

2.  Into your compost bin chuck all kitchen waste.  Add grass clippings, weeds (except roots of bindweed), egg boxes (cardboard rots and the air pockets are very handy). You can add moderate amounts of newspaper as long as you tear it up and mix well in. If you add it in layers, it won't rot down.  You can add bits of small woody stuff (ie.  Cut up your brambles, hedge prunings etc)  The basic rule of thumb is that anything that was once alive will compost.

3.  Over six months to a year, the compost will rot down.  If you're really keen, you can accelerate the process by mixing it all up at intervals.  You need a good mixture of stuff.  If you have nothing but grass clippings, it won't rot.  Add cardboard to grass clippings and it will rot.  (and vice versa).  Kitchen waste rots fastest.

4.  When it's rotted down, take out any big woody bits and chuck them on the top of your new compost pile.  (You need two bins/piles so that one can be filling up while the other is rotting down - but you can wait until the first is full before getting a second)

5.  Do NOT squash down your compost.  The air spaces are important - that's why the woody bits and egg boxes/toilet roll middles are handy, they help give the pile structure.

When you finally have your compost, you can either dig it in, or apply it as a surface layer.  Both work.

MANURE

1.  If you have a riding stable anywhere near you, contact them and ask if they'd like you to remove some of their manure.  Most places will be delighted to see you take it away.

2.  Take as much as you possibly can.  There may be a thing such as too much manure, but I've yet to encounter it.  You can use a two inch layer all over your soil and do no harm at all.  A year or two after you've added this sort of amount, the soil texture dramatically improves.

3.  It does need to be ROTTED manure. Fresh manure would be bad for the plants.

4.  Ideally, dig the stuff in in the autumn so it's incorporated by spring.  Having said that, there's a number of plants (like fruit bushes) that are happy for you to apply a surface layer in spring.  And manure any time is better than no manure for improving soil.

5.  Do NOT use manure where you're going to plant seeds (the lumps will be too big).  That's where you need to have manured the year before.

6.  Brassicas (cabbages, brocolli, etc) do not like manure.  Everything else does.


DIGGING

1. When you first start off a bed, you'll need to dig it.  The soil will probably be compacted and will need the air.  Find instructions for double digging and follow them (because I can't do a diagram here).  Ideally, incorporate manure/compost into the lower spit.

2.  Get the weeds out.  Especially couch grass and bindweed.  (If you have a bindweed problem, use glyphosphate)

3.  Once you've got it properly dug, try and avoid walking on it (this compacts the soil, reduces the amount of air and impairs it's water-holding ability).  If you have an old plank, put that on the soil and walk along the plank when you need to reach things.

4. If you're applying compost or manure and aren't planting anything from seed at the time, then you can often apply them as a surface layer and let the worms do the hard work. Don't dig unless you have to:  a. Life is too short.  b.  Digging is not good for soil structure  c.  digging speeds up the loss of organic matter.

FERTILISER

1.  A layer of grass clippings is a surprisingly effective way of keeping down weeds and adding nitrogen and organic matter. Sprinkle a layer at least two inches thick around established plants (leaving a couple of inches of space around the stem).

2.  Dilute urine is fantastic and free.  Pee into a plastic milk bottle (or whatever else takes your fancy).  Fill a normal watering can a bit over 3/4 full, add 1 litre of urine and that should bring it to full.  Pour over anything that you want to fertilise/water.  Repeat as often as you fill up bottles.  My onions are looking great!  This treatment can be applied every 3 or 4 days and seems to have almost magical effects on plant growth and resistance to disease.  It also helps the plants fight off slugs (and going by my gooseberry bush it also seems to help the plant fight aphids).  Urine is sterile when it leaves the body, so don't worry on that score.

Planted the early potatoes today.  We've had some clear plastic sheeting over the ground for a couple of weeks to warm the soil, and we'll leave it there until the shoots emerge.

The early varieties we're trying this year are: Epicure and Foremost.

Next year, I may try and grow 'Sante'.  We got some from Riverford, our organic veg box supplier, and they had a lovely flavour.

Mind you, you can grow pretty much anything.  My mother-in-law gets excellent results from her seed potatoes.  The 'variety'?  Tesco Value!

Also went down the riding stables and carted away more sackloads of manure.  They love us - I've discovered why now.  It costs an absolute fortune if they have to pay someone to remove it.  If you have a local riding stable, ask if they'd like you to help yourself to manure - they may well say 'Yes please!".

If you have any raspberries or blackcurrants, then this is the best time of year (just as the new leaf growth is starting) to feed them. About three inches of manure or compost all round them (go out at as far as the bush goes and maybe a little bit more). Don't let the compost/manure touch the stems - give a couple of inches space.

If you have gooseberries or redcurrants, they should already have had a couple of inches (goseberries come into growth a little earlier), but better late than never.

Remember, if you like soft fruit, you need to feed them. They can't give you the fruit unless you give them the nutrients to grow the fruit.

(strawberries are different - being very low growing, it isn't practical to use manure/compost, so you prepare a very nice bed indeed and create a new one every three years)

In the winter, when all the leaves have died, cut out at ground level (or an inch or two above if you can't reach easily) all canes that have borne fruit that year.  (in the case of autumn fruiting raspberries, that will usually be all of them.  In the case of summer fruiting raspberries, it will be around half of them)

Grass clippings make a good mulch for raspberries (and lots of other things too) and are a very effective way of suppressing weeds while adding organic matter and nitrogen to your soil. Cut your grass, and sprinkle the fresh clippings (and inch thick is fine) around your fruit bushes.

I was browsing a copy of the Times on the way back from Conrunner on Monday, and found this article on the rising demand for the world's limited supply of phosphorus.

In essence, it's essential for agriculture, and wasteful usage and limited supplies are pushing prices up dramatically.  In a few decades, we may be looking at 'peak phosphorus'.

One of the possible solutions involves recycling the phosphorus that we throw away every day - urine.

I recently read Liquid Gold, an entertaining (It's full of anecdotes on how urine has been used throughout history) and informative book on how to use urine in your garden.  Urine is sterile (as long as it isn't contaminated by faeces) and contains nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in almost the exact ratio needed by plants.  Dilute between three and eight times with water (the more woody material/mulch/compost you have in the soil, the stronger you can make the mixture) and you can feed your plants up to three times a week.

I tried this a couple of weeks ago on my courgette plants - the leaves were turning yellow and the plants were putting on very little growth.

Result?  Green leaves within a week and healthy new growth. 

Tried again with the sorry-looking French beans - they're now, finally, making decent growth up their poles.

I'm now encouraging the family to fill empty plastic milk bottles as fast as they can - there's a load more plants that I want to try this on!

We've just about caught up on all the major tasks.  Phew!

The strawberries now have pigeon netting (just in time as the fruits are forming nicely).  I've put straw under them, but probably need to add a little more.

I've weeded all round the onions (we've a lot of onions and they're too close, so I spread this job over a week or two).

Richard has planted out the courgettes and some of the squashes (under fleece at present to help them get a good start).  Last year, our squashes never really got going.  We worked out eventually that this was because it was too cold when they were first put out.  This year, we'll probably keep them under fleece for quite a while until we're really certain that they're comfortable.  This applies doubly as they're in the most shaded corner of the plot (the crop rotation has them in bed three, and the strawberries have the sunniest spot in that bed).

The beetroot are all coming up pretty well.  We're getting a lot better at making seed beds, and it's improving the germination rate.  We haven't got it licked totally yet, but small seeds really do need fine crumbly soil and a really level surface.  It makes a lot more difference than you might think.

Big seeds like runner beans don't need nearly so much TLC - apart from getting the soil right, of course.

When we grew runner beans at home, we ended up with spindly little plants that mostly got eaten by slugs.  Those that did survive were likely to get blackfly and generally only produced enough beans for a few meals.  Last year on the plot, we harvested enough beans to be giving them away all summer.

So what did we do different?

We fed the poor things.  Instead of just sticking the seeds in the ground, we read a book (horror of horrors) and followed the instructions...
Runner beans are greedy.  They like  a LOT of organic matter in the soil.  They like a trench full of compost and anything else you can lay your hands on and soil on top of that.  Once they get their greedy little roots down into that lot, they'll grow faster than the slugs can eat them, and even the blackfly won't make much of an impact.  We've lost a couple to the slugs this year, but most of the plants are several inches tall already and look as though they're going to make a successful break for it.  (and it's noticeable that the slugs mostly got the ones in the part of the row that I hadn't got around to weeding.)

In short, when growing veg, don't just read what it says on the seed packet (which is brief and misses out lots of good tips), get a really good book like this one.  It could do with a bit more on pests and diseases, but it's very good on how to prepare the ground and what conditions different plants like and what you should do as they grow.

We were amazed how little we lost to the slugs so far this year.  We didn't feel rich enough to buy nematodes as we did last year, so we've been using beer traps.  As far as slugs are concerned, we'll back the advert, "Carlsberg, probably the best lager in the world"!

Make sure plants are hardened off well before you plant them out.  Remove weeds and rotten wood and anything that will give slugs cover.  Make sure the soil has lots of manure/compost so that the plants are tougher.  Put out beer traps (but DON'T empty them on the soil afterwards as alcohol is bad for plants).  If you do all of these things, you won't eliminate the slugs, but you'll certainly make a non-trivial dent in the damage they do.  (Of course, now I've written this, they'll probably hoover the entire plot just to prove me wrong...)

A few weeks ago, Riverford, our organic veg supplier (we still get stuff from them, though a lot less than we did in pre-allotment days) sent us some really fantastic potatoes.  They were a pale gold inside and had a flavour like no other spud I've ever tried.

So I wrote to Riverford yesterday and asked what variety they were.  Riverford, who are good at customer service as well as wonderful veg, promptly replied that they were either Sante or Valor depending on exactly when we got them.

Looking on the web, they were probably Sante, but Valour has blight resistance and that is a really big bonus.  Maybe I'll try growing both next year.  (We're trying four different ones this year, and only one of them is one we tried the previous year)

For the veggies and vegans among you (and those who simply enjoy tasty food), here's a recipe of Richard's that I really enjoy. 

We had it today using spinach fresh off the allotment.

Very well indeed at the moment.  The strawberries that we planted last year seem to be establishing well.  The broad beans are coming up well - we've lost a few to mice (they dig a small hole, cut through the stalk and eat the bean - the hole is pretty distinctive).  We'll try my mother-in-law's tip when we plant replacements - put a holly leaf in the hole next to the bean.

The shallots are sprouting, the onion sets are all in place (we'll have to keep an eye on them as they can get knocked out of position until they develop roots to hold them down).

The raspberries are making good growth - I've spotted the early signs of iron deficiency in one row and have added some iron sulphate to correct that (we're totally organic, apart from being willing to spray bindweed - you simply cannot dig out all the root - and adding iron sulphate to raspberries).

The rhubarb has survived major reworking of the bed around it (removing old raspberry suckers) and is looking promising.

The perpetual spinich is STILL producing growth - it was there when we took over the plot and we've been eating it ever since - I'm giving it regular mulches to encourage it.

Potatoes are in.  I'll look forward to watching them come up.  We could use more space, but we'll be using the entire plot and squeezing stuff into every corner as it is.

Sweetcorn and french beans are in our mini plant house on the patio at home and several are emerging in their pots.  They'll be planted out when they're a bit bigger.

The blackcurrant bushes made good growth last year and should bear a crop this year.  The redcurrants were only planted in the late Autumn and the aim is for them to make good basic growth this year and form a bush.

We've reduced the area of Jerusalem artichokes.  They cropped much better than expected and we're still eating them.

So much more to come.  I'm really looking forward to it all. Carrots and beetroot and salads.

We're still eating the last of the leeks and purple sprouting brocolli.  PSB tastes MUCH better when it's really fresh.  Eat within a few hours of picking if you are able.  I think it will be sprouting for a couple of weeks yet if our luck holds.  PSB does not get club root. This is a big plus when your soil has club root and most of your brasscias (cabbages, swedes and the like) failed to thrive as a result.

We're rotating crops, so we may try a few brassicas in a different place, but we won't be able to use last year's patch again as club root remains in the soil for a decade or more.

I've been wondering about this for many years, ever since visiting the Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales where they had collection bottles in the gent's loos.

I've just found a report of a study done in Finland that says it works every bit as well as conventional fertilizers and that urine is virtually sterile and thus there is no health risk.

This link also makes interesting reading (it appears to be about growing canabis, but the comments would apply to any plants).  It basically says that you can use urine directly to water plants, but it is best to dilute it by a factor of 10 or 20 to avoid scorching the roots.

I may well try this on the allotment.

And a post of mine from just over a year ago which refers to the fact that vegans who eat plants fertilised with human faeces do not suffer from vitamin B12 deficiency (gut bacteria produce it too far down the gut for us to absorb it when it's in the body).  I'm not sure I'll try that one right now, but maybe someday.

Spent a happy hour or so down the allotment this morning spreading compost around the spinach and beetroot.  The spinach was planted by the previous allotment holder, but it's been cropping pretty steadily all year and is still going strong even now.  So, I figured it was time I started actually feeding it!

The compost heap we started back in March has matured nicely now.  I'm spreading it all over the place - I'm removing the bigger twigs and tossing them into the new heap, but otherwise it's lovely and crumbly.  Mildly amusing to find a long piece of chain stitch thread.  Earlier in the year, I put an old cotton towel onto the heap - obviously the thread was nylon as that is all that is left now.  My old silk shirt and a cotton t-shirt have vanished without trace.

Any fabric will compost as long as it is made of natural fibres.  Don't put it on as a screwed up lump, spread it out like a blanket and pile the usual kitchen/garden waste on top of it.  We're also composting a fair quantity of cardboard.  Packaging material, egg boxes, toilet roll centres, cereal packets, etc.

Next time I go down, I must remember to take a load of newspaper.  Newspaper, preferably with grass clippings or compost on top to hold it down, makes an excellent mulch and I need to put a good layer around my blackcurrant bushes to keep the weeds down.

robthefish reminded me that I need to post about the allotment.  micavity took some photos a couple of weeks ago, but I only recently managed to understand LJ's scrapbook well enough to actually upload them.  Here they are.

If you're at all interested in veg growing, take a close look at the sweetcorn photo.  We've been experimenting with something called the Three Sisters method which involves growing sweetcorn on mounds and interplanting with beans and squashes.

For various reasons, we didn't do too well with the beans and squashes (well, it is our first year, and we're still learning), but the mounds made an amazing difference to the sweetcorn as you'll see from the photos.  Don't yet know what the final crop will be like, but I'm betting it will be higher on the mounds.

I don't know why the mounds make such a difference.  My best guess is that the soil warms up faster.

I've got something on the broad beans that I assume is chocolate spot.  Not all of them have it, but the ones in the middle of the row are worst affected.

Apparantly the causes are too much nitrogen (we used up some old Gromore and it was all caked, so the dose was probably wrong - and we shouldn't have been using a fertiliser with nitrogen on broad beans in any case...) and poor air circulation.

I've removed the worst affected plants as it didn't look as though they'd produce any beans anyway.  I've left those that have at least one pod forming.

The good news is that we are getting some beans and they tasted really good when we ate them a couple of days ago.  I'm looking forward to picking some more shortly.

The most curious thing about the chocolate spot is that the affected plants seem to have had a major die-off of blackfly.  I can see lots of places where blackfly were and no longer are.  Anyone care to guess why that should be?

Does anyone know if I should be removing the other diseased plants, or is it okay to leave them and hope to get beans from them?