Judith Proctor's Journal

 Planted a row of rocket where the shallots have just been dug up.

The shallots didn't do very well.  Maybe they were planted at the wrong depth, or they weren't watered enough.

The onions sets did better.   We had some white skinned ones and some brown ones (think the Brown ones were 'Shakespeare').  The brown skinned ones did best of the two.  Some of the onions bolted (threw up a flowering stalk - this is not what you want as they put the energy into the flower instead of the bulb).  Probably not enough watering when it was dry - plus there was a spell when I didn't do enough weeding.

Rocket is a handy crop. It lives up to it's name and grows really fast.  It's a leaf veg with a good flavour - Richard really loves it and often puts it in sandwiches with tahini or cheese.

I cleared a row of sugar snap peas that had finished. Sugarsnap are delicious and half of them never make it home as they get picked and eaten on site!

 This was going to be a post about how well the allotment is doing right now.

Unfortunately, it has now become a post about some bastard who stole most of our rhubarb (and badly damaged the plants in the process) nicked the only ripe squash and helped him/her self to all the ripe courgettes.

I hope s/he chokes on it - though given the amount of rhubarb taken, they must have been stealing to sell.

There are plots available on our site (the short term future with regard to property developers has greatly reduced the waiting list), so there is not even the excuse that the thief has nowhere to grow their own produce.

Bastard.

 My health has improved enough to do a little bit of work on the allotment, and Richard is able to do more now his morale has improved (employment makes a big difference to morale).

We've a lot to catch up on - it had been getting pretty weedy.

We've planted some onion sets for next year and are experimenting with over-wintering shallots.  It's important to firm the soil around the sets rather than just pushing them into the soil as the birds are very keen on pulling them up.

Richard's also planted some broad beans - mixing some compost and well-rotten manure into the soil.

I took a batch of photos for you, but won't be able to upload them until Richard's finished fixing my computer.  The poor machine has been sick for months, but installing a new hard drive seems to have cured the worst of it (the old one was corrupted and causing all sorts of problems).  We had to reinstall the operating system from scratch as it wasn't possible to copy it over because of the disc problems.

Photo software isn't yet on the new drive.

Today, I planted the remainder of a packet of turnips "Armand".  They will need thinning to 6 inches apart and will need watering well when it's dry.  The rest of the row was filled in with a free packet of Cos lettuce (unnamed variety).  These seeds are a year past their 'sow by' date, so I don't know how many will germinate.  They will need thinning to 6 inches apart as well.

 On Monday I planted a row of corn salad, aka lamb's lettuce.  Variety 'Vit'  (I'm trying to record varieties here so that a year from now when I've forgotten what I planted, I can come back and check what varieties did well.)




It's a simple salad vegetable and is hardy unless the weather is really bad, so I should be able to crop some through the autumn (depending on how fast it comes up)  I may add a second row later on to have a succession.  I may possibly need to add a cloche when the weather is really bad.

I didn't plant anything today, I was feeling a bit wheezy and tired.  Hopefully, I'll get something done tomorrow.  Richard picked all the blackcurrants yesterday, so we'll freeze most of those.  I've got some redcurrants to nibble.  I love those and they cropped reasonably well.  Having netting made a big difference.  We got more than the birds this year!

I went down the allotment just before noon and ended up losing track of time and staying until it was nearly 3pm.

Weeded out some of the bigger weeds around the broad beans and picked some for tea.  Weeded the big stuff around the onions and garlic.  The onions suffered badly in all the rain, but some have survived. I'll dig them out soon.

Weeded absolutely everything down to the smallest seedling where I dug the shallots out a few days ago and levelled and smoothed the bed to make a new seed bed.  We need to get some more stuff planted asap as we lost so many seedlings to the cold, rain and slugs.

I decided to give my beetroot seeds (Pronto) maximum tlc, so I soaked them in water while I prepared the bed.  The soil is now free of lumps and stones.  I used my string to lay out a straight line and used a corner of the back of the rake to draw along the ground to make a drill about an inch deep.  I used the spout of the watering can to put a trickle of water along the drill so that the seeds would have a little water next to their roots, then I put a seed about every two inches.  If they all survive, then I'll thin them out to half of that.   I used the back of the rake to push soil back into the drill, smoothed out the surface and then used the head of the rake on end as a tamper to tamp down the soil without totally compressing it.  (that should ensure the seeds make contact with the damp soil beneath them).

I actually remembered to take  a pencil to label the row!

Tomorrow, I'll plant something else.  Haven't decided what yet - I've several packets that are July/April sows. Probably chard or a leaf veg of some kind.

Still lots of weeding to go, but I'm starting to gain on it now.  If the weather stays fine,  then I'll clear another bed and see if anything can be done for the courgette plants.  You know it's been a bad year when the courgettes look unhappy!

The sun's been shining today, without being too hot, so I've been busy outdoors.

Spent a couple of hours this morning working on the front garden.  Mowed the lawn, weeded the bed by the house and transplanted a small euphorbia that was being swamped by large bleeding heart plant.  The bleeding heart has flowered fantastically this year (the flowers really do live up to the name) so there was no way I was going to cut it back.

This afternoon, I went down the allotment and spent a relaxing three hours trimming paths, weeding around beans, shallots and squashes.  I rescued a few sorry looking chard plants and noted that a few carrots survived the horrible wet weather and the weeds.

Picked lots of strawberries - they cropped really well this year - and mangetout and sugarsnap peas.  I love sugarsnap!

We lost a lot of seedlings when the weather was bad, but the beans are all doing really well.  The broad beans are really tasty and there's plenty more of them to come.

A couple of plants were looking a bit pale/yellow, so I've been taking bottles of urine down the plot.  Dilute half a two litre milk bottle into one watering can and pour all round the plant.  Works wonders.  I've already persuaded a few badly slugged bean plants to put out new shoots.

I should have said perpetual spinach yesterday instead of New Zealand Spinach.  The two are different (I couldn't find the seed packet)  I need to get some seeds....

It has a long cropping period.

When we took over our allotment, it was the only plant there (the previous plot holder had left it in really good condition, covered up beds with black fabric as he removed the crops, so we had very few weeds to deal with).   For many months, until stuff we had planted grew, it was the only crop we could harvest.  We came to appreciate its merits and to know how well it responded to a mulch of grass clippings.

It's definitely worth letting one of them go to seed - the seed comes up in places that are just right for the plant - it seems to like areas that were manured the year before.  and, conveniently, they only start to put on real growth about the time you are harvesting other stuff, so they don't really get in the way until space is becoming available anyway.

It isn't actually perpetual, but it does crop for a long time. 

Yesterday Richard and I went to the local stables and dug lots of manure from their pile.  We'll probably go and dig some more next weekend.  I'm always amazed by the ability of horses to produce the stuff faster than gardeners grab it.

Manure is a fantastic soil conditioner.  It's a good fertiliser, but if you use it for several years, you get this wonderfully fine, crumbly soil that is pure delight to work.  It lightens clay soils and makes sandy ones retain water better.  (Just like compost in fact, but with less twiggy bits)

Today, I took a half moon edger round the rhubarb plot to neaten it up, dug up a lot of nettles and a few other perennial weeds and removed a few annuals.  Another advantage of manure is that it's pretty much weed free.  

Once I'd got all the weeds removed and the edges neat, I surrounded each rhubarb plant with a couple of inches of manure.  Rhubarb is greedy, and it tastes good.  Two excellent reasons to feed it well.

Tomorrow, if I have the energy, I'll plant a half row of broad beans and weed the survivors from the autumn sown ones - the late, hard frost, killed quite few of them.    I also need to finish weeding round the raspberries and cut down a few more of last year's stems from the summer fruiting ones.  I'll probably manure the raspberries in the next week or two, as soon as I've got the bed neat and tidy.

We've got a sheet of clear plastic over the soil where the broad beans will go.  This will help warm the soil and bring them forward a little.

I haven't posted about the allotment in a very long time.  That's mostly because the tennis elbow meant that I was unable to do weeding, so Richard had to do most of the work this year. 

Now, thankfully, I think (fingers crossed) that the tennis elbow has pretty much run its course.  The arms still ache, but that's because I'm using muscles that I'd been carefully avoiding for a long time.

Been down the allotment together every day for the last six or seven days and we're starting to make inroads into a vast backlog of work. Still plenty to be done, but we've weeded round the beetroot and spinach, trimmed most of the grass, dug over the bed where the broad beans will go and cleared most of the weeds from the strawberry patch (as well as firming in a lot of poorly rooted strawberry plants and removing runners that weren't worth rooting).

If I can find the energy this afternoon, I'll cycle down the nursery and buy some broad bean seeds and onion sets. Also need to get some garlic.

The chard is cropping really well at present.  It's on ground that was well manured last year, and the leaves are enormous and taste really good as well.

We've been experimenting and learning for several years with both squashes and sweetcorn.  Last year, we had loads of male flowers on the squashes and very few female, and the sweetcorn were devoid of flavour.

This year, both were massively better - and  we were growing the same varieties.

Here's how to do it.

Start your plants off in a small pot indoors or in a greenhouse.

When they're five or six inches high, plant them out.

Dig a hole with a spade.  Put a shovel's worth of manure in the hole.  Put the soil back on top - and make a rim to hold water (i.e. a circle about a foot across).  Plant one squash, or 3 sweetcorn (near the edge of your circle) on top of the soil on top of the manure.

Water.  Keep watering.  If the weather is dry - water.  Do not forget the watering.  If you aren't sure - water.

If you can add urine to the water, even better.  (for new readers to this journal, dilute urine - about a litre of urine to one watering can - is a perfect liquid feed.  It has an ideal NPK ratio, is sterile when fresh, can be carried easily in plastic milk bottles, and is free.)

If you water, you will finally get those female flowers on the squashes, and your sweetcorn will set properly and taste fantastic.

Also, when the shoots of the squashes are getting too long, pinch out the tips.  You want them to put energy into the fruits, not into growing more leaves.

These are both greedy plants.  Feed and water them properly, and they will reward you with delicious food.

Went to the dentist this morning - he's growing a few veg at the back of the surgery and was asking for tips.

A lot of my friends are also starting to grow things for the first time.

So, here are my handy tips on compost.

1.  Anything organic will rot.  (by organic, I mean 'made of organic material', not 'grown without pesticides')

You can compost: cotton shirts/towels, woollen jumpers, all kitchen waste (if you're worried about rats, then either exclude meat or else put chicken wire underneath your compost bin), all weeds (some people exclude dandelion and bindweed roots, but I find even those usually get killed, though I wouldn't put bindweed roots on a heap in the shade), all grass cuttings (but do mix them up with the other stuff if you have a lot of them), corrugated cardboard, cardboard egg boxes (don't squash them, they provide handy air pockets), used straw bedding from hamsters, rabbits, etc, sawdust, hedge clippings (but only if well chopped up, and do mix with other stuff) and probably other stuff as well.

I'm just editing a book on the history of Loose allotments ('Loose' is a village in Kent and is pronounced 'Looze').  In the last century, there was a butcher who annoyed his neighbouring plot holders by putting all the left-over bits of meat on his plot.  They rotted down just fine, but the smell and the rats weren't popular...

Another plot was found to have lots of small buttons on it.  My mother-in-law (keen gardener and social historian) worked that one out.  The plot must have been fertilised with 'shoddy', which was what cheap clothes were made of - it was made from recycled woollen cloth.  The clothes rotted away and left the buttons behind.

Hop waste was also popular as a mulch in Kent.

2.  Kitchen waste is easy to collect.

Everything from the kitchen: potato peelings (If you really must peel your potatoes and lose all the vitamins...), veg peelings (same comment about vitamins - there are almost no vegetables where you gain anything by peeling them, expect possibly squashes when the rind has hardened), stale bread, food scraps, left over takeaways, past the date foods, apple cores - if it's food of any kind, you can put it in the compost.

Keep a small compost caddy in the kitchen - I line mine with newspaper which makes it easier to empty and to clean - and the newspaper can, of course, be composted as well.  There are lots of compost caddies on the market.  A few examples can be found here, but there's lots more.

A lid is necessary to keep out flies, but smell (in my experience, at least) is not a problem as long as the bin is emptied as soon as it is full.  You have three options with lining.

a.  No lining.  I've done it this way in the past.  You'll find the bottom of the bin can get a bit wet.  I just clean it out with a handful of newspaper and then compost the newspaper.

b.  Biodegradable lining.  I'm not keen on these personally.  They have a high carbon footprint to manufacture and you need to pay real money for them.  (and they don't rot as fast as newspaper)

c.  Newspaper.  Not decorative, but it uses up our free newspapers and helps soak up some of the moisture from the waste.  I use three or four pages at a time to line mine.  I overlap them a  bit and fold them over the edge to keep them in place.  I try and have multiple layers at the bottom of the bin.  The paper will soak up most of the moisture, though you'll probably need another page to clean out after you empty and before you make a new liner.

When your caddy is full, take it out and tip it into your compost bin.


3.  Compost Daleks don't take up much space.

They're called 'daleks' for obvious reasons, though most of them don't look like this:



but more like this:


There are other kinds of compost bin, but 'daleks' tend to be cheap and cheerful and often available at a discount from your local council.  They don't take up a lot of space and are easy to use.  (they can be a bit fiddly to remove the compost at the back, but if the worst comes to the worst, you can just lift the whole thing up, dig out the good compost and stick the rest back again)

At the end of the day, any kind of compost bin/heap will do. 

We have three daleks in our garden to fit into smaller spaces, down the allotment, we have two heaps surrounded by a crude wooden fence.

Tip everything into your dalek (or on your heap) - do NOT compress it (the air spaces are an important part of the process).  If you run out of space in the bin, start another one.

4.  There is a perfect mix, but you don't need to worry about it.

If you start reading up on compost, you'll find all sorts of fancy recipes.  Don't worry if they sound too complicated.

The basic rule is this: use a mixture of different stuff and it will all work out fine.  Don't let one ingredient dominate (apart from weeds, you can have as many of them as you like).  You can speed up the process by mixing up your heap with a fork, but it isn't essential.

If you have all grass clippings and no weeds or woody bits, then approach a neighbour.   They'll be only too glad either to give you an occasional bag of weeds/hedge clippings, or alternatively to take your grass clippings.  I get stuff from three of my neighbours now.


5.  If your compost bin has a lid, water it occasionally.

Heaps don't have lids -they get water from the rain.  They rot down fine.

Daleks have lids (which can help the heat build inside them on a sunny day and kill weed seeds).  Take the lid off now and then and if it looks really dry, chuck in a bucket of water.  This is not a fine art, and it won't be the end of the world if you forget.


6.  Real Compost is lumpy and has twigs in it.

Packets of compost from garden centres are full of fine-grained black stuff (and cost a lot of money).  That's because they have a lot of peat in them.  This fine if you want to grow seeds in trays or acid-loving plants, but for everything else, your home-made stuff will be better.  Peat is very low on nutrients.

How do you know when your compost is ready?  When you can't recognise the original ingredients any more.  (Don't worry about egg shells, just smash them and leave them in - they're good calcium).  The exception is twigs.  You have two options with twigs.  You either leave them in the mix  you're going to spread on your garden (which is what I do with the small ones), or chuck them back in the compost to go around a second time (which is what I do with the bigger ones).  Stuff bigger than twigs should not go into the compost in the first place.  (twigs, if you really want to know, add carbon and help create air space and structure in your compost bin and are a useful part of the process even if they don't rot completely the first time around)

7.  You can use compost almost anywhere.

When you have your compost, lumps, twigs and all, you can either dig it into the soil, if you're preparing a new area, or simply put a layer an inch or two thick on the surface around your plants.  Don't put it right up against the stems - plants know where they think the surface should be and you shouldn't argue with them.  You can spread it under trees, around fruit bushes, between rows of plants, inbetween perennials, anywhere where you think your plants are hungry.

Over the next year, your layer of compost will mysteriously vanish - ready for you to add some more the next year.  And your plants will be bigger, healthier, and crop better.

I notice that Liquid Gold is currently available on Amazon UK for less than £4 including postage.

It's an easy, enjoyable read with amusing notes on the uses of urine throughout history.  It's also very reassuring if you want to use urine on your garden and want to know if it is safe/effective.  The key point is to dilute it, so that it isn't too strong for your plants.

(If anyone wants to know, I pee into an old jug and then pour it into plastic milk bottles for storage and carrying to the allotment.)

Anyone thinking of growing veg for the first time and looking for something easy to try could do a lot worse than grow rocket.



The first rule of growing veg is to grow something you like to eat.

I'm not a massive fan of rocket, but Richard really loves it and will eat it in preference to lettuce every time.  Rocket has a mild peppery flavour.  You can eat it as a salad vegetable or cook it like spinach or use it in pizza recipes.


The second rule is to grow something easy.

Rocket is on of these crops where you put in the seeds, stand back and wait for the plant to hit you.  Okay, maybe not quite that fast, but it is called rocket for a reason..  It germinates quickly, grows quickly, and you can do lots of small sowings for a succession of plants throughout the summer and autumn.  You could also grow it on your windowsill.


How to grow it.

1.  Get seeds (between £1.15 and £2 per pack.  This should be an easy plant to save seed from if you don't want to get new packets every year)

2.  Look at this page (I was going to give instructions, but they'd said almost exactly what I was going to and they have pictures to boot).

3.  Start picking leaves as soon as the plant gets more than six inches tall.  It'll be up to a foot in height before you can blink.  (Sow your second row once the first row has clearly visible tiny plants)

Sometimes, there is just so much hard work on the allotment....

You have to get the entire family to help on occasion.

I mean, quality testing on the strawberries - you wouldn't believe how many you need to sample to be sure the flavour is just right...

And the sheer slog of walking all the way from the kitchen to the back garden to pick raspberries.  I mean, there's so many of the darn things.

And the extra bill for all the cream!

Shocking.

Not to mention the mountain of crisp, mangetout peas that have to be dealt with.  Admittedly, I can't complain that I have to shell them, but I'm sure I'll think of something to complain about if I really work at it.

I know my friends. You're a truly selfless group of people, and I'm sure you'd help out if you could, but I think we can just about manage the struggle on our own...