The broad beans are in! On with the list!

Things to Do on Plot 129

With just the broad beans still to plant, Plot 129 will shortly be turning its attention to more mundane tasks - trimming the blackberries, pruning the raspberries, winter digging, and other rather unmemorable things. To help jog the mind, here's the list of Things to Do:

• Trim blackberries and wild rose
• Prune raspberries and damson
• Clean guttering
• Bonfire!
• Clear and winter dig empty beds
• Plat broad beans
• Build and creosote new raised bed (using discarded pallets from the nearby building site)
• Clear area for new greenhouse tent
• Tidy away plant pots
• Prune Darcy Bussell (rose)
• Weed flower garden
• Put away summer structures (garden bench, greenhouse tents)
• Refresh woodchipped areas

November

We're well into November now, and the temperatures have dropped. Last week Plot 129 saw the planting of its largest attempt at garlic so far, with four cloves of Elephant garlic, and about twenty five cloves of a hardneck variety (Carcassonne Wight) going into a freshly dug bed. We've had mixed success with garlic over the years, but hopefully the sheer quantity going in the ground will ensure some edible plants for 2014!

Joining the garlic in the central bed were 50 sets of 'Electric' red onions, and around 100 white onions, ready for spring. Left in the ground these should develop into good cooking onions, but also promise a spring onion crop if picked early.

One of this years failures was the asparagus - apparently very unhappy at being moved into raised beds, most of the plants died off and didn't sprout at all this spring. Clearing out the bed, it became clear that fennel had done its best to colonise as much as possible. Whilst I love a good cup of fennel tea, we don't have quite as much application for fennel as asparagus, so the fennel had to go. Nine crowns of Connover's Colossal have gone in, in place of the fennel, and fingers have been crossed.

Other additions include a new 'Champagne' rhubarb, and lots of spring, summer and autumn bulbs (Autumnale Album and Water Lily colchicum and Conqueror autumn crocus , as well as snowdrops, gladioli and lillies) and this year Plot 129 is experimenting with winter planted peas - a variety called Meteor, which promises winter hardiness, dwarf habits, and tasty, early cropping. We'll see if theory matches practice in six months time...

Still to go in the ground are just the broad beans, having missed the window for green manure, and the poppies Plot 129 has been promising itself for years. There's also a lot of structural work to do, some of which can take place even as the temperature continues to fall. Oh joy!

Harvest!

It's been a while since Plot 129's last blog post, but it hasn't been quiet on the plot. The raspberries have been producing steadily over the summer, and we've had a proliferation of beans, beetroot, lettuce, Italian kale, chard, potatoes, spinach, shallots and raddish. The blackberry season came early, and produced a wonderful crop of enormous, juicy fruit, and the tomatoes also did well for quantity, although their refusal to ripen has dictated the production of a large quantity of green tomato chutney! This year also marked the first in five that one of the gooseberry bushes has fruited, so all round, a good year for soft fruit.

Italian kale

It's been a pretty good harvest in general this year, although the onions suffered with the weather and haven't grown particularly well. A particular highlight was eating our first sweetcorn - we will definitely be planting more sweetcorn next year.

 

 Some of this season's other lessons learned for 2014 are:

• Plant more shallots!
• Plant a lot more beans than you need as they don't all sprout.
• Plant fewer yellow courgette plants!
• Don't over fill the raised beds, as smaller growing plants such as carrots and beetroot can get overshadowed and stunted by larger neighbours.
• Build more raised beds.
• Grow tomatoes in a greenhouse environment. (Obvious, now I think about it?!)

 Autumn is setting in now, and the temperatures are dropping. We've been promised a frost tonight, so some last-minute crops were brought in, and rhubarb, asparagus and red currant bushes planted, ready for the spring. Plot 129 is experimenting with a mycorrhizal fungi (Thompson & Morgan's 'Rootgrow', to be precise), which promises to help plants develop a secondary mycorrhizal root system, giving increased access to nutrients and water - we'll see what happens next year!

Growth spurt

I managed to get a good six hours on the plot today, weeding, strimming and planting. The raised beds continue to do well, as do the courgettes, herbs, beans and brassica, but the onions are taking a long time to recover from the intense warmth and lack of water over the last few weeks, and many of the raspberries have dried up in the heat. The potatoes look fantastic though, and today I was able to harvest lettuce, French beans, beetroot, potatoes (early crop), courgette, some raspberries and gooseberries.

Whilst Plot 129 warmly welcomes most wildlife (the lavender for the bees seems to have gone down very well) an unwanted recent visitor has been digging holes everywhere, and has also dug up about half the carrots in the raised bed. Badgers do dig up carrots looking for carrot fly larvae, but the carrots didn't show any sign of badger investigations. Tempting though it is to blame Plot 129's black-and-white nemesis, the jury is still out on the culprit...

Carrot devastation

 In other wildlife news, I was very happy to see many more butterflies on the plot today than I've seen in ages. The most apparent species were Red Admirals, with Cabbage Whites an unsurprising second.

Jerusalem artichoke

The five Jerusalem artichoke corms that I purchased this spring have yielded just the one plant, leaving me with half an unplanted bed. With various seed packets due to expire this year, I thought I'd experiment with planting squash a little late in the spare ground. Fingers crossed they sprout! I've also filled in the bean beds with a mixture of nearly-expired left-over bean and pea seeds, in case they are still viable, and filled in the dead onion areas with a new sowing of mixed raddishes.

The lovely colours of Chard

Sweetcorn

Tomatoes

Bergamot

Sunflowers, with my neighbour's beans (much better than mine!) in the background

Lettuce profusion

July Heatwave

It's been three weeks since I was able to visit the plot properly, and during this time the UK has been experiencing a lengthy heatwave. I suspected that a barren, dried-up wasteland awaited me, but much to my surprise many plants have coped extremely well - none more so than those in the raised beds, despite my fears that they would have been amongst the first areas to dry out. The beds were filled with a mixture of soil and heavy recycled compost, and it seems as though this was an ideal mixture for retaining the water. The lettuce looked fantastic, and I was able to pick my first crop of baby beetroot from one of the beds.

Beetroot, purple raddish and yellow courgette

The ground-level hyssop-edged bed, planted with cabbages and cauliflower, also seem to have thrived in the heat, as have the sweetcorn, beans and herbs (especially the mint, pictured left). The courgette plants look healthy, although they probably needed more water to fruit successfully - I was able to pick a couple of courgettes, and there are plenty more coming. The onions seem to have struggled with the dry spell, however, not competing well with the weeds for water, and the potatoes are showing signs of wilting too.

As you probably know, there's no water source at the allotments, other than the river, and what we can collect in water butts from shed roofs. I've also sunk an old, cracked water butt to create a mini well, which is great for the spring but absolutely no use at this time of year, when the water table drops. This may have been a blessing in disguise, however, as we've recently had news that diesel has leaked into the groundwater from a nearby building site, and elevated levels of hydrocarbons have been found in the wells. The building site has kindly put in a tap for us with mains water so that we're not reliant on ground water, and I'm happy to report that the tap has been sited exactly opposite the entrance to plot 129! so I spent a happy and soggy hour or two collecting buckets of lovely fresh water and liberally watering all the surviving plants!

Clematis

Cut-and-come-again lettuce, looking wonderful despite the intense heat

The very surprising raised beds

Shallots, with yellow courgettes to the rear

Today has been a good day - lots of weeding, lots of planting, and lots of harvesting! We left the plot with bunches of raddish, lettuce and herbs, enough to keep us occupied with cooking tomorrow.

Weatherwise, we've had nearly everything except hail and snow today. Temperatures averaged out at about 16 degrees during the day, but the wind was strong enough to bend the radish stalks over, and the rain heavy enough to  knock gooseberries off the bush. A beautiful double rainbow made us feel a lot better about the soakings we sustained.

Although its still a little early I planted out the sweetcorn this afternoon. I'm  off walking Hadrian's Wall for the next couple of weekends, and so now is the last opportunity before mid-July to get them in the ground. They haven't hardened off, but they have been planted under a mesh polytunnel, which should keep off insects, and the worst of the weather. Last year the badgers took all my sweetcorn, and so this year I'm hedging my bets - some will go into the new raised beds, and some have been planted in the ground, nearly as far from the garden entrance as possible. I also planted out some kale, having also grown them from seed in the greenhouse. My neighbour Victor gave me a top tip which I'm trying out this year - planting the new seedlings with toilet roll cores around them to prevent slug attacks. I'm really hoping this works as my cabbages and cauliflowers have been decimated by slugs this year.

In other news, most of the onions are doing well, the potatoes look great (the earlies should be ready to harvest once I'm back from the trek), but the beans are doing terribly - only about four of the thirty-six bean seeds have sprouted. I've a few runner beans growing on in the greenhouse so I can supplement the canes a little, but I suspect this year is going to be a Bean Failure.

The raised beds are the success of the year so far, sneaking top spot from the clematis, which really seem to have enjoyed the cooler weather. Other highlights are the Red Hot Pokers, and the marigolds, which are adding beautiful splashes of colour already. Thanks to Ewan for the pics...

 Lettuce bonanza

 Proto carrots...

 Bee central.

Well this, as Firefox might say, is embarrassing! It appears that a whole year has elapsed since the Plot 129 blog was updated. A combination of appalling weather to close 2012's growing season, equally awful weather to start 2013's,  plus technical difficulties put the gardener off reflecting on progress, and only the produce picked today has cheered her up enough to begin posting again:
Raddishes!

So what's new since June 2012? Well, Plot 129 now has a well - desperation at the constant need to cycle water two miles from home and the dearth of water butts (now resolved, I'm happy to say!) persuaded me to sink an old, cracked water butt as far down as possible. Down by the Thames, its not hard to reach the water table, and so this has been more effective than you might think. The addition of heavy stones on the lid to stop animals falling in has made it a perfect resource. We also have two wonderful new raised beds (4'x6'x2') that have made all the difference to root vegetable planting - for the first time in five years Plot 129 is well on the way to producing edible crops of carrots, parsnips and lettuce (not, of course, a root vegetable, but also vulnerable to ground predators). We're also trying some new varieties this year - Jerusalem artichokes went in about three weeks ago, and we have cucumelons, aubergine and lots of sweetcorn growing on in the greenhouse.

As of today, we also have early and late potatoes (King Edward) growing successfully, plus lots of onions (Centurion, Red Baron and Stuttgart Giant), mild shallotts, green and yellow courgettes, spinach, rocket and garden peas happily in the ground. The cabbages and cauliflowers met an early and catastrophic slug attack, but appear to be making a fine recovery, and have been planted round with Cabbage-White-butterfly-defying Hyssop. The 2012 Hyssop plants overwintered well, and have been supplemented with another 10, so Plot 129 is crossing its green fingers that the plants continue to deter the pests.

Other pest-control measures this year include the enthusiastic planting of marigolds around the vegetable plots. I'm not at all sure if they work, but they look very nice.

If I were to fill in the details of all the changes and planting that have taken place this year, this would be a very long post! So instead I shall try to blog a little, often, and keep a better record of Plot 129 in 2013! Happy gardening, all!