Allotment Working Party

Here are some pictures from the Working Party held last Saturday.

Moon faces

My blogs about planting according to the moon phases have always been after the event.

It was suggested that I might provide some early warning of the moon phases for planting so that others, should they wish, would be able to do the same.

Now it would be simple enough to buy a biodynamic calendar, but why waste your money ! All you need to do is log onto the The Gardeners Calendar website where they have a complete guide to planting by the moon, with details of what to plant (and what not to) for the coming seven days.

Click here to go there now.

Asparagus me, domine

My asparagus crowns arrived today from Simpsons Seeds and Heather and I went straight down to the patch to plant them in the bed we had prepared earlier in the year.

The variety we are growing is Dariana, an F1 hybrid that has been bred in France to compete with the more popular varieties that have come out of The Netherlands.

According to the blurbs, Dariana is high yielding and will produce straight, high quality spears of superb flavour.

There is some suggestion that growing tomato plants alongside asparagus will help reduce the risk of asparagus beetle. The scent of the tomato plants, apparently, confusing the beetle's homing instinct !

We have been growing an interesting variety of tomato from seed : Galina . This variety has been bred in Siberia to produce a very hardy, golden-yellow cherry of fantastic flavour.

We have put four Galina plants that have been previously hardened-off alongside the asparagus bed, but under a cloche . We will also plant out some more without cloche protection when the risk of frost has passed and then compare the results.

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Flyaway !

This is our plan to protect our carrots from carrot root fly. We have screened the area where carrots have been sown with a fine mesh at about 3' high with the base buried into the soil.

The rationale here is that the flightpath of carrot root fly is a maximum of 12" above the ground, so when they try to attack our carrots they will bounce off the mesh.

Of course, with the money spent on these defences we could have bought up the entire stock of carrots from Tesco... but this is a war of attrition and, we insist, money well spent !

The rest of The Patch is looking reasonable. The picture below shows our Autumn sown Peas and Broad Beans with a few spring sown plants to fill in gaps. The cardboard tubes are protecting our Celery plants and will (hopefully !) encourage them to produce long blanched stems. Beyond this is our Autumn sown Garlic, Onions and Shallots.

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Arbour lights

A very pleasant morning down at The Patch with the sun shining and the birds singing !

The arbour in front of the shed has been constructed and trellis has been added to the sides to support the crops that we are going to grow up and over it.

The plastic chairs will be replaced with a bench and we will then sit in the shade on a sunny day and watch the world go by.

Heather sowed a few more Beetroot seeds where an earlier sowing had left some gaps and we tidied up the Raspberries removing some of the weaker plants and replacing them with some more vigorous ones that we had planted as 'extras' last Autumn.

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Going back to my roots...

The moon is in Virgo, which is an Earth sign, so today is a good time to be planting and sowing root crops.

The weather forecast said rain this morning, but it had stopped raining earlier and so, with the sun shining, we took the opportunity to spend the day down on The Patch.



Heather & I sowed Carrot (Autumn King) and Parsnip (Countess) and then planted our maincrop Potatoes : Cara and Desiree. However, we were left short of seed potatoes and decided to take a trip to RHS Wisley where we found they were selling 2.5 kg nets for £2.50 !

Having bought some second early Anya, (a cross between Desiree and Pink Fir Apple) we drove back to the allotment and planted them up. I also sowed another row of Carrots, this time the variety being Purple Haze. As the name suggests, these carrots have a rich purple skin and a deep orange flesh which will look great when cut in to strips for crudites.

By way of experiment, we have sown half a row of Fennel Pronto. Using the moon phase planting method it is not supposed to be a good time to sow this veg. The remaining half a row will be sown when the Moon is in Scorpio and we will then see which half is the more successful.


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Little Wooden Hut

'I wouldn't leave my little wooden hut for you.

I've got one lover, and I don't want two.
What might happen there is no knowing,
If she comes around, so you'd better be a-going,
For I wouldn't leave my little wooden hut for you!'

The shed was delivered yesterday and we spent a sunny afternoon erecting it.

All we need to do now is attach the roofing felt, glaze the windows, hang the wallpaper, fit the curtains, install cooker etc. etc.
























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