25/1/25 - Bare Root Strawbs

Good evening, and welcome to this weekends allotment diaries round up.  Though the plot itself is relatively quiet, and waiting for the weather to warm up, the polytunnel is already starting to come into it's own with some signs of life coming through.  Another storm system has whipped it's way across the country, but the polytunnel and hooped tunnel have stood up to it well with no damage reported!  So, let's get stuck in.

Buying Stuff

During the week, I've been spending a few more pennies to carry on preparations for the coming growing season.  Kicking things off, we have the strawberries.  These were not on my radar initially, but now the tunnel is up, I've followed in the footsteps of numerous YouTube growers and decided to grow some strawberries under cover.  A few years ago, I tried growing strawberries from seed, and while successful, they were lifted from the plot after only one season and moved to a flower bed at home for their second season.  We did get a second reasonable crop from them, but the slugs had the better of them.  First on the weeks shopping list, 20 bare root strawberry plants.  10 Elsanta and 10 Cambridge Favourite.

Of course, I also needed something to grow them in and to make best use of the crop bars during the main growing season, what better that some cheap hanging baskets?  Added to the basket, 10 of those!

As I'm getting used to the layout of the polytunnel I'm also beginning to visualise how it will look at different stages of the year.  In one corner, there is some space which I haven't turned to growing bed space.  It lends itself really nicely to some shelves.  Have you seen the price on some aluminium greenhouse shelves and staging?  Staggering!  The answer was a cheap little greenhouse.  The type you may have on a balcony, or a patio during the summer months when the weather is a bit more stable.  Given it will live inside the polytunnel, it should last quite a while, and give me four nice sized shelves.  One of those, added to the basket.

It doesn't stop there.  I had an idea.  One that involves sowing yet more seeds.  As any allotment owner will tell you, you can never have enough seed cell trays.  I have a nice collection of Containerwise cell trays coming together, and this week, added to the shopping basket were some 30 cell trays to add to the collection.

Finally for the shopping basket, something I have been lacking in the compost tray was a small compost trowel.

No more spending on the allotment or polytunnel this month.  Promise....

Weekly Temperatures

Generally the weather has been pretty average this week, with the only thing of note happening being another storm coming through bringing mainly strong winds to the area along with a bit of rain.  Temperatures inside the tunnel have maxed out at a pleasant 25.5 degrees at some point, but also dipping down to -1.3

Planting The Strawberries

After all the buying and the deliveries turning up throughout the week, I needed to get the strawberry plans potted up as soon as I could.  I assume they are in some sort of dormant phase at the moment, so light and moisture are probably not really important at the moment.  Still, it's nice to get their feet into some dirt.  The mix I used to plant them into consisted of 50% peat free potting compost from the local nursery (which I believe they buy from Melcourt, but it comes in a unbranded bag), 50% of an older peat based compost which I have left over from a couple of years ago, and then final a reasonable sprinkling of blood, fish and bone.  I've gone with two plants per hanging basket, although they're supposed to have 30cm of space each.  I'm sure they'll be fine.

Putting The Mini Greenhouse Up

For this visit, the next thing I wanted to do was get the mini greenhouse put together so I could use the shelf space.  At the moment, I don't have anything running between the crop bars where I can hang all the strawberry baskets, so the new shelves are a great place to keep them for the time being.

Rounding Off

To wrap up this update, there is continued though slow germination on the lettuce sown for cut and come again a few weeks ago.  But there is definite movement though.  No sign of germination on the sweet peas or White Lisbon salad onions.

Back at home, on the window sill, the Ailsa Craig first sowing of onions have come on OK, but it look like some of them are dying off already.  This weekend I will be reading about when they should be potted on into their own cells.  Elsewhere, the Red Cherry tomato seedlings have produce their next set of leaves, so it will soon be time to transfer them into their own cells too.  And finally, we have some good germination of the second sowing of Ailsa Craig onions and Black Beauty aubergine.  I'll need to monitor those and see when I will need to think about pricking those out.

In the garage, I have put together a small light rig which I used for a short time last year, and also dusted off the heated propagator.  I also have at least one (possibly two) heat mats somewhere, but I can't find them at the moment.  Hopefully I will have time soon to get all this up and running, ready to accept it's first seedlings when I need to move them on.

Thanks as ever for sticking with me in these allotment diary entries.  There's so much more to do as the start of the growing season quickly approaches.  Happy growing all!