9/3/25 - Bringing Structure and Sowing
This weekend has been awesome for the allotment and the garden. Even since my last update from Thursday, we have got so much done both on the allotment and at home. Let's kick off this update with a weekend overview, under the watchful eye of the Gnome Collective looking on from the Gnome Terrace.
General Synopsis
Weather: Lovely. Dry, warm (16 ish), no wind, no frost. Caught the sun and come home with rosy red face and arms after working two afternoons on the plot.
Allensmore (local nurseries and suppliers to some of the country's major garden centres, had one of it's impromptu sales at the gates of their premises this weekend. You can often pick up plants for 30% or greater off the retail value you would expect to pay elsewhere. It's a great way of them getting rid of gluts of plants that otherwise they haven't been able to shift. So, this weekend, we've picked up 4 Hellebores in full flower, two roses and a Dahlia. Most of them have already been planted out, with just one of the roses left to go. It's a patio rose, so we will be on the hunt for a large pot for that.
On the sharing bench at the allotment, a member also left quite a collection of Gladioli corns too. Some of them also came home with me, and have ended up buried in the garden somewhere. The problem is that recently, we have bought and had given to us so many plants and rhizomes that I've forgotten where half of them are now planted. Our garden is going to look so random in the Summer!
Sowings and Seedlings
Also heading for a space in the polytunnel have been the Bedfordshire Champ emergency sowings of onions. There are two 1/4 tray gone up and hopefully they will continue to grow on strong so I can prick them out in the coming weeks. The second sowing of leeks have also made their way too.
The first sowings of White Lisbon salad onions have germinated well, and are continuing to grow albeit it slowly. I've sown a second trough of the same White Lisbon onions and left them to germinate in the polytunnel, with a view of moving both the troughs out come April.
In a first for this season, I've also been doing some direct sowing. This weekend, the covers have come off half of one bed where the parsnips are going to live this year. Previously, I've sown parsnip in rows, but I always forget to thin them out. This year, I've spaced them out, and dropped two seeds into each hole, so thinning should be nice and easy.
Along with the parsnips, having a polytunnel for this growing season has allowed me to get our first early potatoes (Charlotte) into their tubs. I put a couple of spades of rotted manure in bottom of each tub, followed by compost until the tubs were half full. Then I added a bit of blood, fish and bone, before setting 3 seed potatoes in each tub and filling the top half with more compost. All 4 tubs are now sitting in the polytunnel and will probably get moved out in around late April. They should be ready to harvest in around 12 weeks or so, but as usual, I'll take the lead off the foliage.
Harvest
The good thing that I managed to do towards the end of last year, was to pick up some plants that really may have struggled to grow outside, but I kept them undercover for most of the winter, and when things allowed, I planted some of these plants in the mini polytunnel. The broccoli is now coming to be harvested. There isn't a massive amount, but it's still good to be able to take something home for the plate each week. Towards the end of this year, I hope to be a bit more prepared for winter growing and produce much more through the winter.
Structures
To round the weekend off, I decided to get some early jobs done while the weather has been nice. It will be some time before I consider putting out peas, beans and cucumber plants, but there is no reason why I can't get the structures in place, ready for them. This also means I have been able to free up some space in the mini polytunnel, and also finally deal with the heras fencing I've had stashed away at the back of the plot all winter.
The peas structure is now in place. To get it in, I've had to remove the ground cover, but the ground is looking good, even though the mole has been having a bit of a mooch about during the winter period!
The next structure is for my climbing beans. When we took over the half plot next to our current one in September '04, the previous tenant left his bean support structure in place. After making sure he definitely didn't want it, I took it down and stored it for the winter. The main metal framework is now in place, but I won't add the pegs and rope until it's planting time. As I've only got one of these structures, I will also have to build a more traditional tepee for the other half of the bed, but again that will wait until planting time.
The final structure build also took the most effort. I need a cucumber trellis, and it's always been the intention of using the heras fencing to make one in one form or another. I broke the fence panel down into two long poles, two short poles and the trellis section during the winter months. The shorter poles are now used on the crop bars in the polytunnel. I cut down the trellis to the right size for the length of the bed I wanted to use it on. Then, the two long poles needed cutting down to a more manageable length. As I didn't have a ladder, or enough reach to hammer the poles into the ground, I dug down instead, and set them in place in holes. Then, the trellis was trimmed further to move any sharp pieces sticking out before being tied into place. I will need to revisit to make a better job of attaching the trellis to the upright poles, but for now, they are up and look good. I also had another spare metal pole on the plot, so I used that to add some additional support in the middle.
There's still a ton of things on the job list for March, so I expect I'll end up doing a few bits and bobs after work during this week. It's getting busier and busier!
