28/12/25 - Season Changeover
We're nearing the end of the year, but there is no let up in jobs that can be done, or need doing. Since starting the allotment, I've been amazed at how people seemingly all but give up during the winter months and often don't visit their plots for weeks or maybe months on end. To me, that just seems a bit of a waste given that with a bit of thought and planning, an allotment can be used all year, and there's never a shortage of jobs on.
Today has been another dry but chilly day. In the coming weeks I will be starting to sow the first seeds of the Winter at home and once germinated, some of them will be able to be moved up to the polytunnel. So, the first job for the day was to flip the polytunnel from sull on growing mode, into plant nursery mode. We still have crops in the tunnel. Broccoli, which we are in mid harvest, and cauliflower, which will probably start heading up when the warmer temperatures come back. Up until this morning, we also had carrots in the raised bed, but I harvested the last of those which brings our carrot harvest for 2025 to the end. Growing carrots undercover like this has really proved the value of a tunnel though. If we had more room in the tunnel, I'm quite sure that we would be able to grow more and continue harvesting them right through Winter. Anyway, back to flipping the tunnel...
Last year, having the new table at the end of the tunnel to server as a potting bench worked really well and it is something I wanted to repeat for this Winter. So to make room for it, the raised carrot bed needed to come out. I've saved the soil from the bed in some potato buckets so I can use it again in the Spring. After that, anything else that I found that I could do with a bit more room, so in the mini polytunnel, I pulled up the remaining Chinese cabbage. It's been over-run by small slugs in the last couple of weeks, so time for it to go. That left me with some undercover room in which I can store not only the raised bed, but also the soil and our potted olive tree for the Winter. With the table moved in, I could then put up the second piece of suspended staging, ready to accommodate the seed trays. With all that done, the tunnel is now ready but importantly, the crops that are still in there still have room to grow.
With the work inside complete, I had a wander around the rest of the plot and see what else I could tick off the job list. Last week, I pulled up the failed swede that had never really got going, and had started to rot. We still have parsnip in the ground next to it, but now the swede had gone, I gave it a quick weed and then took advantage of the pile of digestate sitting in the carpark, spready a barrow load over half the bed,
The remaining beds that have not been put down for Winter, things are looking really quite good. The sprouting broccoli is doing well. It looks like the whitefly that were still present on the plants have dropped off in number. There are still some signs of it being present, but not as bad as it was. Plus, we have some frosts in the forecast which really should help getting rid of the last.
The garlic bed is looking good. I think there are only 2 or 3 cloves which have not produced anything out of the whole bed. With the arrival of some cold weather, hopefully the development of the plants should continue well.
I also had a close look at the new raspberry canes I put in around a month or so ago. Though they are deemed to be dormant, I was surprised to see the earliest sign of growth on them. The tiniest sign of green growth is already appearing in 2 or 3 points on each cane. There's not much I can do about it I suppose but with Winter so far being reasonably mild I guess I shouldn't be that surprised. Next Autumn, following the first crop, the root ball should be much more established and the instruction for Autumn fruiting varieties is to cut all the canes down to near enough ground level. I guess that will stop this sort of thing happening next year?
The red cabbage which didn't make it to the Christmas table continues to look OK. I can only assume it too has stopped growing for a while so we will wait and see how Winter treats it and if we can still get a good picking from it through the Spring.
One area of the plot which is also standing out nicely at the moment is the garden and pond area. Though much of the growth has died back, I also pruned back some of the wall flowers at the end of the Summer. This created room for one of the longer Flax type plants to bush out a bit. There is a second plant also in the bed, but it is still being pushed out by the wall flowers somewhat. I might see if I can cut back the wall flower a bit more and get the second Flax to come on a bit more. The crocosmia have already started pushing through new green growth so it will also be time to cut back the old seed heads from last years flowers.
With all the rainfall this Autumn, the pond has also really cleared up nicely. I'm reliably informed by some allotment neighbours that there has been life spotted in it, but apparently you have to creep up on it really carefully to see it. We just need to wait and see if any frogs put in an appearance
That was about it for this visit. A few more jobs ticked off the list, but a bundle load more to go. Later this week, I plan on taking the car up and picking up all the pots and seed trays that I've used through the year and bring them back home for washing. I never realised before reading up on allotment good practise that washing your pots and trays is a good idea before using them again. While I'm at it, I'll also bring home the pruning and cutting tools to give them a good clean down and oil as well.
