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Field Allotments Hixon
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By Mrs FM
Hartley.
Unusual
& Old
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Alan J Hartley
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A New Growing Season.
This Season March has been one of the sunniest and driest on record and
I have been making the most of all the good days to get an assortment of
jobs done. It has been such a dry start to the Season that the ground
has baked hard like it does sometimes in the Summer Months, whereas,
normally, we can have a wet Spring with our traditional April Showers.
It has been good for hoeing though. It has not been good for Seed Sowing
directly in the ground though with the lack of moisture in the Soil, but
the dry weather hasn’t stopped the Weed Seeds from germinating. However,
I did manage to get both plantings of Broad Beans off to a good start,
although they are not growing and bulking out the way they should be by
now. The Flowers are coming, but the Plants remain much smaller than
normal.
I did plant a lot of tiny Onion Sets that I was given by a
fellow Plot Holder, but I have been having to water them to get them to
start into growth. Hopefully, when they root down and start shooting
properly, they won’t need watering so much, even if it stays dry, as
surprisingly, Onions come from the warmer and drier parts of Asia.
My Sea Kale Harvest was short lived with the Crowns developing their
Flower Heads very quickly, due I think, to the dry conditions. I did
manage to harvest several big bagful’s of Stems though, but not as many
as usual. However, with the dry weather, there were virtually no Snails
on the Plants! Growing in what are normally damp and dark conditions,
under the upturned Buckets, Snails can be a real problem for the Plants,
but not this year. Our English Asparagus Season traditionally starts on
St Georges Day which is 23rd April! This is another plant that will
stand dry conditions as long as it gets an occasional drenching, so we
will have to see how it does. Mine seem to be a little slow in shooting
as of writing this with another Plot Holder having beaten me this year
by having her first picking already. The Globe Artichokes are very slow
to come into growth as well which again I must put down to the dry
conditions as they do like a lot more moisture in the ground. I do mulch
them from time to time though to add Humus to the soil around them as
this helps to retain some moisture and improve their growing conditions
a bit, but it has still been too dry for them.
As April got under way I put in Seeds of Courgettes, Squash, Outdoor
Cucumbers, etc and around Mid April, I put in my Runner, Borlotti and
Dwarf French Beans. These all went into Pots and Trays in my Greenhouse
to start them off where they would get a bit of guaranteed warmth and
moisture. They will not be needed until around Mid May, so should have
plenty of time to come up and develop as they normally reckon that it
takes about a Month from Seed Sowing to decent pot sized plants. I also
potted up my Tomato Seedlings that are intended for planting out at
about the same time. These had been sown a little earlier as they reckon
that it takes about 6 Weeks for Tomato Seeds to reach planting out size.
About Mid-April I also sowed my Parsnip Seed. However, I put these
directly in the Bed on my Plot where they are to grow. Some people
transplant them, but it was always said that transplanting Root
Vegetables like Parsnips, Beetroot, Swede and Turnips is likely to make
them “Fork.” They now understand that “Forking,” can be due to a number
of factors such as stoney Soil and fresh fertilizer in the ground.
However, although I do transplant Beetroot, Swede and Turnips after
first sowing them in Plug Trays in my Greenhouse, I still don’t
transplant Parsnips.
Apart from growing some of the vegetables in my Greenhouse I also potted
on both batches of cuttings that I had taken from a couple of lovely
ornamental Grasses that I had obtained back in the late Autumn. The
compact Blue Grass had come on much quicker than the tougher leaved,
variegated one, but I was still pleased with the end results, because I
now have a number of plants that are different to any that I have grown
before for our Plant Sale. When I bought the two original Pots, they
were not very big, or impressive, but I carefully split the root balls
to give me a quantity of part rooted cuttings. These went into Plug
Trays for a few weeks to grow on and I still have some of the original
root balls to plant in my Garden. Most people buy Plants and don’t see
the potential of splitting/dividing them to give them more Plants. Quite
often when planting up a space you want several of the same thing for
impact and this can cost a fortune as plants can be so expensive in
Garden Centres these days. So it is always worthwhile buying plants that
you can split and it has always got to be cheaper.
This Year I put in more Potatoes than I normally do, partly because the
prices seem to have gone up so much making it more worthwhile to grow
them and partly because this year I will have more growing space with
the acquiring of my new flower beds. I always put my Potatoes in earlier
than everybody says you should, but usually I get away with it by
earthing up the tops to protect them from any late Frosts. They seem to
have come up very quickly though this time and are still doing well. A
lot of people like to grow Potatoes in Large Tubs of one sort or another
and that is just what a friend of mine is doing. I was going to help her
fill 3x Large Tubs, but just as we were about to fill them, I realised
that they didn’t have any drainage holes in them. People often use a
range of Tubs of one sort, or another, like Garden Trugs and things, to
grow Potatoes in and some are not really suitable if they are not made
with drainage holes. If you don’t put any Holes in, Plants may well end
up sitting in a Bog Garden! I don’t have a Battery-Operated Drill, so I
used an old-fashioned Brace and Bit to make the Holes, but as the
plastic of the Tubs was quite thin, it only took a couple of minutes to
do the job.
With the dry Weather I took the opportunity to Re-felt the Roof of my
friend’s Shed and Re-align the Guttering so that the Rainwater tub might
fill a bit better – if we ever have any Rain this year! She also wants
to replace some of the thin panelling that covers the Shed before she
paints it. Quite a few of the thin lengths are starting to break up on
her old Shed, but she feels that it will be cheaper to do a bit of work
on it than replace the whole Shed with a new one. Like so many things,
the price of Sheds seems to have sky-rocketed in recent years and the
old ethos of Allotment Gardening is to “Make do and mend.”.
On my own Plot I finally decided to remove my Liquorice Bed. It has been
in the same place for a number of years and the Plant hasn’t grown very
well recently, so I dug it up as best as I could, because they are quite
deeply rooted, and then cut up the roots into 4, or 5 inch lengths,
before potting them. Basically, the idea is the same as taking “Root
Cuttings,” that you can do for some garden herbaceous, perennials, which
is really what a Licourice Plant is. Roots will sprout new shoots from
dormant Buds in the right conditions. They do spread underground like
this and they can be difficult to control, but I planted mine in a Bed
that had been dug out and lined with a tough and impervious membrane.
Growing it was for a bit fun and it was interesting to come to realise
that the Roots are yellow inside and not black like the Sweets.
Apparently, it is the black Molasses that are added in the processing,
that give Licorice Sweets their jet, black colour. The Pots of Roots
were put in my Greenhouse to encourage them into growth and indeed some
are shooting already.
Other maintenance jobs that I have done recently include re-laying some
Slabs on my Plot. I changed a couple of narrow Slabs for wider ones to
straighten up a Path and put some Stepping Stones in my Chrysanthemum
Bed, between the rows, to make it a little easier for cutting the
Flowers later on. The stepping stones came from some half Slabs that I
got cheaply from Work along with a few odd offcuts that I found.
Re-arranging the Slabs on my Plot freed up a few bigger, more useful
ones so that I could put a few down for a friend on her Plot. She had
bought 2 new, and large 2ft x2ft ones to use. However, they were thinner
than the old Council ones that you used to get and when I jumped on one
to settle it down, it broke straight down the middle! It just goes to
show that nothing seems to be made to the same quality that it was in
years gone by!
Bought Tree Posts only seem to last for 3, or 4 years on my Plot,
although they are supposedly guaranteed for 20 years. (Incidentally, I
have never tried to taking an old, rotten Post back to get it replaced
under guarantee!) This year though, I am trying the old-fashioned idea
of cutting my own Posts from Trees instead of buying them. I am sure
that they will last just as long and are obviously much cheaper with
bought posts costing anything from £5 to nearly £10 each. I Put in 3
Posts. One for my Mashua, one to replace a rotten one that was
supporting one of my Apple Trees and I put one in for my Friend to
support a Windbreak for her. The Posts were cut from Hazel Trees that I
had Coppiced at work. They were too thick for Bean Poles so I paid a
pound each for them and took them home. I tried putting a Point on them
and hammering them in, but it was far better to dig them in. Put in far
enough they were still quite firm though.
My Friend had brought some old Half Round Fence Rails from the Stables
where she keeps her Horse. The idea was to cut them up and make some
Pegs for both her and my, edging boards. In the past I have always
bought, thin pressure treated, lengths of 2inch x 1inch timber, but it
doesn’t last. The hope is that the thicker Fence Rail will last a
longer.
Doing all of these maintenance jobs and Potting, I nearly forgot to
prune my Grape Vines, Figs and Buddleias and ended up doing them a bit
late - at the end of March instead of the end of February. I don’t think
it will matter though as even this late in April, they are only just
starting to shoot. However, the Blossom seems to be appearing on all the
different Trees which really signifies the start of a new growing
Season. Lots of other things are happening as well now and we are going
headlong into a new Allotment Year.
 
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