I know it is late in the season to start planning your allotment year and to start your planting, but for one reason or another this is the position I am in. This weekend I intend to start planting and getting the allotment growing again. I am also looking after Eva, so it will be her first time at the allotment where she can actually ‘help’ with the gardening. I will get her planting a few potatoes if nothing else and the rest of the time she can potter around the allotment and dig in the soil which she will enjoy.
AT the start of 2009 I had a very good idea of what I wanted to do with the allotment, and I had plans drawn up of where I wanted everything to go, although the reality did not stick totally to this plan at least I had a rough idea for the allotment that year.
This year I am struggling, I have only been to the allotment twice this year, and I do not have a formal plan so it is really about time that I put some thought into it. This year I do not expect to be getting too adventurous with the planting, but I do intent to concentrate on the things that did well or that we enjoyed eating last year. After all that is what the allotment should be about.
What I know now:
We are still using the potatoes I grew last year, I will therefore be planting a similar number this year, probably a range of varieties like I did last year, some earlies (if it is not too late) some salads and some main crops. The things that I learned last year was that I needed to label them better, and then store them in bags for each variety rather than pooling all the earlies into one bag, salads into another and main crop in another. This way I will be able to find out which variety we prefer.
I will be planting carrots, probably trying to get more carrots in as we tended to buy quite a few, I did not pick them trying to wait until they were of a larger size, if I planted more then I would be happier to pick them when they were smaller knowing that there were more coming along to grow into the bigger ones that we can store or eat later in the season.
The onions are very much the same. I planted quite a few last year but nowhere near as any as we eat so I could do with planing probably twice as many. We also enjoyed the shallots and so I will be planting twice as many of those as well. Indeed the shallots did really well last year so are a good bet.
Last year I planted a long row of beans, although these grew very well, and fruited very well, I do not think I will grow as many this year. We simply did not eat them so 80% were wasted and went straight in the compost bin. I will plant some french and runner beans but I will probably limit this to a small wigwam of each.
The broccoli did not do anything nor did the dwarf french beans, but I think that I will try again with those as they are both vegetables we like to eat. They may not do anything again this year but then not much will be lost. I will change the way I did the dwarf french beans and start them off in pots before planting them out to see if that makes much difference.
The leeks did very well last year, although many were wasted as they all became ready at the same time, I will try and stagger their planting so that we get some throughout the season.
The Fruit
Last year I was generally happy with the fruit, some of the fruit bushes were in their first year and as such they were just establishing themselves, we will see this year how they do.
We really enjoyed the strawberries, but there were not enough of them so I will be planing some more this year, although they will probably fruit better in their second year. The rhubarb did very well even in its first year after being moved, this year I will just leave them well alone and take fruit as we need it.
One thing I noticed about the fruit cage on the allotment was that although using the space on the ground for the strawberries was a good one for best use of space it proved difficult when harvesting the fruit of both the strawberries and the other fruits,a s you have to squeeze under the netting and do not have much space in the cage its self.
This weekend on the allotment
That all leaves me with the question as to what happens this weekend, my priority it to get the allotment beds prepared for planting, allocate an area in the vegetable plots for the planting of some more strawberries, plant some of the early potatoes, get some carrots and onions in which all in all will probably be a tall order as I also want to do some plastering at home…
I hope to be able to report good things following the weekend.
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