One of the amazing things about having the allotment is seeing how much it changed and burst into life over the summer. Well if summer was a 100m sprint autumn is more like a gentle stroll through the park. The allotment is slowly putting on it’s winter coat in the form of lots of rotted manure on the beds, followed by the sowing of some green manure.
The idea with green manure is that you plant it whenever you have bare soil. It quickly grows and you either dig it in straight away to provide some extra humus to the soil or you can leave it to help smother weeds and prevent rain from leaching away the good stuff in your soil over winter. We are leaving ours in over winter, which has the added bonus of giving our plot some much needed colour over winter.
We didn’t really have much to do today. We harvested some beetroot for tea (three types!) and a few peppers, tomatoes and chillies, tied up the apple tree (thanks to Pilla’s old tights!), fed the greenhouse plants and that was about it. Home in time to watch the derby.
I was delighted to harvest my first compost yesterday – it’s at least four years old, and looks good.
Hi to both of you,
Just wondering what winter veg you had on your plot at the moment and what changes you may be planning for next year.
Neil.
Hi Neil!
Our winter veg consists of squash and pumpkin, parsnips and curly kale. We had planted cauliflowers and red cabbages but to be honest these haven’t been hugely successful. The cauli was doing really well and forming nice curds (which we were chuffed with as it is notoriously difficult to grow your own) but then in the space of about a week they went to seed sending sprounting bits all over the place! The red cabbages succumbed to slugs/snails despite netting them. However, we do have good stores of onions, shallots, garlic and beetroot and still have lots of tomatoes, peppers, chillies, courgettes and sweetcorn to last us a good while yet with some planning.
As for changes for next year, we do want to try again with the brassicas, we think we will just have to be a bit better at looking after the red cabbage and savoy seedlings (which this year never made it into the ground as they were so spindly!) and use finer netting. We weren’t very vigilant with our purple sprouting broccoli either. It did really well but we weren’t quick enough at harvesting so a lot went to seed, so will persist next year but be a bit more on the ball.
A few things we wouldn’t bother with, such as the caulis (too much space, not enough return!) and fewer runner beans (only so many two people can eat!) will make way for more sweetcorn, potatoes and other things that we really got lots of use from.
Think the best advice is don’t go growing too many unusual things or too much at once, make sure it’s stuff you will actually use. Secondly just plan in advance as the growing season comes around quickly and can be a bit manic, it is such a shame to realise you missed the time for planting as you spend the rest of the time catching up!
Happy planting, let us know how you get on!