Home brewing antics can now be found at my other blog; http://gettinggrist.blogspot.com/

Wednesday 13 April 2011

Allotment - April

All the seeds I'm sowing for 2011 are sown. Okay, I'll be doing some successional sowings of carrots, so there will be more to come, but other than those, everything's done. I told you things were going to be easier this year :)

Since my last allotment post I've planted the remainder of my potatoes. Four rows of cara and four rows of cara red.

I've also sown the remainder of my squash seeds. These were sown into pots at the end of March and the interesting thing is, these have already caught up with the plants which were sown at the end of February. So, there really is no point sowing too early.

The two early ones are the pair at the back of the table, while the group of four in the foreground on the right, were planted three weeks later. If anything, the later sowings look stronger.

The four smaller plants on the left were sown by my five-year-old (can't remember when) and I'll have to find room for two of these on the plot somewhere.

As well as the squash, I've also sown my sweetcorn (Honey Bantam). These go into home made paper pots, so they can be transplanted without disturbance when the times comes. I also rehydrate the seed slightly before sowing - I put some kitchen towel on a small plate, add water so the paper towel is sodden, then spread the seed on top and leave overnight before sowing the next day.

In the same paper pots I've sown a few dwarf runner beans (Hestia), which I'm going to grow in a strawberry planter at home.

One veg our little'un really loves is cucumber, so I've also sown a few of those. They're a variety I picked up in France last year, suitable for outdoor growing (I think), and I'll be interested to see how they get on.

I was going to give courgettes a miss this year, but couldn't resist as I had some spare seed - another variety I picked up in France. I'll keep a maximum of two plants and find room for them somewhere.

On the plot, the hops have also made an appearance and it wont be long before they are scaling my new hop frames. Can't wait.

Oh, and in the garden at home, we've planted a few Juneberry plants. I know nothing about them, other than the blurb in the plant catalogue (I think Juneberry is the european name - our US friends know them as Saskatoon). I don't expect too much from them this year, but we'll see...

3 comments:

  1. your way ahead of me, i started of well a month ago but its drifted abit recently, but going down now. My seeds are very slow this year might need to do second sowings on a few things.
    Out cucumbers have done well the last 2 years, i've trained them up a bit fence leaning at 45deg against a wall to keep them off the ground, and thats worked well, my boy loves them too. i blog here about the allotment.
    http://caustic-daydreams.blogspot.com/

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  2. I was really on top of sowing a month ago but I seem to have got left behind a tad now... All being well I'll catch up at the weekend when some of the seedlings taking up all my greenhouse space find their way up to the allotment. :)

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  3. Lack of space is a real pain. I know I'm not doing so much this year but I don't have the luxury of a greenhouse, so my seedlings are taking up all available windowsills! At least while the weather's good, they can stay outside during the day.

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