I've now harvested both beds of potatoes and the onions so I'm starting to think about my crop rotation. I know that brassica's ideally go into the bed where the legumes have been but I haven't really grown many this season so I've put kale and cauliflower into one of the potato beds. I will plant my onion sets and garlic in the next couple of weeks into my second potato bed and then in the spring I'll plant only one bed of potatoes into the onion bed. In the meantime therefore I'm going to get a good layer of manure and compost onto that bed and cover it ready for spring. I've also decided that the 3 sisters weren't really successful for me and so I'm going to have just a bed of peas and beans (where I currently have the sweetcorn and pumpkins but didn't really manage to grow any peas) and then I'll have a bed of sweetcorn and pumpkins next to the flower bed.
I have already started to collect the insides of toilet rolls to plant my peas, sweetcorn and sweetpeas. I've seen some negative comments about using toilet rolls but it has been my experience that they are very useful if treated correctly. Peas, sweetpeas and sweetcorn do not like their roots disturbing so if you don't have a deep root trainer the toilet rolls work perfectly well. Snip about an inch up around the bottom in 5 places and then fold the bottoms in. Fill with compost and put them into a gravel tray with a thick layer of newspaper (or some capillary matting) and keep the paper very wet but not sitting in water. That way the cardboard becomes very damp and keeps the compost damp enough for the seedlings. Before you put the cardboard tubes into the ground you should water them really well, so that the cardboard is very wet. This will then help the cardboard to breakdown faster when under ground - remember that cardboard does not just disappear but don't be put off - the roots grow through the cardboard and the roots are not disturbed when planting. It's also a free resources so everyone wins!
I'm also preparing myself to grow more from seed this year. I have a plug plant tray and a number of seed trays that I'm going to use and I'm determined to try and not buy as many plug plants next year (if any at all). I have both a polytunnel and greenhouse so I should certainly be able to grow from seed and I'm going to challenge myself to do that this year.
I finished today by harvesting the ripe tomatoes out of the polytunnel, I was also given 1.5kg of plums and I picked 2.5kg of apples from a plot that is about to become vacant (after asking permission from the current plot holder), I also managed to pick 1.3kg of blackberries. I then realised that I don't have enough jars to make jam so I've asked all of my friends to save them for me. I'm going to make apple sauce and I'll make some apple pies as well as including some in the blackberry jam (the kids really enjoyed blackberry and apple jam). I was also considering drying some of the tomatoes and bottling them in olive oil, but again I am devoid of appropriate jars which is very frustrating! I think all in all, I've had a great first season on this plot. It's only my second season growing on an allotment and I really think I've had a significant amount of success - even with my limited knowledge. I feel as though I can only continue to learn and grow and hopefully that will be reflected in my harvests.
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