3rd March 2019 - What do you put in the bed when you harvest winter onions?

In the summer when everyone harvests their winter onion social media is full of people asking what they should put in their beds now that the onions have been harvested.  Of course you can plant brassica's or legumes which would be next on the rotation but I plant onions!  My family eat a lot of onions and I can never grow enough but one of the ways I try is by growing the all year round.  

In order to grow onions all year I have to be organised.  In February I plant my sets into modules; today I planted 120 sets and I still have another 2 bags of sets to plant which should be at least another 240 sets.  At the moment they're in the polytunnel but I will move them outside when I do the rest of them.  One of the things to remember even when planting in modules is to protect them from pigeons!

I have found that onions are quite happy to be transplanted from modules into their growing position; you don't need to disturb the roots too much when you transfer them but even if the roots are disturbed the onions still grow well.  

So, if you're thinking about what you're going to put into the winter onion beds, it's worth thinking about preparing some more onions to go in when you have harvested.

Edit:  I have been asked about crop rotation and specifically been told that you can't plant summer onions in the bed that you grew winter onions because of onion root fly.  I do rotate my crops but honestly the distance of the beds would actually have very little affect on the root fly maggot which can migrate quite a long way from where it hatched to your onions.  You can grow onions in a bed for a full year before rotating to another bed. If your soil can get to 35°C or more then that will kill the pupae but that's only likely in a hot bed or compost bin.  Don't plant bright yellow plants near your onions, because the adult fly are attracted to the colour and often lay their eggs at the base of yellow plants.  Because the flies are attracted to bright yellow colours you can buy yellow sticky cards that the fly is attracted to and the  stick to; you should change the traps twice weekly and it's a good idea to record changes in fly activity so that you can think about nematodes for future years.

In addition to the onions I have made a start sowing beetroot.  As you know I'm not great at growing things from seeds but I'm trying something new this year.  First I'm only sowing a small number at a time; I'll be waiting for the first lot to germinate before I sow any more and then I'll do no more than 10 seeds.

I'm also sowing them into the coir expanding biscuits.  I put half of them into the tray to expand last week but didn't have time to sow before I had to leave because Middle L cut his foot and I had to take him to the hospital.  They therefore had nearly a week to fully expand (they only really need 24 hours!) I put 8 seeds into the little dips and then I filled the rest of the trays with more biscuits to expand.

Last week I planted my leeks into the roots bed and so the root trainers were freed up.  I have quite a lot of sweet peas that I want to grow this year so I have used the root trainers for them and I'm also saving toilet roll middles to grow some more.  

I've also noticed that my lemon tree is not very happy, from reading it seems like it has been too cold, the best way to deal with it is to remove the leaves and give it a feed.  I'm a bit worried about removing all of the leaves but I'll give it a feed and cover it with fleece and see how it goes; hopefully it will recover and I will have to remember to fleece it at the end of summer this year.

Until next time
Happy Gardening x

25th February 2019 - Warmest February on record

This time last year it was snowing and this year it has been the warmest February day on record!  This weekend I was determined to make a dint in my to-do list but I was slowed down on Saturday by a chest infection (it hurt to breathe).

Last week I cleaned out the pond; I also bought some 'sludge bomb' that you drop into the pond and it effectively eats all the excess sludge.  Once I got up there this weekend though, I decided that it didn't need it.  While the water is still a little murky I could see the lily at the bottom of the pond and so I'm going to leave it for now and see how it goes.  The frogs have already started to sing to each other so I'm hoping to see some frog spawn pretty soon and I obviously don't want to mess with the pond once the frogs start spawning.  I can keep the sludge bomb for the end of the season when I want to clear the pond again.

I had some leeks in root trainers over the winter.  I didn't have room for them in the onion bed but I didn't want them to die off and I thought the root trainers would be a good way to keep them healthy while I was waiting for a bed to be ready for them to go into.  I have planted them into the bed that I'm planning to put the carrots into; leeks are a good companion plant for carrots because they're supposed to help to mask the smell of the carrots from the root fly.

I also planted them very deep, which is supposed to help to blanch them; I'm looking at other ways to continue to blanch the stalks as they grown,  You can earth them up, much like potatoes, with additional soil as they grow or you can use cardboard/paper tied around the stalks when they're big enough.  I am saving toilet rolls for the job and I think I can even pop them over in anticipation of the leeks growing big enough.

I fixed the flag this weekend as well, I love having my England flag flying although it does have a tendency to tangle around the arbour but over the winter it was pulled off of the post and so I needed to take it down and fix it back again.  I don't have a proper flag post; I use an old curtain rail and I've stapled the flag to it but it does the job.

I had 3 tree peony's that were delivered as bare root plants and they've just been sitting in the shed for a week.  I wanted to get them potted up this weekend but I needed some more compost first.  As ever I made up my normal mix of compost, root booster and all season feed.  I didn't have any grit or water retaining gel so I didn't include those but I did top dress it with some moss which should help keep the moisture in the pots.  The pots smaller than they will eventually end up in but until I decide whether they'll be in pots or in the ground (or even at the allotment or house) the pots are a good size to get them established and will probably be fine in there for the whole season, if not longer.  They eventually grow up to around 5' tall and make a really lovely statement piece in the garden.

When I picked up the bags of compost I bought some primula's for the flower bed next to the shed in 85a, I enjoy having this area as a flower bed, it creates a nice space around the sitting area in front of the shed.  One of the things I think I'd like to do this year is clear the area in front of the shed and make a bigger seating area.  I think I'll need to move the bird feeder to do that but if I have enough matting after using it for the greenhouse, then I think it will be the perfect thing to use to extend out from the flags.

Some of the jobs I have planned for this year include clearing behind the compost bins; I want to cover the area with membrane to reduce the nettles and brambles that grow in that area.  Once it is clear I may even be able to put the tree peony's back there or even a fruit tree.  

I have no idea how long this nice weather is going to last but I will certainly be making the most of it while it's here and so fingers crossed I can get more done.

Until next time
Happy Gardening x

17th February 2019 - Cleaning the Pond

I love my pond, it was one of the first things I planned to put into my allotment when I got 85a, Mr L bought me it for my birthday and then installed it as a surprise while I was away with work.  When I first got it the water went a pea green colour and after trying a few things I got some daphnea from my neighbour which completely cleared it and has kept it clear.

I have a lovely marginal grass, a bullrush type plant, a waterlily and an iris (which has never flowered).  Last year I dropped a rock into the pond and while trying to fish it out again I noted 2 things.  The first was that the bottom of the pond had quite a lot of silt and dirt and the second was that there were little leech like creatures in that silt that managed to attach themselves to me (yuck!)

I'm pretty sure I've talked about the pond before but just as a recap, my pond does not have fish in it; it is solely a wildlife pond and I've been lucky enough to have both frogs and newts use it.  I also have seen dragonflies and various insects.  I've had birds and hedgehogs come for a drink and since installing the pond I have seen hardly any full sized slugs on my plot at all.

I genuinely believe that having a pond, if you have room, is the single most beneficial thing you can do for your garden and allotment.

And so to this weekend, I wanted to clear the pond before the frogs started spawning because I knew that once that started it would be another year before I could get it done.  I started by taking all of the plants out on Saturday and removing the mini fountain.  I genuinely couldn't believe how much they had spread.  The grass in the picture above was out of it's pot and the roots where as big as the plant above ground and it was really heavy (it actually turned out that it had grown around a brick that's I'd stood it on!!)  One of the things that's really important when you're taking anything out of the pond is putting it on the side to allow anything that needs to be in the water to make their way back in.  That was one of the reasons I wanted to get the plants out first because if there's any critters hiding that's where they'd be.

On Sunday I went down to the garden centre and got a pair of gloves so that I could get my hands into the pond without getting eaten by the bugs!  I started by taking out the bricks that I'd used to stand plants on and a terracotta pot that I'd used to stand the fountain on.  I also bought a mini rubble tub to put the stuff in that I pulled out of the pond.  

I then laid on my stomach and reached into the pond and scooped up all of the silt and dropped it straight into the tub.  There were 2 frogs in the pond who started to pop up and try to get away from me but of course because I had taken all the plants out they had nowhere to hide!  I managed to scoop them out with the net and pop them on the side.  I wasn't able to get all the silt out because I couldn't reach all the way to middle but it is definitely better than it was.

I needed to sort out all of the plants, as I've mentioned they had really spread.  I have no idea if what I've done is ok or not but I couldn't leave them as they were.  I essentially hacked away at them with my secateurs; I snipped off all of the roots that had grown outside of the pot and I removed any excess growth as well so that the roots I had left could support the plant.  I managed to split the grass although I still had to throw away more than I kept.  I had to do the same with the iris, bullrush and waterlily.  I re-potted the iris and waterlily into bigger pots partly so they had more room to grow but also because both of them had managed to grow sideways and so I wanted to straighten them up.

In the picture you can see that all of the stuff I pulled out of the pond I've left on the side and I weighted down the bucket to allow anything in there to climb back into the pond without it all ending up all over the place (or back in the pond!).  The water is still like a mud bath but one it settles I'm hoping it will clear again.  I do realise the irony of wanting everything to settle when I was trying to get it out but I think that unless I'm prepared to completely empty and scrub it I will always have to put up with some silt in the bottom of the pond; I think I'm going to try and clear it like this once a year to avoid it getting this bad again.

I do want to get another solar fountain and so that will be my next job once everything settles, I've also looked at some stuff to drop in the pond that will allegedly clear sludge so I might try that in the summer (it apparently works better when it's warm).

Until next time
Happy Gardening x

27th January 2019 - Countdown to Spring

Is anyone else seriously counting down the days until spring?  I hate the winter and being cold - in a past life I think I must have been something that hibernated or I lived in a hot country :-D

Over the last couple of weeks I've started looking at what I want to grow next season, especially as I have a lot more space now.  I have always wanted to grow asparagus and so I've ordered some for one of the new beds in 86a.  I got them from Groupon but they've been delivered from Hayloft .  I bought 18 crowns - 6 new greenic (early season), 6 guelph millenium (mid season) and 6 gijnlim (late season) they cost £13.98 (22% off) plus £1.99 delivery; which I think is really reasonable.  The problem I have is that I can't plant them until March and so now I need to work out how to keep them until then - my best option at the moment (I think) is to keep them in the boot of the car where they'll be cool and dry and not available for the mice to eat them.  I will keep you posted on my progress.  

I can't remember if I've previously mentioned that I keep a bullet journal.  If you've never heard of bullet journals you can check out the original concept at bulletjournal.com or look on Pintrest and Instagram for bullet journal inspirations.  My journal includes everything I need for my day to day life and for me, it's about having everything in one place so that I'm not looking for my to-do lists in one place and my calendar in another.  I have started my to-do list for this year and as you can see it's already starting to mount up!  I did a few jobs before I did the list though so it's not as long as it could have been.  

I did spend a little bit of time up at the plot this weekend (for the first time since Christmas); I got 2 blueberry plants from Groupon a couple of weeks ago.  They're only small, in 9" pots, so I wanted to re-pot them into slightly bigger pots and make sure that they're in ericaceous compost with root booster.  When I create the beds in 86a I am going to have one with acidic soil for the blueberries,  I also have a rhododendron that I might pop in that same bed.  I kept the pines from the Christmas tree and I'll use them as a mulch for this bed.

I've also arranged to have 2 posts for the new gate that I need to pick up from another plot holder.  I will need to dig holes for the new posts (although I'm hoping to persuade Mr L to help me with that one!) and the gate already has all the hardware that I need to be able to hang it as soon as the posts are ready.  The gate currently has a number 3 worked into the metalwork and so I'm going to get something to cover it and then that is where I'll put my plot number.

The other job I got done this weekend was to begin cleaning the bird feeders.  It's important to clean them at least once a year to help keep the birds healthy.  One of the feeders had got clogged up and so it desperately needed to be cleaned.  The rest I need to clean over the coming weeks so that as the birds are beginning to feed their babies the feeders are clean for them.

At this time of year it is all about planning and making sure I'm ready when spring comes.  I will be very busy trying to get 86a fully productive; I'm super excited about the asparagus bed and the blueberries and I can't wait to get started again (roll on spring!)

Until next time
Happy Gardening x

Metaldehyde slug pellets banned from Spring 2020

You may have heard the news that the traditional blue slug pellets have been banned from Spring 2019.  DEFRA say "metaldehyde poses an unacceptable risk to birds and mammals."  

Sales will stop in Summer 2019 (which I don't understand if this ban is in place from spring!)  and then a further 12 months will be allowed for supplies to be used up.  Only those using permanent greenhouses will be permitted to continue to use the metaldehyde pellets where birds cannot easily get them.  This in itself seems very short sighted given that slugs and snails will likely leave the greenhouse after consuming the pellets and then potentially poison wildlife.

Mr Gove said, "I recognise that significant effort has been put into encouraging growers and gardeners to use this pesticide responsibly by the Metaldehyde Stewardship Group.  However, the advice is clear that the risks to wildlife are simply too great - and we must all play our part in helping to protect the environment.  I encourage companies and growers to look at the alternatives, such as ferric phosphate, which is authorised and does not carry similar risks."

Metaldehyde is without doubt toxic to wildlife; hedgehogs, amphibians and birds have all be poisoned by eating slugs and snails that have eaten the pellets, or have eaten the pellets themselves.  The problem of course is that while the blue pellets do reduce the slugs and snails if they, in turn, poison the other wildlife then there are less predators for the slugs and snails, which let their numbers increase.  It is a vicious cycle that will now hopefully be broken.

If you want to use other barriers then growlikegrandad.co.uk has suggested the following methods.  He points out that using egg shells is not a good idea because the snails eat the shells and it helps to strengthen their own shells against predators! 

• A targeted approach to watering, to the bases of plants and not all the bed areas in between them, don't make slugs and snails a gift of damp soil which is easier to travel across 
• Wood chip paths dramatically reduce slug and snail numbers and damage at Grow Like Grandad's allotment.  He receives free deliveries from local tree surgeons which helps to keep costs down.  If your plot doesn't have free wood chip ask your committee to phone a few local arboriculture firms, one will usually be glad of having somewhere to drop off their wood chip.
• Place some old scaffold boards on the ground near your crops and make a habit of lifting those every few days and destroying the slugs you find hiding beneath.
• Make a pond and encourage frogs and toads into your allotment or garden, Grow Like Grandad has an army of toads now (transported from home) and in 2018 he found only a handful of slugs and snails at the plot in the entire year (the garden was a different matter!)

My personal choice for trying to reduce the slugs and snails was to put a pond into 85a (I'm still debating doing this in 86a).  I also have a  hedgehog house, a wood pile and a wild bird feeding station; all of these encourage the local wildlife into my plot to eat the slugs and snails.  In areas of the plot that I have barriers to prevent wildlife (brassicas under enviromesh and in the polytunnel) I sparingly use ferric phosphate pellets (also known as iron pellets).

I use Richard Jackson's slug and snail pellets from QVC.  These pellets also have some Flower Power in them so that as they break down they add nutrients to your soil.  I'm sure there will continue to be a debate about whether the ferric phosphate is safe but I'm not aware of any studies that say these pellets are damaging to the wildlife; although there are comments about the iron in the pellets being damaging to the soil structure, which is why it's so important to use sparing, as per the instructions.  You don't actually need to lay hundreds of them anyway; just 2 or 3 around a plant is more than enough to control the few slugs and snails that get away from the natural predators.

I am personally delighted with the news and wanted to share it with you all, although I'm sure many of you had already heard.  I strongly believe the the hedgehog population particularly will benefit from this ban.

Until next time - Happy Gardening x

11th November 2018 - 3 tons of topsoil

This week I have had 3 tons of topsoil delivered for 86a, I enlisted the help of Mr L to get it all moved up to the plot.  We filled the last of the beds that have been made and then ended up with 2 bags filled and waiting for the next set of beds to be made.  The soil was delivered at 8.15am, Mr L arrived around 9.30am (after I'd already prepared the bed and carried 2 wheelbarrow loads) and by 12.15pm we had moved it all up the hill.

As a reminder, I completely covered the whole plot with membrane and then as I was ready to fill each bed I cut it out and stapled the overlap to the inside of the bed.  This has created a barrier against the wood, which I hope will go some way to preserving it, and means that I don't have to worry about making the ground even because the membrane creates an extra side to the bed.  I was also able to fit the cardboard right up under the sides of the bed.  Again, I'm hoping this will help to suppress the weeds that will try to make their way through.  I have ended up with a good layer of cardboard and about 8" of soil so this should suppress a lot of the weeds as well.  

I mentioned last week that I was working on my plan for 86a.  I decided to go ahead and put both plots onto one plan.  I haven't included the path between them so it does look like they're back to back when in fact there is a 4' gap between them.  The 3 big beds at the right of the shed are already in place and filled.  The 5 smaller beds opposite those beds are next on my plan.  My friend has offered me some wood so I'm going to use that to build the 3 compost bins (scrapping the temporary one I've got next to the shed at the moment).  I want to use the same matting and gravel as a base for the greenhouse and put it to the left of the shed.  It will be against the hedge on it's left side but otherwise it should get a good amount of sunshine.

The bed immediately in front of the shed, (that is perpendicular to the rest of the beds) is the one that I'm not sure of yet.  The space in front of the shed is quite big and I don't want to waste the space but I'm not sure that putting a bed there is the best option.  I would like to have a fire pit and seating area so this is potentially where it could go.  Having said that it's a waste of growing space and perhaps it would make more sense to have the bed or maybe a fruit tree.  I'd be happy to hear any thoughts you might have about this space.

Until next time...

Happy Gardening x

4th November 2018 - Another bed in 86a

Here we are at the end of the season but there's still loads to do for me, particularly in 86a.  This week it was littlest L's birthday and so I didn't get up to the plot at all yesterday, which was a shame because we had the Bonfire Night party and from what I hear it was a brilliant night with around 100 people coming along.  We have a second bonfire in December for the Winter Solstice, so I'll be hoping to go along to that one.

Up at the plot today I wanted to get my second bed finished because I had planted all of my onions into the bed on 85a and the extra ones I'd put into individual cells.  Some of them had started to sprout and so I really wanted to get them into a bed before they got too big for the cells.  I hadn't counted them but I actually had 112 onions the needed to be transplanted.  I also had 3 garlic bulbs that I wanted to get planted, I didn't count them but I did manage to get them all in.  This year I decided to try soft neck garlic because while my bulbs grew well last year I struggled to keep them and I read that soft neck keep better than hard neck - I have no idea why (if anyone does please feel free to let me know).


I also had some leeks that I was hoping to fit into this bed but they wouldn't fit and so I've put them into root trainers.  I have no idea if they will be OK but they were unhappy and getting root-bound in the pot they were in.  I'm hoping that they'll be OK in the root trainers because they'll have more room to grow and because they're now planted individually when I do have room to plant them they'll be easier to put into the right place without disturbing them too much.  I'm also going to add toilet roll to help blanch the stems, it's not something I've done before but I'm hoping it will work.

I now have 2 beds actually growing things in 86a.  I'm getting 2 more bags of topsoil delivered (hopefully) next weekend to fill my last large bed and then the leftover will have to wait until the other beds are made.  I'm hoping to get 10 more scaffold boards for Christmas and 5 more bags of topsoil.  My plan is to have all of the beds in place and ready to go for next spring. 

I have used the Grow Veg garden planner for 3 years for 85a and I am going to set up a plan for 86a.  I haven't decided yet whether to do it as 2 different plans or to put both of them together on one plan.  I think it will be easier to do it as one plan but I don't know if I can extend current plan.  If you don't use it, I would very much recommend it.  You can get it as a free trial to start with but it's worth the £19 per year subscription.  As part of the planner you can get a list of plants/seeds that you need to make the beds but it also tells you where you can plant things, based on your previous planting to help you with your crop rotation.  You also get regular news and offers.  

I will share my plan once it's done but until next time...
Happy Gardening x