The Floodlit Allotment

Soggy bank hol

I put off the allotmenting this weekend, but it made no difference in the end.  Showers ahoy!

I visited a friend yesterday and discussed allotments with her, her hubby, and his Dad!  Lots of expertise!  Also gifted courgette, tomato, climbing bean and cabbage plants!

So, amid the rain, I pinched off the tops of the broad bean plants.  This is to get rid of the nice juicy plants which attract the black-fly.  (Should be done when plants start to flower.)  Indeed, a few of the plants did have black-fly nestling there, so I squished ‘em good!  I was going to wind the runners around the canes, but I have a horrible feeling that they’re not going to recover from last weekend’s frost.  I guess we’ll see.  Not much happening to them anyway, apart from grim-looking-ness.

I put the squash (including my pumpkins) and tomato (mine and the gifted, much bigger, ones) plants in the greenhouse, where I hope to harden them off.  This is a process of allowing them to acclimitise to the cold, wind etc, and get tougher stems, gradually.  I think that the absence of this hardening off might have been the death of the butternut squash plants a few weeks ago…

I planted out the pea plants, new broad beans, new runner beans and climbing bean plant in the raised bed.  Fingers crossed.  It’s windy as well as wet today!

And finally (as John Craven would say) I piled up soil round my jerusalem artichokes.  I don’t know if they needed it, it seems to be an optional phase, but I thought I’d give it a go.  I was pretty wet through by now, so it wasn’t much fun!

Loukik and I have some pretty exciting news in the offing, so watch this space!

Other tips I’ve picked up:

- cabbages like alkaline soil, so I’ve obtained some univeral pH indicator paper.

- grass cuttings act as a good mulch for things like beans – water well underneath before putting it down.

- tomatoes will benefit from having their  side shoots (not the flowers though!) nipped off during growth.

- marigolds are good at putting off nasty pests, especially near tomatoes.  I’ll build this into the plans.

- lavender (named from the Latin – to wash) also scares away pests, and borage attracts them away from other things!