What do you do on an allotment when it is snowing and freezing to boot? One of those days that make your eyes water, nose run and ears sting. Most people would stay at home. We didn't. The greenhouses were dark with snow laying on the roof - surprising how something so white can restrict the flow of light so much. So we swept the greenhouse roofs and in the time it took to do a few other bits and a cup of tea in front of the gas fire in the shed, the roofs were covered again.

So far only minor losses in the greenhouse from the cold spell. Hollyhocks don't like the cold and an odd sweet pea is RIP despite a paraffin heater that we set up over the weekend. Some of our radish seedlings have died but a lot in the pot remain alive so we will see what happens with them. We are potting up the onion seedlings sown at beginning of January along with summer broccoli and cabbage into twelve cell trays. The January sowing list is complete and we are waiting to start February's list which is longer.
Our stored butternut squashes have started to go rotten so they are now chopped up and frozen ready to make butternut squash and apple soup. The onions in store are doing well although we were unable to get anything out of the ground to eat because it was frozen. Thankfully all thawed out now.
Back to buying potatoes from the supermarket. We left a lot in the ground and they have rotted. We are going to buy the first lot of seed potatoes tomorrow from the spud fair. Early spuds going in big pots in the greenhouse for our first new potatoes in June. The rest will chit in the shed well wrapped up in fleece.

In an attempt to reduce our manure bill for next year we have begun collecting stable manure to rot down over summer. 4 car loads and approx 100 bags later we have two large compost bins rotting away. In true dedication to the cause we are hoping to keep up the fortnightly trips and to build another couple of bins to accommodate it all. In the coldest of last week's weather our manure piles were steaming away, testimony to the good stuff within.
Outside bulbs continue to grow and snow drops have flowers on them. The bellis flowers were the only colour in the snow last weekend along with an odd pansy flower. The sedum is budding and tree buds are getting fatter slowly but surely. The promise of better things to come - better get on with those jobs then ....

With Christmas and new year over it is time to really get down to thinking about the growing season ahead, which for us starts now. As you can see from the picture below we did as we said we would on Christmas morning, and visited a rather wet allotment to pick some veg for dinner and some greenery for a table centre piece. This had bay, rosemary, privet, holly and some variegated stuff, all off the plot. This would have cost a small fortune from a florist, but cost us the price of a candle and a piece of oasis.

   During the winter months, I find myself digging out (no pun intended) my old allotment books. I have just finished reading Terry Walton's My Life on a Hillside Allotment. A pleasant enough read but rather uncharismatically written and portrayed. It does however give an overview of what needs doing season by season and gets the brain thinking about the year ahead. My absolute favourite and a book that I turn to for comfort again and again is "Digger's Diary" by Victor Osbourne. A beautifully written description of some of the characters on his allotment site and the things he does month by month, the successes and failures and his observations about what is magical about having an allotment. If you don't have one then you probably won't appreciate the delights of this book.

   The weekend between Christmas and new year saw us making our first sowings of the new year. A tray of early peas, climbing peas and onions, a pot of belstar broccoli and greyhound cabbage and a few pots of sweet peas: all of them germinated in less than a week. Cleaned a greenhouse out this morning and done the minor repairs and bits and pieces to keep it in good condition. Bubble wrap going in tomorrow and the newly emerged seedlings will hopefully survive the cold weather. 

   We are disappointed with our over wintering broccoli plants which have been getting a bit on the big side. Four of them have started to produce heads because they had outgrown their pots. We probably grew them too early last year. We have re-potted the remaining ones in the hope they won't grow too much before we can plant them out in March. Another pot sown anyway just in case. We usually get broccoli in June from the over wintered stuff so it's worth doing.

   We will be working hard now for a few hours every dry weekend to get the ground dug, cleared, manured and composted before planting kicks off big time. On the 27th January it is the annual Potato Fair in Sydenham where you can buy spuds as single tubers. We buy rows of various different types, some turn out nice and others don't. Last year we lost our seed tubers because we put them in a shed and the prolonged frost in February affected them badly. We won't make the same mistake again. We bought five micro tubers of a blue potato last year, lost four of them and planted the one survivor to get some decent size tubers to grow this year. They did well and we have loads of purple tubers to plant this year. We'll let you know what they look like (if they ever reach a plate). Normally we would have shallot bulbs growing in the greenhouse in six cell trays. This gives them the opportunity to grow roots before planting outside and gives them a good head start on the worst of the winter weather and allows us to get them out of the ground a bit earlier at a good size so we can use the ground for something else. However we decided not to save from last year's crop as we had been saving our own for years and the crop wasn't great this time round. New stock then this year.

Our plot plans are now complete and up on the shed wall and our aspirations for 2013 clear. We wish our readers a happy new year and hope that your aspirations are fulfilled.  

Merry Christmas

What greater accolade can a home grower get than sitting down to the freshest of carrots, parsnips and sprouts for Christmas dinner? We will be undertaking a short visit to the plot on Christmas morning cutting some seasonal greenery for a nice table centre  piece and getting the veg for traditional fayer this year.
We are now officially into winter and can look forward to the days getting longer albeit very slowly. Next weekend will be time to clean out a greenhouse and get it bubble wrapped ready to receive some early January seedlings. Always a risk but worth a try none the less. Sweet peas and broccoli continue to plod on in the greenhouse, a welcome bit of colour in an otherwise bleak landscape. The winter gem lettuce have suffered in the frost unfortunately and we have lost most of the them. Interestingly the mixed leaf (better known for growing in spring and summer) has done better .
This year we challenged ourselves to growing something new and bought a pack of dried chick peas from a well known supermarket. They grew very well and formed attractive plants - read our letter in the Kitchen Garden magazine and try them yourselves.
Wishing y'all a merry Christmas xx

Count Down To The 21st

We are now into December and whilst we look forward to Christmas like anyone else we also countdown to the shortest day of the year on the 21^st. After the 21^st it’s official that the days start to get longer and we can look forward to sowing a few bits in January and for things to start slowly taking off.

The weather is changing and what better than a cold fresh bright day to do some work on the plot. There is something very attractive and compelling seeing our allotment site at it’s quietest when the ground is white with frost and everything grinds to a halt. Frost is good for gardening (well we think so anyway).  The reason for autumn digging and leaving the ground rough is to enable  the frost to breakdown the clods of soil making for an easily workable and friable end result when it comes to planting time.

We like first frost because it gives parsnips their sweetness and enhances their flavour. Our parsnips aren’t pretty but they do taste good. Sprouts taste far better after being frosted than before which is why we don’t grow early varieties . Cold weather is also beneficial to fruit production with most fruit trees requiring a fair number of weeks below a certain temperature to set a decent amount of fruit the following year. We find that in mild winters  we see less fruit on apples, plums, apricots and gages as a result.

Frost and cold weather also help in the constant fight against bugs and disease when growing your own. Without the very cold spells we find that disease and bugs proliferate very quickly once the weather starts to warm up a bit whereas in a good cold winter we see less. However even despite some cold days of late the white fly on the brassicas are still very active and aphids are still a nuisance on stuff in the greenhouse.

Here's what our allotment site looked like this morning:

 

So whats happened  this weekend then?  We  have  checked on the stuff growing in the greenhouse. Day length is at its shortest in December and January so nothing grows particularly rapidly but things do need some water and attention from time to time. Our winter lettuces are doing really well in a cold greenhouse but unfortunately grey mould is showing itself on some of the older leaves. We remove these regularly and hope that grey mould won’t consume the plants before they are big enough for us to eat them. We potted up our broccoli plants into larger pots and these have done really well, filling those larger pots now with roots. We really do need these plants to slow down now as we won’t be planting them out until early March at the earliest.

We managed to get 90% of our sweet peas germinated in the greenhouse in November. Took a good 4 weeks but they are up now. In addition we have some osteospernum cuttings looking very unhappy at the moment but we hope to see some roots on them in spring if mould doesn’t kill them first.  So far so good on that front.

Even though the ground has had frost it is still diggable with only the top layer being hard and unyielding but easy enough to get a fork into. So some digging and clearing up done this weekend along with digging more spuds out. We have left his job a bit on the late side this year and have some slug damage as a result but our good intentions to get them out sooner just didn’t materialise. At the moment we have a variety of cabbages, broccoli, kale, sprouts, carrots, parsnips, turnips, spring onions and swede still in the ground which will feed us overwinter so the digging is done patchwork style around these areas.

Useful also at this time of year is to identify where your runner and French beans are going to grow. Dig out a deep trench and fill it with stuff thats hard to compost – brassica stalks, weeds without seeds, compost from the kitchen etc. When filled up replace the soil on top and it will settle over spring providing food for your beans when you plant them in early summer.

We have been in the process of building a large shed for the last 2 years now. Again good intentions but little action! However this year things have really moved forward and we have a solid structure built now and are working to get the inside of it finished before Christmas for the inaugural opening (this is the reason the spuds are still in the ground) . We have small sheds on the plots which are full of gardening paraphernalia so we wanted somewhere to sit down and warm up in the winter over a cup of tea. Photo below shows our pride and joy as is it now.

Time to get on  now and have a look through some of the seed catalogues to dream of what might be.

First Prize!

What inspires anyone to take the responsibility of running an allotment site? More than that, what inspires them to continue year after year? Could it be because of the enjoyment of being moaned at by other plot holders when all you want to do is get away from life and get on with a bit of work on your own plot? Would it be for the pleasure of spending time writing letters to people who take a plot but who don’t then use it? Would it be the death threat directed to our Secretary when a young man was evicted from his plot for using it as a storage facility for his building supplies? How about the aggressive encounters with other plot holders not particularly wanting to work a plot (but wanting an allotment anyway) and not being happy about letters reminding them of their obligation?

    What is it about the human psyche that gives someone every enthusiasm for an allotment but without the commitment to do anything with it? What makes people sign up to a tenancy agreement outlining minimum standards of plot upkeep and usage when the intention may be good but in practice they just can’t maintain the minimum standard and rarely pitch up on site? We’ve seen many over the years and had many an unpleasant situation to deal with but we still come back for more.

   We do it for the sense of satisfaction of a job well done, as well as the fact that we steward the site and keep it safe and viable for future generations of people in the South Norwood area who may look for an allotment.  We get satisfaction not only from having tidy and productive plots ourselves but also having a well run site. It is the pleasure of seeing those who are committed gardeners with well kept plots getting pleasure from their time on site. It is the satisfaction of articulating a standard and working towards maintaining that standard. Of seeing the turnaround of our small site from being unkempt and un-managed to being relatively well kept and well managed. Of having processes in place to ensure that plot holders are treated fairly (although it is usually the perception of someone losing their plot that they are being treated unfairly).  The satisfaction of moving people off whose intentions may be good, but in practice not followed through in action and bringing new people in to have the opportunity to grow their own.

   The pinnacle, then, of our achievement in terms of the hard work and dedication that comes with running our site, was in the attendance at the Croydon Federation AGM on the 17^th November to receive 1^st prize in the Amenity competition. This competition is a measure of how well managed a site is overall and it is the first time since 1976 that SNAHA won this award (although we did get 2^nd place last year).  Our site is considered to be the best managed in Croydon and that feels good and makes the hard work and aggravation worthwhile. Photo below of Tony, our secretary, collecting the cup from the Mayor and the committee with the first prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 Trevor, Tony, Gary and Anita

 

 

 

Bonfire Night

We were lucky that it remained dry on the 3rd of November, so that we could hold our annual bonfire, on the allotment site. This is everyone's opportunity to get rid of their burnable rubbish and an enjoyable evening for those who like a good fire and a drink.


The bonfire requires a bit of planning and we start building it a few weeks before and keep it covered to keep everything dry. This leaves us with the task of a hedgehog hunt before lighting up, however we haven't found any yet!

Here are a few more pictures of our bonfire:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's Getting CHILLY!

First of all we welcome new members Elias, Mary and Lorna who take their plots just at the right time of year to get ready for planting in spring.

It is around this time of year that some allotment sites get ready to close up for winter.  We stay open all year round for those few hardy individuals (ourselves included) who wish to brave the cold and wet to get some jobs done on the plot. Saying that there are lots of things to do on a plot over winter. We  clear, dig, manure and compost and cover those areas to prevent the rain and wind leaching the goodness out of the soil. It is amazing what the worms achieve under cover in taking the manure and compost down through the soil when everything else comes to a standstill.

Raised beds always need attention and it is during winter that bits and pieces of woodwork are sensible to get done like building a bigger compost bin, another raised bed, a support structure for raspberries or  blackberries, repairing a shed. Greenhouses need cleaning and weeding (not the best job in the world) and a bit of insulation if the intention is to grow in them over winter.

Sweet peas, cuttings of herbs and perennials and next year’s broccoli plants always need a bit of love and care in the greenhouse and we find it is good for the soul to see a few bits growing during a time of year when everything looks bleak.

Sowing in November - Sweet peas and broad beans. Sweet peas from an autumn sowing are always stronger and more sturdy plants than those that are spring sown. I like to think we get more flowers from them and certainly they flower earlier than their spring sown counterparts. Don’t forget to plant garlic. Autumn planted garlic always produces a bigger end result and it needs to go in before December to make a difference.

Already planted and basking in our cold greenhouse  – calabrese for early planting in March and the first broccoli to cut in May / June.  We sow Belstar because it is the only one that seems to survive overwinter with a bit of protection. We have some winter cauli’s as small plants ready to plant out in March. These are a trial as they should have gone in the ground in October or earlier. Let’s see whether they produce anything in spring.  

Growing undercover now – mixed salad leaves (a trial to see how long they will survive the cold and short days) and winter lettuce in window boxes and plant pots. We still have some chilli plants struggling away in the hope that they might ripen. Think we may be settling for green chillis from now on. Couple of chilli plants have made it home to be overwintered for an earlier and bigger crop next summer. We did this last year for the first time and we did indeed get earlier and bigger crops from the already established plants. It's worth a try on a coolish windowsill with reduced watering and feeding.

Cuttings of semi ripe woody perennials and herbs such as thyme and rosemary always seem to do well over winter in the greenhouse. We always plant more than needed to allow for the inevitable losses.

Where does the time go? Thankfully it seems in winter, in terms of allotment gardening – very quickly. Sitting on our laurels in early  November thinking that there is ages to get things done as we put our mental list together, we always find that January is upon us before we know it and we haven’t done a quarter of what we intended to do and then it’s March and time to start planting.

Better get on with those jobs then ..................................