Sunday February 15, 2009

The start of the year...

Before I start to talk about work on the allotment for this year, a quick look back at last year. We still have several rows of leeks in the ground which did well - but a few of them did go to seed which means in the leek you get a hard central core which renders the leek is useless even in soup. The potatoes are all eaten, the garlic nearly so but we have loads of onions hanging in the garage ( I grow around three hundred per year..) . The carrots I stored in compost in the greenhouse have survived well but we have nearly finished eating all them too.

I did set some garlic in the allotment last November but not many of them came up. Now things are warming up after the snow and cold snap I have set this years shallots and I bought and set some more garlic to replace the ones that did not appear.

Before the winter I got a trailer load of manure which has now been dug into the first allotment I have - luckily I did it before the bad weather set in. I also put some around the raspberry canes. Incidently those canes did really well with three varieties we had berries from August until November.

I will need to clear the leeks before April when the onion sets will go in. By then other seeds like carrots will need sowing. I had great carrots last year but they got badly affected by carrot fly. sowing the carrots by onions is said to put off the carrot fly or covering with a light fleece perhaps. Perhaps you have our own tips for avoiding carrot fly ?

This weekend I also sowed this years leeks in a heated tray in the greenhouse. The only problem apart from the hard cores on some of them is the damping off of the seedlings. This is caused I think by a fungus and to avoid it you should clean the seed tray well and use fresh compost.

Until things warm up even more and dry out a bit there will not be any further activity.