April - Spuds Planted & Rhubarb Crumble

Half way in April we have made a ginormous progress on the allotment - it has been unseasonably warm too.  Some of the weekends have been +20C and more and we have had two weekends in a row of sunny allotment-friendly weather.  We spend almost five hours digging over the soil and planting last Sunday (10/04) and good few hours yesterday (16/04). We will be taking a break over the Easter, but plan to plant peas, sweet peas (flowers, for those who don't know), beetroot, carrots, lettuce and more during the Royal Wedding weekend.  Major project will be to develop a small area for picnics as at the moment there is nowhere to sit down.
So what have we done so far in April?  As on the 10th of April - about half of our (over 200m2 allotment is weeded out/planted in. Potatoes planted out on the 20th of March started coming out and I covered them with more loose soil to encourage more potatoes forming.  These were Desiree and Maris Piper.  I hope that planting potatoes in this staggered time-line produces a continuous crop and not too many potatoes in one go. 

Last year I planted a small lupine flower at the footpath end of the allotment.  This spring it has tripled in size and I hope there are more of those wonderful purple flowers to come.  Daffodils have finished flowering and I am glad that I managed to cut a few of those for home - lovely, lovely scent!  Onions planted in March have grown about 20cm and carrots have started coming out.  So far there is no sign of pumpkins or zucchinis (courgette).  I have watered all vigorously as the soil is very dry - hardly any rain at the end of March/start of April.

We planted (in order of rows): some basil (cheap seeds form Lidle) and dill one row of each amongst last year's parsley, which is still growing strong; mixed row of potatoes (Arran Pilot and Desiree, potatoes fell out of chitting trays and we could not figure out which is which);  a row of dill (had dill from seeds collected last year and half from new seeds bought - interesting to see which one grows and how fast!); a row of Maris Piper; two rows of Desiree and finally one more row of King Edward.  The last few rows of potatoes were planted in the soil we did not use last year, so it looks much better and much less sandy.  And finally, at the fence end of the allotment, I made a little pile of sand and compost and planted five National Trust pumpkin seeds we received in the mail. I don't think there is anything particularly historically significant about these seeds...

The biggest issue with weeds has been dealing with bind weed.  It appears like a small innocent plant on top of the soil, but has large root system that chokes and kills the surrounding plants.  This has been the only instance when we have used weed killing spray.  Ordinarily we do not use any poison whatsoever - we even dig out dandelions and other large unwelcome weeds.

We collected parsley and rhubarb.  I made some lovely fresh rhubarb compote to go with vanilla ice-cream and last night tried this rhubarb crumble variation:


Rhubarb Crumble
In a medium sized deep 1L baking dish (we use ceramic so nothing sticks) place about three or four large chopped rhubarb stems. Cover with crumble mixture and bake for about 20 minutes on 200C in a fan-forced oven. 

Crumble Mixture:  
1/3 cup brown sugar, 
1 tsp baking powder, 
1 tsp cinnamon, 
100g unsalted butter, 
75g plain flour, 
1/2 cup rolled oats 

Mix sugar, baking powder and cinnamon add flour and then crumble in butter with fingers. Stir in rolled oats. (I don't have a photo of the finish product as it was too tasty!)

Yesterday (16/04) we finished planting out all the seed potatoes we have!!! Yay! At the end of the allotment, next to strawberries, we planted a row of Desiree (12 spuds, numbers for our own record), King Edward (12) and a mixed row of five Arran Pilot and seven King Edwards.  Below photos show how we measured out the distance and dug in little sticks to where the potatoes are to make weeding easier.  Also, we added a little string around the sticks where we planted half potatoes.  Some of the larger potatoes, which had multiple shoots were good enough to be cut in half.  We though this was quiet unorthodox, but after a chat with some of the other allotment holders - turns out, this is quiet common.  Anyhow - at least we will know if this splitting is any good.



Also, yesterday I noticed that potatoes planted on the 27th of March (Arran Pilot and Maris Piper) are coming out too. 

Spring 2011!

Welcome 2011. After a long break we are back in the allotment and everything is growing extremely fast - mostly weeds at the moment!

 In February we went to inspect the allotment and found some interesting things - like these zucchini plant left-overs.

With the growing season starting soon, we have stocked up and bought many seeds and seed potatoes. We also have an inventory of the seeds bought and collected last year that can be planted.  From the last category we have: lupine, marigold, dill, poppies, watercress and coriander.  The list of seeds purchased is rather long, so I might account for the things we have managed to plant in the last two weekends. It has been unusually warm and spring-like.  Around +15C during the day, but still a threat of frost at nighttime.

One of the first things planted this year are potatoes. Here is a picture of them occupying a large space of the kitchen floor.  This process is called chitting and allows them to grow little green shoots, which helps them grow faster. We planted a row of Maris Piper and a row of Desiree potatoes.  Maris Piper and Desiree are both main crop variety which will be ready to harvest in June-July. I think Desiree was the organic variety, but I am to lazy to walk to the garage to check the bags and labels.

But before the spuds went a row of carrots (Mr Fothergill's, Early Nantes 5) with a row of onions (Homebase home-brand Stuttgarter Riesen) next to the carrots them to keep the carrot-fly away.

The front of the allotment is full of new marigold seeds and a mix of field flowers to attract bees and other good insects. Plus a Lidl (cheap supermarket) budget brand summer flower mix.  Marigold is meant to deter animals and I am hoping that means no dogs and cats would be wondering around the allotment.  

We've planted quiet a few rows of Gigante di Napoli parsley - seeds left over from last year, purchased at the Real Food Festival in Earls Court, London.  Last year this parsley grew like mad.  It was not exactly 'gigante', but very tasty.  In the parsley box, we've planted some dill randomly amongst the other herbs surviving the winter - not sure if these seeds collected from last year's plants will actually grow.  The main plan this year is to continually plant herbs throughout the summer, so I have small batches of them to use all the time and not a plantation of dill or parsley in one go. We have made a patch ready for the pumpkin seeds, but did not get very far with planting - perhaps this weekend...? Meanwhile all the weeds are flowering and attracting these bumble-bees that sound like small helicopters!


Never mind, since the weeds are all prostrate - ground covering - and seem to come out reasonably easy. With such a large plot of weeds, the plan is to only clear the area immediately for working on, but that's still quite a lot! But with so much space, we'd be made not to go nuts with planting food! Every week, something new, and every month a new set of spuds and root veg! That should be a great harvest!

10 months later

Ten month's later... We received the allotment in an overgrown state and a lot of hard work has gone into it. Compare it to the Day 1 too see the difference! In this photo you can see marigold and lupin in the front 2m (marigold keeps cats/dogs out due to it's unusual scent), 2 rows of potatoes - Orla and 'mystery' potatoes, a row of coriander and tarragon (the latter does not want to grow as yet), a row of water-cress, 2 more rows of potatoes... and in the distance more herbs, cucumbers, parsley, carrot.. I better make a proper list of all things growing and make that a separate post!