MY WEEK 20 : ( 15TH MAY )

Hello all, well the weather is a bit wild in this part of the country at the moment but the rain and the warmth of the sun are providing ideal growing conditions for the crops and the weeds, it seems that everything grows overnight, I just hope that the risk of frosts has now passed otherwise there will be some frantic covering with fleece to be done.

This week I uncovered my overwintered Dhalias as they were pushing up against the fleece covering that I had used to protect them through the winter, they appear to be very healthy with only a few signs of damage from slugs or snails , I have given them a dressing of Growmore fertiliser to give them a bit of a feed to get them on their way and placed a ring of slug pellets around them to protect from further attacks by our slimy little pests.

As you can see the Gladioli are growing well, I will soon have to start thinking about erecting some sort of support system for them to grow up in to try to keep them straight stemmed as last year they seemed to grow in all different directions apart from straight up.

This week I have planted out my Chrysanthemum cuttings, I removed the top 2" in order to 'stop' them which will encourage more sprays to form and planted them 15" apart in rows that were also 15" apart, with these I will need to erect a support system once again to keep them growing upright so that they provide nice straight stems for cutting later in the summer.

This week I planted out my first Celery plants, they are self blanching so they do not need to be grown in a trench as traditional varieties do, I will still encircle them with collars to help them to blanch better, I will use a strip of roof felt about 12" high rolled round to form a tube and held togetther with large paper clips. My other Celery plants that were sown much later than the January sown ones above will be planted out at the beginning of June.

The Shallots and Garlic are putting on good growth, I finaly finished hand weeding them this week and also transplanted some that I had planted as spares along the end of the bed, into the gaps where not all the sets had sprouted, hence the nice neat rows with no gaps.

This week I have had a few compliments about the Early Carrots and how well they are doing, they do seem to like my raised beds that have been rotorvated well and enriched with a bit of Growmore fertiliser.

This week I have seen many postings on allotments forums about people's Broad Beans having damage to their leaves, this looks like the outer parts of the leaves have been nibbled all the way round, this is a common problem with Broad Beans and is usually caused by the Pea & Bean Weevil, it does not reduce the crop yield much but can attract other pests to your crop such as ants, there is a treatment called Derris Dust which is on the HDRA list as allowable for use by Organic growers or you can spray with an insecticide such as Sybol, please remember though that this will also harm beneficial insects as well such as Ladybirds.

The salad bed is now full and already producing crops of Radishes far too quickly for us to consume them, from the front to the back you can see Salad Bowl Lettuce, Corriander, Rocket, Radish and beyond these the Spring Onions.

The 3 rows in the centre of the picture are my First Early Potatoes which as you can see have already been earthed up and are flourishing with this warm and wet weather, the outer rows that you can see are my Maincrop Potatoes which I need to earth up when time permits to encourage a higher yield.

My Sweet Peas are starting to produce their first flower buds which I hope you can see in this close up photograph, it looks like that despite the cold spring that we have had I should still be picking my first flowers by the end of the month, which did not seem to be the case a few weeks ago.

Other things of note for this week include the first signs of my Beetroot germinating which I only sowed last weekend, the Runner Beans, French Beans, Sunflowers, Calabrese and Purple Sprouting are doing ok although my Sweetcorn has not germinated very well this year for some reason, so I will have to rely on donated plants to ensure a full crop this season.

Looking ahead to the forthcoming week , I have started to darn togetther the covering for the Brassica cage which I intend to put up as soon as the strong winds subside, hopefuly allowing the planting of the varoius Brassicas that are ready to be planted out. I am also with my helpers planting up all the Hanging Baskets and containers this week and although they will be a bit immature I will post some pictures of them next week.

Anyway that's my progress updated for this week, hope you all enjoyed it. I nearly forgot to let you all know that the BBC are going to show a series on allotments called the Big Dig, it starts on Sunday, 28th May at 10.00am on BBC2 and it will run for 10 weeks, hope you all have a great week on your plots and I will speak to you agian next week, thanks Steve.