MY WEEK : 7 ( 12TH FEBRUARY )

Hello all and welcome to this week's update, last weekend I went to my allotments to check on what needed doing in readiness for the season ahead and during the week at the Kitchen Garden I managed to get a great deal done as well. As you can see in this photograph taken last Sunday at my plots the Garlic is doing well although the leaves are a bit yellow which is either from the cold or they may need a feed of nitrogen, if the new leaves come through green then they do not require nitrogen and the yellowing would have been as a result of the cold, I will have to wait and see. I managed to harvest some Leeks, Calabrese and Parsnips and on the whole I was pleased with the condition of the plots considering the gales, snow and frosts that we have had since Christmas.





The main casualty from all the gales over the Winter has been my Fruit Cage which as you can see from these photographs is leaning quite badly with several of the timbers having cracked or broken. If I can I will try to repair it by replacing and strengthening them however if this proves to be too difficult then I will consider replacing the Fruit Cage altogether.


The Brassica Cage has withstood the weather very well with only a couple of places in need of attention, these are were I joined the material together with poly twine which has snapped and needed darning again, this is what I concentrated my time and efforts on last Sunday. It was good to see some of the regulars at the allotments as well, it was a lovely day and the attendance was high. The interest in how I was getting on at the Kitchen Garden was nice and they wanted to know all about it and if they could visit in the future. I will be going to my allotments again next Sunday to continue with my preparations for the season ahead.



The week started off at the Kitchen Garden with the weather being dry and this was ideal for rotorvating the large bed where we had removed the lawn from, it was hard going as the soil underneath the lawned area had been compacted over the years so progress was slow, after this and a few aches and pains I decided to do some this week and finish the job off next week it will still be easier than digging it all by hand as I have said before it is better to do digging little and often rather than do it all in one go and then you are unable to do anything for days afterwards this applies to the allotments also.



If you remember I had found that the Garlic I had stored for use in cooking at home had started to shoot a few weeks ago and I decided to plant them in pots until the soil conditions were right for planting them into the open ground, they were now ready for planting out and had established a good root system so this week I planted them 4" deep and 6" apart next to where the early Carrots are underneath the cloches, hopefully they will have the added benefit of helping to deter the Carrot fly from my Carrots as you know that the Garlic have a strong scent. There were 120 Garlic plants in all, this photograph gives you an idea of the size of the bed/plot at the Kitchen Garden. You can also tell from this photograph that the plastic on my cloches needed to be pegged down on the sides somehow to keep the soil underneath warmer and more protected, I have modified them by stapling the edges of the polythene to batten's of wood 2" x 1" which now weigh the sides down a treat I will take a photograph and show you next week of what I did.





The Hot Peppers and Aubergine have germinated very well and will soon be ready to be pricked out into individual 3" pots to grow on, with this in mind I have looked into the best way of heating one of the sections of the Glasshouse which measures 18ft x 12ft and the most economical way. After a bit of advice seeking from various sources the consensus was that Electric heaters do a good job but are very expensive to run so a Gas heater was the best option and most economical for our needs, I have ordered a Hotbox heater with an output of 6kw which is what we need to keep the area frost free and heated and this runs on Propane gas ( Red bottles ), to heat all the Glasshouse and Greenhouses as they did in years gone by would be hugely expensive these days so that is one luxury I will have to work without.





In the Cedar wood greenhouse I had contemplated growing crops such as Tomatoes, Cucumbers and Courgettes in bags of compost used as large grow bags because of the possibility of not having the time before the season starting to sort out the greenhouse borders but with the indifferent weather this week I decided to make a start. I first of all dug the border over and enriched it with chicken manure pellets and then laid some edging bricks to retain the soil, then added 6 bags of compost to the border to improve the soil as well, as you can see from the above photographs the transformation was well worth the effort and will undoubtedly pay dividends with my crop production, next week as an experiment I will plant a few early potatoes in there to see if we can crop them any earlier than those that will be going out into the open ground, this will enable me to learn in readiness for next year when we will be in full production for the hotel restaurant.

Also this week I made a start on clearing some of the cold frames as the Sweet Peas that I had sown at home were ready to go out into them, I am pleased with the germination rates of them and hopefully this time the local mice population will not a have a field day and eat them all, I will have to wait until Monday to find out if this is the case or not, to help ensure that they don't the Pest control officer has been baiting all of the area for the last week or two.

Other things done this week have been setting up a heated propagator blanket in the Glasshouse to help with the seed sowing which this week has included the Banana Shallots and Roscoff Rose Onions both sent to me by website visitors, thank you! and Artichokes, Basil & Romanesco all of which have been donated to me by friends these are in addition to my crop list but very welcome.

Well that concludes another busy week both here at the Kitchen Garden and My Allotments, I hope you all have a good and productive week ahead on your plots and I will of course be back next weekend with my next installment, thanks Steve.