MY WEEK : 19 ( W/E 13/05/07 )

Welcome to my latest update of my progress on my two allotments here in Stourbridge, West Midlands.
Well we have waited for a decent drop of rain for a few weeks now and it has certainly arrived with a vengeance over the last week with more forecast to come, the ground however at my allotments has only now at the end of this week really fully got to the level of moisture it needed. As elsewhere I'm sure, the weeds have responded first with a carpet of them appearing across the plots, the crops and seeds have also enjoyed it with them germinating well. The extremely dry and warm weather has resulted in my Garlic crop starting to mature much earlier than usual, with the leaves starting to turn brown and dry but on the whole things are looking good so far.







The Gladioli have come through strongly and provided we do not have any frosts now they should be producing some fantastic cut flowers soon, the Potatoes that I planted a couple of weeks ago without them being chitted have come through although they are later than I would have planned had I not tried to take on the Kitchen Garden restoration, I'm sure that I will still get a good crop from them which is more important than having the earliest crop.






The Shallots and Onion sets were planted into a bed that I had mulched with well rotted manure over the Winter leaving the worms to take some of it down into the soil to improve it, I then just turned the rest into the top spit of the soil a couple of weeks before planting out the sets. They are looking really strong and healthy with no yellowing of the leaves and good thick leaves forming on them. The seedlings that you can see emerging in the top-right photograph are of my Beetroot ( Boltardy) which I only sowed last week, the soil temperature must have been just right for them to have germinated so well, I sowed the seeds in pairs so I will need to thin these out to leave just the strongest plant every 4" to get a decent size crop, some people do not thin out their Beetroot until later when the thinnings will provide a small whole Baby Beetroot for pickling say, I prefer to have larger Beetroots for cooking and having sliced in salads which is why I thin mine out early.






The Lettuce that are pictured above are both Salad Bowl varieties which means that you do not harvest the whole plant, you just harvest the leaves that you want and then the plants will then produce new replacement leaves within a week or two, they do not last all season long though so you still need to repeat sow them but not as often as you usually would need to.






In the true spirit of allotmenting when you are either not successful with a crop or in my case very late with sowing one you always get offers of help from fellow plot holders as was the case when I went to sow my Leek seeds much later than I normally do, a fellow plot holder kindly gave me a supply of Leek seedlings which has saved me about 3 or 4 weeks of time, I have transplanted these to grow on until they are pencil thickness when I shall then transplant them again using the method shown on my Video about Leeks which you can find on my Video Link Button. The Asparagus crowns that I planted only a couple of weeks ago have started to produce very young spears which are quite thin and spindly and should not be harvested however tempting that is, instead I must leave them to grow into ferns which will feed the crowns helping them to increase in size and vigour for following crops, I will also do this next year as well and hopefully in 2009 I will be able to harvest my first crop of the delicious spears.






The Summer Cabbages are doing well and growing away nicely as are the other Brassicas in my cage, you can see in the top-left photograph the Cabbage collars that I mentioned last week which I have fitted to stop the Cabbage Root Fly from laying it's eggs at the base of the plant they lay them on the collar instead where they will dry out eventually and die. The Peas which I have also sown in my Brassica cage to stop the dreaded Pigeons from devouring them have germinated well as you can see in the top-right photograph, I am hoping that the mesh of the netting on my cage will also stop the Pea Moth from laying it's eggs in the pods which results in maggoty Peas.







The climbing French Bean ( Blue Lake ) which grows to about 5ft tall, the dwarf French Beans and the Runner Bean ( Mergoles ) which I sowed in cell trays in my cold frames at the allotments have started to germinate and as long as the weather remains mild I will plant these out at the end of May into there beds, I have added Growmore to the soil in their final growing positions which should give them a good balanced feed to start them off.






Back at home in my greenhouses I have got round to taking my Chrysanthemum cuttings at long last, this is much later than last year but I should still be able to enjoy some lovely sprays later in the Summer from them, I have placed them in a propagator with the lid on to root in multipurpose compost with Vermiculite added to it to improve the drainage they should root quite quickly in this environment. The other plants such as Cucumbers and Courgettes which I usually struggle to get full germination from have for some unknown reason have all germinated which has left me with too many of them but I may be in a position to help out a fellow plot holder with my surplus plants.






One pleasant surprise that I had this week was to see how well the Sweetcorn had germinated as they were from self saved seed from a cob that I dried out at the end of last Summer following advice given to me by a fellow plot holder who has done this for many seasons, I have yet to see how good the crop turns out but things are looking good so far. In the last week I went to both B & Q and a local nursery to source my plants for making the Hanging Baskets that I do each year for friends and family, I was lucky that when I got to B & Q there bedding plants were on offer at half price which was a stroke of luck and saved a few pennies.




Finally for this week we had an invite from my Mum & Dad to go with them to the Malvern Spring Gardening Show which we had not visited for a couple of years, it was a fantastic day out and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone. The show has definitely grown in size and popularity but it is amazing to see the variety of plants that are on show and the new varieties that are available for 2007 and to witness the results of hours and hours of hard work and dedication by the exhibitors. There were some amazing Show Gardens this year with Chris Beardshaw's Victorian themed garden of how they used to mix Vegetable Growing with keeping Livestock and also Fruit trees and flowers proving the star attraction of the show with it's RHS Gold Medal and best in show award. I have included a slide show below for you to enjoy of some of the sights of this year's show, I will be back next week as usual with my next installment from my allotments, thanks Steve.