Thursday, 13 April 2017

A Dry Start for April

It's been windy and felt on the cool side since the almost summery weather of the weekend but in truth the temperatures have only returned to their average values for mid April. However, this is the driest start to April I've recorded with only 0.6mm (0.02in) having fallen so far this month. This might be a statement I regret making by the end of the month.
Temperature & Rainfall Records for April 2017
As you may be aware, if you're a regular follower, our plots at the allotment suffer from club root. If possible it means that we only grow club root resistant brassicas on the plot as there is no cure for this disease of the root system.
As you can see from the photo above the plant develops roots which are swollen resulting in stunted plant growth and in severe cases the brassica will die off completely. To make matters more difficult on the plot not all our beds suffer from this problem so I try to keep a note of which beds are affected.

In order to try to overcome this problem or a least to reduce its effects we are growing our early brassicas in 5" (125mm) pots.
Cabbage "Regency", Cauliflower "Helsinki" & Calabrese "Aquiles"
None of these early varieties are club root resistant. They will be planted out in a bed which is in a four year rotation plan and has never shown any signs of club root but hopefully growing bigger plants in larger pots will give us a better chance of a good early crop. It's also worth mentioning that so far we have never suffered with a club root problem with any of the varieties we've grown that have been sold as "club root resistant" varieties.

Posted by Martyn at 10:19 3 comments

Wednesday, 12 April 2017

Fruit Setting?

Well we couldn't expect the fantastic weekend weather to last and it hasn't. It's turned much cooler and cloudier over the last couple of days and it's been windy at times.

Tuesday was a day to be working in the greenhouse rather than outside. Each day there's an inspection of our apricot, peach and nectarine trees in the greenhouse to see if any of those flowers of a few weeks ago have set any fruit. At the moment things look promising but it's early days.
Apricot - Flavourcot
Peach - Avalon Pride
Nectarine - Fantasia
It looks as though all three trees have set some fruit so we are hopeful that we'll at least get something from each tree.

The early salad leaves and club root resistant brassicas sown at the beginning of the month have germinated well and they'll need pricking out into modules in a few days time.
Top left Red Cabbage "Lodero"  then moving round clockwise Spinach "Amazon", Rocket, and Cabbage "Kalibro"
Of course now there's some new spring greenery in the greenhouse the pests are starting to move in.
Mint sauce with added protein anybody.

Posted by Martyn at 09:57 0 comments

Monday, 10 April 2017

Busy Day Planting

Sunday turned out to be our warmest day of the year as forecast but it was a close run thing. No sooner had the temperature peaked at 22.7°C (72.9°F) a whole 0.1°C (0.15°F) higher than Saturday when the weather took a turn for the worse. Suddenly a cool almost gale force wind blew up and the sunshine disappeared. It was back on with a jumper.
Temperature, Sunshine & Wind Speed Records for 09 April 2017
It didn't stop us getting done what we wanted to do on the plot. Our modular grown onions were planted out alongside the shallots. Our first two rows of Onward peas were sown and we managed to get four rows of main crop potatoes planted as well. Part of the plot was strimmed and Sue did a bit more refurbishment to our autumn raspberry bed.
On this part of the plot we've only one more bed to plant up although it doesn't look all planted up at the moment. The bed in the right foreground is planted up with early potatoes then working round the beds in a clockwise direction are onions and shallots, then peas under the sticks, which leaves one bed to be planted up with our early brassicas.

Posted by Martyn at 10:51 0 comments

Sunday, 9 April 2017

We're Being Spoilt

Saturday was a glorious sunny April day with the temperature reaching 22.6°C (72.7°F) making it the warmest day of the year so far. Sunday has started off lovely and sunny so Saturday might not hold onto that record for very long.
Temperature & Sunshine Records 08 April 2017
We decided to make the most of the lovely weather and get some planting out done at the allotment.
Pear - Invincible
Our pear trees are now in full flower and putting on a superb display. I wonder how many of the flowers will set fruit. There were plenty of pollinating insects doing their bit on Saturday.

Sue set to planting out our broad beans - Witkiem Manita - and shallots which had been raised in modules in the greenhouse and had spent the last week in the coldframe hardening off.
Broad Bean - Witkiem Manita - sown on 02 March 2017
The other half of this bed will be filled with more broad beans sown at a later date to provide some continuity of harvesting. Our second variety is Robin Hood and is a shorter growing variety. I'll probably sow the seeds in a couple of weeks time.
Shallots - Golden Gourmet & Red Sun - planted in modules on 02 March 2017
The shallots don't take up very much space in this bed so rest of the bed will be filled up with onions.

While Sue was planting out our shallots and broad beans I was cultivating some of the beds that had their covering of weed control fabric removed last week.
Most of our soil is in excellent condition for cultivating at the moment. This bed was once our old strawberry bed. Last year it grew a decent crop of potatoes and this year we are going to grow our sweet peas and winter squashes in it. We think we might be able to squeeze in a row of peas too.

Pity that the fine weather isn't forecast to last.

Posted by Martyn at 10:24 2 comments

Saturday, 8 April 2017

A Cold & Calm Start To The Day

The forecast is for Saturday to be our mildest day of the year with Sunday promising to be slightly milder. However, it's certainly been a cold start to Saturday with the temperature falling to 0.6°C (33.1°F) at 06:35. It's also been a very calm night too with no wind recorded at all.
Wind Speed Records 07-08 April 2017
As you can see from the above weather station readings it was calm between 21:00 Friday until 09:00 on Saturday morning. That's unusual for us to have such a completely calm spell.

On Friday we visited Norwich and had lunch in the jungle.
It's certainly different. This lemon and ginger cake finished off our jungle lunch a treat.

Posted by Martyn at 10:09 0 comments

Friday, 7 April 2017

A Plot Tour

We’ve been a bit busy this week and not had any time for gardening at home or at the allotment since Monday. On Monday I thought it might be a good idea to do a quick video tour of the allotment before we get too much sown and planted.

There’s lots of fruit blossom and we’ll have to hope that some fine weather brings the pollinating insects out if force to set some fruit.

Just in case you missed my video on YouTube showing how we plant our potatoes I’ve added it to the end of this blog.





Posted by Martyn at 09:00 4 comments

Tuesday, 4 April 2017

First Earlies and Tester Potatoes Planted

Monday was a lovely sunny spring day. It wasn't quite the warmest day of the year but with only a light breeze it felt like it should have been. We decided to take advantage of the fine weather and get our first early potatoes planted.
Planting First Early Potatoes - Casablanca
If you follow our blog you'll know we don't plant our potatoes in the traditional way of digging out a trench which then has compost or manure added before the potatoes are placed in the trench which is then backfilled. We prefer the trowel only method.
Planting First Early Potatoes - Casablanca
We find our method is much easier and quicker and gives us good results so we'll be sticking to it. We also had time to plant six varieties of potatoes that we haven't grown before. We've four tubers of each variety to try.
Planting Potatoes:- Cara, Innovator, Isle of Jura, Osprey, Rooster, & Saxon
We planted these potatoes in a similar manner except that they were planted through holes in weed control fabric. I'm anticipating that these potatoes will all be lifted at the same time. When the potato tops have died back the weed control fabric will be removed to make lifting the potatoes easier. I will start lifting our first earlies before the foliage starts to die back and it's much easier to do this without any weed control fabric getting in the way.

Posted by Martyn at 10:21 3 comments

Monday, 3 April 2017

A Very Mild March

As we move into April our gardening season gets into full swing. March is normally a coolish month and for this reason I don't start sowing many seeds until the beginning of April. However, March turned out to be very mild, well for March, as the average temperature for the month was 8.8°C or 47.8°F.
As you can see from the graphic above March for us was not only the mildest I've recorded, but also the mildest in the last 25 years, replacing 2012 from top spot by 0.1°C or about 0.15°F. Rainfall and sunshine amounts were about average for March so it wasn't too bad a month and it certainly gave us the opportunity to gets some beds ready for sowing and planting at the allotment.

The first batch of seeds have been sown and have been left to germinate in the greenhouse.
Now all I need to do is keep the slugs, snails and mice at bay to give the seeds a chance to germinate. A list of all our sowing and planting in April will be kept here.

Posted by Martyn at 09:49 0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)