Horticultural

Sunday was Three Sisters Day

Unusually we drove to the plot because there were about five boxes full of plants to carry, plus a hoe, spade, gardening bag and longwave radio for the cricket (not for my benefit, you understand, although I find listening to cricket commentary rather relaxing, apart from when Geoff Boycott is on).

Rick finished clearing the top end of the plot where we'd trench composted over the winter, and where I had planned a Three Sisters planting scheme of corn, beans and squash. This involves following the Native American way of planting these three crops in a mutually beneficial way - the beans grow up the corn, the squash covers the ground and suppresses weeds and stops pests such as mice reaching the corn, and the beans help to fix nitrogen in the soil to help feed the squash and corn. Clever, eh?

There are various ways of planting (just Google it for lots of ideas) but I used "mini mounds" each planted with one sweetcorn plant, one or two beans, and a squash (either summer of winter) planted to one side, as the pic on the left shows. You can sow straight into the mound but I grew seedlings in pots first to evade the slugs and get a head start on the weather.

A plastic bottle with the base cut off was incorporated into each mound so that I can water direct to the roots, which is more efficient and prevents erosion of the soil surface (important on a gradient!). Each bean and squash seedling was also armed with a slug sleeve - a ring made from another plastic bottle with a jagged top rim to discourage slugs from sliming over and eating everything.

Although the theory is that the beans climbs the squash, you can tell that I am not 100% convinced by the presence of the stakes ... I have a feeling the beans will romp away quicker than the corn.

You can see the finished set of mounds on the right. Given how rampant the squash always are, all that bare soil will probably be covered in a fortnight or so ...

If you're interested in what varieties I've sown, here's a list (seed firm links are on the left-hand side of the page):

Mr Brooks Blue bean (Heritage Seed Library)
Bean Cosse Violette (Real Seed Company)
Bean Hutterite Soup (Heritage Seed Library)
Sweetcorn Ashworth (Real Seed Company)
Sweetcorn F1 Applause (Suttons - I never usually buy F1s but these were a gift and they are actually a lot less sturdy than the Ashworth, interestingly)
Squash Harlequin (Heritage Seed Library swap - also available here)
Squash Green Bush (just a bog standard green courgette, can't remember where these seeds were from)
Summer Squash Mystery Mix (Real Seed Company)
Pumpkin Rouge Vif D'Etampes variants (own saved seed - bound to be a very mixed bunch!)
Rainbow Squash (Real Seed Company)
Pumpkin Jack Be Little (Organic Gardening Catalogue)

(Sadly, the Butternut squash didn't germinate so I am trying again with a late sowing - fingers crossed!)

Cup and saucer vine: a sowing debacle

Aside from the tomato seeds detailed below, I also sowed a pot of Cobaea scandens, the cup and saucer vine, which I knew as a child from looking at it longingly in DG Hessayon's Houseplant Expert book. It's an exotic-looking annual climber that I am hoping will jive along nicely with my red/purple/blue colour scheme in my back garden, clambering up a fence or wall. (It's an annual that can be grown either in a conservatory or in a sheltered spot outside).

The seeds were large, papery and round, which at least made them easy to sow - or so I thought. The seed packet wasn't very forthcoming about sowing methods: reading the information on the page linked to above, it seems I have down everything wrong.

I didn't soak the seeds before planting, I planted the discs flat against the soil rather than on edge, and I probably covered them with too much compost. I am hoping that the seeds will stick a metaphorical two fingers up at the expert horticultural advice and germinate nonetheless. I am off now to stick a clear plastic bag around the pot. That much, at least, I can remedy.

Tomato fest 2006

And so it begins: my annual mission to grow tomatoes outdoors, without the protection of a greenhouse, on my allotment.

An exercise fraught with danger and tinged with the hope of achieving the holy grail of delicious ripe tomatoes.

Last year was a bit of a write-off. Very late frosts in June turned my young charges crispy, and although they recovered, the damage was done. With two new cold frames in my armoury, I have high hopes of preventing a repeat performance.

And so, on Sunday evening, far too late for any non-obsessed person to start such an enterprise, I decided to start sowing tomato seeds. A quick perusal of my cardboard seedbox and rather snazzier Lee Valley lever arch file seed keeper, it soon dawned on me that I had far more seeds than I needed. In case you are in any doubt about the veracity ofthat statement, please peruse the list below:

1. Gardeners Delight - the old faithful cherry tomato. A must-have
2. Whippersnapper - no idea about this one, aside from the fact that it's from this year's Heritage Seed Library haul
3. Sub Arctic Plenty - ditto: this was my "lucky dip" item from the HSL so I have no reason to know anything about its provenance. From the name, though, I have high hopes for it thriving in the possibly sub-Arctic surrounds of a home counties allotment
4. OxHeart - this one came as a gift from my aunt in New Zealand. From the packet it looks large and juicy
5. Brandywine - the remains of a packet that I tried (and largely failed with) last year Essex Wonder - the HSL variety currently being "sponsored" by me and colleagues in the Guardian Unlimited news team
6. San Marzano - another half-full packet from last year. This one's a small plum tomato that brought limited success
7. Auntie Madge's - another Heritage Seed Library packet that I don't think I had much joy with last year

... And probably several more that Ihave dropped off my tomato radar.

I sowed one pot of each, in the end. There'll be time for fresh sowings later, if it all goes pear-shaped. Even though lots of tomato seed packets suggest sowing in February or March, if you are sowing to grow outside, it's best to hold off for as long as you dare. Otherwise you're left with leggy seedlings desperate to be planted out, when it's still too chilly for them to thrive.

Oh, and the seed compost mix? Nothing snazzy, just some peat free compost cut with a few generous handfuls of perlite, that white crumbly substance that helps to aerate the soil: vital for young roots to develop.

See the celeriac grow

So, here then are the celeriac seedlings, nestling in their perlite and compost bed and reaching for the light.

I planted some more red baron onion seeds this week and transplanted the seedlings from the first sowing into pots. The fresh smell of onion was quite refreshing.

I'm writing about sowing seeds for my book at the moment so if you have any top tips, do let me know ...

Breaking news

The celeriac has germinated ... I repeat, the celeriac has germinated.

More soon ....

Finally: a cold frame!

After many hours of grappling, and being sent the wrong bits, I now have one double decker cold frame! I can't face putting the other one up yet, but this one should do for now. It can at least take the overflow from my lounge windowsill.

One of the annoying things about my house is the lack of windowsills wider than the palm of your hand. The only ones are in the lounge, so that's always packed with plants, and in the kitchen, but that one's too narrow and shady to provide much in the way of staging for seedlings. And given that I am sowing as if there's no tomorrow now - lettuce forellenschloss, rocket (pictured below) and cabbage southampton wonder have all germinated, and I am waiting for celeriac prinz to sprout too.

Gillian over at My Tiny Plot is having success with rocket too, but I am particularly jealous of her beautifully laid out masterplan for the coming year. My masterplan - such as it is - is sitting in the back of my Moleskine diary, and is very rough. I am going to try the three sisters approach to growing squash, beans and corn again this year, and rotate various groups of crops around to different areas of the plot, but beyond that, my main plan as it stands is to "grow lots of things". Organised, eh?

What's hardening off?

Sorry for the break in service: I have been busy, and ill, in that order. Now that I am back to (nearly) full strength, I have been turning my attention back to important things, like this blog, and my book.

Being terribly impatient, I've already sown some lettuce seeds a good month or two of the scheduled time: they're two varieties called All Year Round and Marvel of the Four Seasons, so I am hoping they live up to their names. They're in my brand new compact plant trainer, and looking rather leggy, which is not surprising given how few hours of sunlight (or even light) they are getting. I am hoping that, with cold frame protection, they'll give me an early crop of spring lettuce.

Because of an ongoing problem with onion white rot on my plot, I am trying growing some onions from seed this year. Apparently onion grown from seed is less susceptible to this horrible fungal condition that can (and has, in previous years) wipe out almost your entire onion harvest. Traditionally onion seeds are sown on Boxing Day (Dec 26 for all the American readers). I've always been convinced this is just a way out of spending any more time in fraught family situations ("sorry love, must go and sow my onion seeds now, couldn't possibly play Twister with Aunty Mary and the kids again"). I was a day or so late with my onions which went in on Dec 27. They took a little longer than the four or five days it took the lettuce seeds to come up, but now they're going strongly. Now I just need to get around to contructing the two double-decker cold frames I bought so they're ready for the hardening off season.

If you don't know what hardening off is, think of it like this. You're a seedling, brought up in a cosy propagator on someone's sunny windowsill. You're used to humid, warm environment, without a breath of breeze in the air. Suddenly you're whisked away to a cold, windy allotment. You're not acclimatised to the cold nighttime temperatures. You keel over and die. 

The solution is that seedlings are gradually exposed to the outside, perhaps by being placed in a cold frame for a few hours on a warm day then brought back inside. Gradually the plants toughen up and can be moved to the allotment and will adapt to conditions there.

Hardening off can be a real pain for allotmenteers: it requires a lot of time spent shuttling plants inside and outside. But it does improve greatly the survival rate when you transplant crops to their final growing position. A cold frame or cloche will help a great deal to protect from the worst of the elements but there's no substitute for the gradual switch from inside to outside.

What happened to Sunday being a day of rest?

I had been getting very twitchy about the fact that my tomato plants weren't in position yet last week. Particularly as I'm entered in a competition and all.

That was resolved today with a mammoth Sunday allotment session, broken only by the consumption of a picnic lunch, during which time I planted tomatoes, globe artichokes and physalis, sowed 12 types of squash (summer and winter), weeded, watered and hoed, and cut back the grass with my brushcutter.

It was a fantastically rewarding day: I could feel my muscles working in all the right places; I was outside enjoying the dry (if not quite sunny) weather; and I got to spend the day surrounded by plants and lots and lots of bees.

Just in case you're interested in what tomatoes I am growing this year, here's the list - all grown from seed, naturally:

Brandywine (the potato-leaved heritage variety, as pictured)
San Marzano
Auntie Madges (from the Heritage Seed Library)
Gardener's Delight
Yellow Scotland

One little trick I learned from experience is that when planting out tomatoes in their final growing position, you can bury them pretty deep, even if it means cutting off a few of the lower leaves. New roots will sprout out from the stem and help the plant develop a good root system (essential especially if you're growing them outside) and it also helps to stabilise them. It works for me anyway, although I am not sure if it's the orthodox way of going about things.

The list of squash is a little more scary. Here goes, of the ones I can recall (I'm only growing one or two of each):
Twonga
Jack Be Little
Zapallito de Tronco
Aubergine blanche (yes it is a squash - from the HSL I think)
Whanga Crown
Waltham Butternut
Rainbow
Rouge vif d'etampes
Plain green courgettes

It's wonderful to see everything growing like there's no tomorrow. Top highlights were the chives (pictured right) - surrounded by bumblebees flying in and out of the flowers like drunks leaving a pub at closing time - the peas and beans - now beginning to develop mini (i)pods - and the potatoes - seemingly unconcerned by the recent frosts, they're shooting up now (see left).

The weeds, unfortunately, are also shooting up. Fortunately my trusty assistant did a marvellous job on those. (And no, I don't mean the brushcutter.)

Jobs still on the list to do include planting various beans and more salads and beetroot. The sorrel I sowed a few weeks back hasn't done that well, and neither have the leeks. Is it too late to try again? Maybe, maybe not - last year I grew some summer cabbage about four months too late and it lasted me nearly all winter.

Major worries

Two allotment sessions this weekend, dominated by sowing more seed: leeks (musselburgh) and radishes mainly. Took this picture of the tiny gooseberries  because they look so cute and hairy. I've left my fingers - with dirty fingernails, natch - in the shot for scale.

I also wanted to see if I could spot the Major, because he's really gone downhill in the lasdt couple of months. Last year he was sleek and bushy-tailed - now an infestation of fleas has left his hindquarters and tail almost bare and he is skin and bone. I am not sure if he's been abandoned or is simply being neglected by his owners. The last couple of times I've seen him he's been so desperate for me to give him a scratch that he's almost bitten me. So now I've got some flea treatment and a couple of pouches of cat food at the ready in my gardening bag so I can treat him and give him some grub when I see him next. I just hope I'm not too late.

Other gardening tasks this weekend included potting up Rick's marvellous Pieris into a larger pot and a bit of light weeding around the gardening, as well as masterminding my plan for renovating the last remaining flowerbeds in the garden.

Pootling and potager

It's Easter weekend, and I don't have long to post because there is serious garden/allotment pootling to be done.

Actually it's been a bit more productive than that: yesterday I planted 3kg of Epicure potatoes (dates back to 1897, since you ask), while my trusty assistant who prefers to keep a low profile on this blog sowed three types of peas (Karina, Sugar Rae and Norli). Today I've been to the not-so-high-class store known as Wilko (which nevertheless does very cheap gardening stuff), bought 15 8ft bamboo canes destined for various jobs around the allotment, perlite, vermiculite and an agapanthus for one of the raised beds in the garden.

It's now raining, hence the pootle hiatus and the chance to type. And to foment further plans for the two beds in my garden I haven't yet got around to renovating. At the moment I am thinking potager, for one of them at least.  Unfortunately I can't find a good web resource in English that explains what a potager is, but if you have rudimentary French this Wikipedia page should be enough to fill you in. It would be a way of creating an area of the garden for herbs and salads that could be picked and eaten immediately, while still being attractive. For the moment, though, those plans are on hold because the spring bulbs on that patch are so gorgeous at the moment that I can't bear to dig them up.