1 May
Last year I grew some herbs in pots in the greenhouse which was fairly successful and so I am repeating this again this year and sowed a selection of basil, coriander, oregano and parsley. I want to try for a succession of herbs so more will be sown later. We also sowed some rubeckia, French bean and broad beans – time had to be rationed in the greenhouse though as it was very hot working in there. A full list of varieties sown is available here
We planted a nectarine – Fantasia – in a pot by the greenhouse door. As I was frequently popping in and out of the greenhouse to cool down I paid it more attention than usual and was excited to notice that some tiny fruits have set. Now we just have to hope any late frosts don’t make them drop and they grow big enough to have a taste. Read this post!
3 May
An overnight frost was forecast and so the nectarine was covered with a sheet of fleece to try and offer it some protection – we need to do all we can to encourage the tiny fruits to continue to grow.
4 May
The nectarine seems to have survived the frost but on the allotment is a completely different story. The leaves of the kiwi have been frost burnt and are shrivelled – not too sure how the flower buds will have been affected. Some of the leaves of the grapevine have also been burned and the potato tops that were just pushing through the soil have been blackened. This happened last year too although the growth will have been checked the plants will recover. Our plot neighbour threw fleece over his potatoes and still the frost managed to get to the tops.
On a positive notes we picked our first few sprigs of broccoli although I’m not sure whether there will actually be much more forthcoming. The broccoli plants were badly affected by the conditions over winter.
The penstemon collection ordered from Unwins arrived. As these are young plants we decided to pot them up to grow them on a bit before planting them in the garden.
5 May
The mammoth task of potting on our houseplants continues still about 16 more to go!
The fishpond filter also had a really good clean, the filter medium and UV light bulb has been changed as this needs doing yearly. We even managed to see most of the new fish that were introduced to the pond last week. They have been hiding since being released into open water no doubt becoming familiar with their new surroundings.
Excitement on the wildlife front as the first of the eggs in our nest box cam have hatched – a bit sooner than we expected. A video clip can be viewed here.
More excitement of a different kind occurred when we attempted to remove the straw that had been trying to protect the banana plants. The activity had to be suspended and plans changed as a colony of bumble bees have set up a nest in or under the straw. As much straw as it was possible to remove without disturbing the bees too much has taken away and the rest will have to remain in place until the bees leave.
We thought that banana plants had been killed by the harsh winter but a young shoot is emerging so we may still have a chance of one of the plants at least recovering.
6 May
The first lot of tomatoes have been planted in the garden greenhouse. As last year we are using grow bags and ring culture method as this proved successful last year. Six tomatoes have been planted in two grow bags with compost from a third grow bag used to fill up the rings.
As we have flower buds on our pot grown kiwi Issai and young fruits on our pot grown nectarine we want to do everything that we can to try and get them to produce fruit that we can harvest and so we have treated them to some slow release fertiliser. The granules are supposed to provide food got 6 months so we hope the plants thrive on it.
7 May
We sowed the first of our sweet corn despite the unseasonably warm April we were not tempted to sow the seeds any earlier. I noticed at least one plot holder had planted theirs out – I wonder how it fared during the frost that we had a couple of nights ago. Generally we have noticed that people plant out their corn earlier than we do but it then seems to take a while to start growing and our later planted corn easily catches up.
Another batch of strawberry plants – Finesse (an everbearing variety) – arrived today and have been potted up. We are considering growing these in a trough in the garden so we can hopefully have a few berries easily available.
8 May
The highlight of the day was picking our first cauliflower of the season – it may have been small but was perfectly formed and we didn’t want to wait for it to grow before we picked it. Hopefully there will be one or two more. The cauliflower was one of a select band of brassicas survivors of last winter.
Some of the alpine strawberries have been moved from the ‘nursery bed’ into their permanent positions. I’ve used them to create a border along the front of the newly planted Japanese wineberry and thornless blackberry. Each was dug up with a large rootball and set into a hole filled with water so hopefully they will not realise that they have moved. Already they are flowering well despite some flowers being affected by the frost we should have some fruit soon.
Crimson flowered broad beans have been planted and I started weeding the parsnips seedlings. There is quite a difference in germination success of the two varieties of seed sown. Gladiator has germinated far better than White King.
9 May
The weeding has continued to give any seedlings space to grow without competition from faster growing weeds. Where possible I have used the hoe to cut weed tops just to keep them in check.
9/10 May
Lots of sowing done too see this list for details.
11 May
The new strawberry bed was weeded. We had tipped tubs of used compost from the garden greenhouse into this bed before digging, as I weeded I was surprised by the unique smell of coriander and then noticed lots of coriander seedlings has grown amongst the weeds. I have never planted coriander outdoors as I had always assumed it wasn’t hard enough in our climate but these seeds must have overwintered during the worse winter we have experienced for years and still germinated. Maybe I’ll try sowing some seed outdoors too.
We planted some Carouby de Maussane, mangetout peas, which are supposed to be tall growing and have attractive purple flowers. It’s the first time we have grown them so we look forward to seeing how they grow and of course taste.
Our herb beds have become very untidy and so plants are being moved out to a recently cleared bed. The first stage today was to move lots of chives to create an edging to the new bed. We have plenty of chives as they have self seeded everywhere and so I'm hoping some plot neighbours will help themselves to the ones I can't use.
Unfortunately our dahlias didn't survive last winter which came as no surprise. I don’t think the problem was our method of storage as plot neighbours who had stored dahlias conventionally for years also had a complete loss. Last winter was just exceptional. In many ways it is a good thing as in anticipation of such an event we grew 40 new plants from seed and would have had space problems had all the old tubers survived. If the seed grown plants perform I don’t think we will bother trying to overwinter tubers again.
14 May
More tomatoes have been planted up in the plot greenhouse. The potatoes growing in the bags inside the plot greenhouse are growing really quickly with one variety – Maris Bard showing the first flower buds. We just hope we are not disappointed in that the plants are all top and few tubers.
I also completed the replanting and dividing of the herbs from the old herb bed into the new area. Also transplanted was a piece of our second cardoon and autumn fruiting raspberries Joan J.
15 May
More tomatoes have been planted in the garden greenhouse
16/17 May
The dark leaved dahlias ordered from Unwins arrived. We have been wondering whether our seed grown dahlias were large enough to produce full sized flowering plants this year but the ones from Unwins are a very similar size. The central growing point has been removed so maybe we need to do the same to our home grown plants. It is really difficult though deciding to drastically prune such young plants. The dark leaved dahlias have been potted up so they can grow on a little before they are planted out in the garden. We could still have a frost which would put paid to them.
The first lot of runner beans have been sown – see here for more details
18 May
We harvested the second cauliflower from the over wintering brassicas that we have just about given up on – after the ravages of last winter the plants were in a very sorry state but it was worth using the ‘leave it and see what happens method’ as we have managed to harvest some fresh greens from them.
19 May
Initial investigation of our over wintered dahlia tubers led us to believe that all the tubers had rotted but on removing all the straw and top lot of tubers we found that the ones that had been left planted in the ground were beginning to produce shoots. We had planted one tuber of each variety and piled other tubers on top of them before covering with straw and black polythene. The unplanted tubers rotted but the ones in the ground appear to have survived.
The carrots were treated to their one and only weeding of the season. To help guard against carrot fly attack I lifted the enviromesh and tried to mainly work ducked underneath. From now on the carrots will have to look after themselves so that the enviromesh can be left in undisturbed.
The first French beans and lettuce have been planted and we picked our first fresh strawberries of the season from our new strawberry plants.
20 May
The first of the new season brassicas – cabbage and cauliflower have been planted. The varieties are some that claim to be club-root resistant. As we do have some club-root on the plot we will see how these perform. Although our planting was interrupted by rain (unfortunately enough to stop us working but not enough to do the plants much good) but we couldn’t leave the plants unprotected from any marauding wood pigeons so they were quickly covered with insect netting. This doubles as protection from the white butterflies too.
21 May
It will soon be time to plant out the dahlias that we have grown from seed and so the dahlia bed needed clearing of weeds and preparing so whist Martyn did that I weeded our largest onion, chive and garlic bed. I’m trying to keep up with weeding onions this year as once the weeds grow larger weeding becomes more problematic and pulling out large weeds can also lead to uprooting young onions too. I don’t know how long this resolution will last as it seems that no sooner have I reached the far end of the bed that weeds are already growing at the other end. This is a problem when we have had very little rain so if the weather turns wet the weeds will grow even faster … and we have a small onion bed as well as our longer one!
On a large plot like ours we have to weed according to the needs of the plants so the plants that can survive are at the bottom of the weeding rota and sometimes remain there indefinitely.
25 May
A visit to the plot today revealed that the strong winds had ripped the enviromesh covering from the carrot bed. After all the care I have taken to keep them covered, I hope passing carrot fly haven’t taken this opportunity to pay our carrots a visit.
The wind has tattered quite a few of our fruit plants especially the cane fruit – raspberries and tayberry
30 May
The rain today although prevented us from making a planned trip to the allotment. It rained for a few hours but hardly produced the amount of moisture needed. Late afternoon we decided to pop to the plot if only to water the tomatoes and ended up returning with enough fruit and vegetables for dinner.
We decided to tip out one of our potato bags and discovered a reasonable amount (enough for four helpings) of potatoes but there were lots of immature tubers so the remaining bags will be left to grow on a little longer.
We picked a bowl of ripe strawberries and also a handful of ripe blackcurrants. Together with a cauliflower and some springs of white broccoli all was enjoyed for dinner.
The weeds seem to shoot up once they have even a little moisture and so it looks as though we will need to put in some overtime.
One bit of excitement is that some cyclamen seeds have germinated. I bought the seeds as a challenge not expecting success but 6 out of 8 of the indoor cyclamen are through and growing well and a couple of cyclamen coum have tiny leaves and there are signs of others maybe germinating. Fingers crossed.
31 May
We made quite a lot of progress today.
The brassicas that have been patiently waiting in the cold frame have been planted out. We couldn’t really put this off for much longer or the plants would have spoiled. Despite yesterday’s rain the ground was dry so each planting hole was filled with water before filling in; the plants have been planted fairly deeply and firmed in well. As no doubt we were being watched by the wood pigeons, we have netted all the brassicas with insect proof netting. This should not only protect from wood pigeon attack but should also give some protection against the large white butterflies. It’s not foolproof as one or two butterflies do manage to get in somehow but it does keep most out.
We also planted our first three courgette plants with more in the wings if they all do well we could be in for yet another glut year.
Other bushes that needed netting were the redcurrants. The berries are beginning to turn red. When we arrived at the plot a blackbird already was investigating them and made a great fuss on being disturbed so netting was a priority.
We prepared the bed in which the dahlias will be planted. Some of last year's tubers had survived the winter. These were the ones that had been left in the ground onto which other tubers and straw were piled. There should be one of each of the varieties that we most wanted to keep. We had thought that they had all rotted but unlike the ones that were just piled up and not planted they have amazed us.
There was lots of weeding around young plants and seedlings to make sure they didn’t suffer from too much competition for the desperately needed moisture.
