I know that I am late with my New Year’s greeting, but as the saying goes – Better late than never.
We’ve had a lazy time. Our afternoon walks have been local, as we reckoned everywhere, including the roads, would be really busy with many people still taking time off work and school.
Staying local was a wise move, as Nostell was heaving on the two days that we visited. Hardly surprising, as one was New Year’s Day. Extra areas were given over to parking, and it was even too busy for Ruby to have a ball chasing game.
This week, we will probably have the place more or less to ourselves.
We had just one visit to the allotment, not to do any work, it was bitterly cold, but to harvest a couple of things.
We haven’t much left to harvest but we came away with a red cabbage and a bucket of leeks. Some leeks were used in a chicken, leek and mushroom pie which was served with some of the red cabbage. I cooked the whole cabbage and froze some to use later.
The leeks are really thin this year, and have some brown streaks on a few of the outer leaves. These need stripping off, making the leek even thinner. I turned to ChatGPT for some answers and then asked Notebook LM to summarise the information into a graphic.
We can rule out overcrowding. We maybe need to think about being more generous with our feeding regime. We sprinkle fertiliser on the soil prior to planting and then leave plants to just get on with it.
Many crops are small this year and as suspected the drought played a large part in the problem. Apparently, the soil needs to be moist 10-15cm down. We did a lot of watering but according to ChatGPT, we would have needed to use 10-15 cans of water every week to satisfy our 2×5 metre bed and compensate for the drought. That’s just for the leeks. An impossible task,
I took a few photos of the plot and we also filmed a video which is posted here.
As you can see very little is growing. Under one enviromesh tunnel are garlic and overwintering onions, both are looking good.
The other tunnel is covering remaining brassica oddments which can be more or less cleared.
About half of the beds are covered with weed control fabric which has then been covered with manure.
Other beds which produced hard lumps when dug over, have been left in the hope that the weather will break down the lumps. This seems to be working,
Piles of manure are being stacked around the plot. If they rot down sufficiently the manure will be incorporated into these bed before planting up.
That’s all for this week so as always, stay safe, stay well and stay warm
Well done for getting out there in that bitterly cold weather. Worth it when you come away with that excellent cabbage and leeks too – skinny but not worm-ridden, what a bonus!
Not much else to harvest Belinda
Happy New Year!
I love leeks, but since finding out they can, if one has a predisposition as I do, contribute in a major way to kidney stones, as do beetroots apparently.
Is that true of other alliums, Debbie