The 2015 Allotment / Veg Patch Thread - it's here!

[TheSpottedZebra]

Yes, it's the thread you've all been waiting for, a place to chit chat about your allotment or fruit and veg patch - however big it may be. Even if it currently only imaginary or no bigger than a pot of growing basil from the supermarket.

Come discuss your plans, your seeds, your learnings from previous years and your goals for this year. All levels of knowledge welcome, from absolute beginner, to enthusiastic 2nd year-er (me!), to anyone else.

Welcome, DontSweat ! You sound a bit like me - new allotment, a few things grown before in the garden, and kids telling us what to grow...! Have you just got the allotment? What state is it in?

I've done a bit more hacking away at my plot today, digging out some kind mysterious but tenacious weed with very deep tap roots, as well as clearing lots of other grass and crap. And to think I thought it was in an ok ish state! It's taking me ages to sort. My weed membrane has arrived now, so I'll be able to cover the bits that I've cleared, until they're needed.

Arf at the tales of kids 'helping'. My mum is not really one for advice in life, but she did advise me to never let dc see me deadheading. As she is still pissed off hat the time that I decided to 'help' her in the garden, just before she had a big party, one that she'd been getting ready for for months...

Amantes how are seedlings looking today? Not too dead I hope?

I've spent hours hunting for a large cloche which I can use over one of my raised beds to extend my seedling space. Have accepted that the only option is to build one from upvc sheeting.

Hello everybody

It's been a reasonably dry day here and the kids are being quiescent (which is rare) so I escaped into the garden early on and got LOADS done!

I have:

• planted my yellow tomatoes and fancypants James Wong black tomatoes (3 fucking pounds for 6, count them, 6 seeds )

• dug up my sage plant and transplanted it to a new home in a pot
• dug up the veg patch of the garden (long thin bit in the sunshine, 0.5m x 5m, so didn't take long) and positively enjoyed it because of my superior garden fork
• raked up leaves and liberally applied topsoil to the parts of the garden where I previously removed stepping stones (there are now unexpected holes as I didn't add enough soil to fill up the spaces at the time)

I am now relaxing upstairs in my QUIET house (can't tell you how rare this is when we're all home) with a cup of tea and MN, daydreaming about the raised beds which DH has promised to help me build tomorrow.

Wanted to share my smuggery with you all!

Oh, Partridge -that sounds heavenly! You got loads done too! Those James Wong seed prices are extortionate aren't they? Have you got a greenhouse, where are you growing your toms? I'm still holding off on sowing the bulk of my seeds, but gosh it's hard...

I went to allotment today too. I had a willing helper, but we had so much rain yesterday and last night that the ground was just unworkable. In fact even the grass paths were swampy already. I must do something about the paths actually, as they'll hopefully be getting a bit of wear. So we use did some light hand weeding of the bit where the fruit bushes will go, had a wander, shifted to the tip all the rubbish ive been building up, then called it a day. Hope that's the end of the rain for a while...

I tend to plant the toms earlyish; I grow them in an odd little room at the tail end of our house which has a plastic roof essentially it is an indoor, poorly insulated greenhouse! It's very cold in winter but not quite as bad as outside (currently a toasty 8 degrees) and is ROASTING in summer. Anyway, I start them off in there and move out in May-ish.

It has been quite rainy here today and yesterday too, but nothing for a week before that so not too bad. It sounds like you had a productive time at the allotment anyway, as working out what you actually need to do is half the job (well for me anyway ).

Oh, you might know; can I grow raspberries in a container rather than in a plot? Advise me please!

Yeah I grew rasps in pots before! I'll be planting them out though now I have plot, I don't think they give the best harvest in pots. I remember reading that you had to really watch to ensure that they didn't get too dry. I found autumn ones did better for me, but I have no idea if that was pot - related or not.

Hmm, maybe I'll sow just a few toms now, as a little experiment? I have plenty of seeds, pots and compost, so nothing to lose... 8 degrees sounds a lot warmer than my conservatory however (i guess), maybe I'll just wait a little longer...

I'm in Australia and it's late summer here. The most successful tomatoes have been the cherry ones that grow out of the compost willy nilly, while our carefully nurtured heirloom toms are rubbish.

Little Lebanese aubergines are very good again. The pumpkin is an extravagant joke. Dwarf beans have worked, so more of those next year. Chard is unstoppable and, like rocket and lettuce, grows all year round.

My sad plants rescue double graft satsuma has fruited, so now it's the long wait until winter for it to ripen.

I'm off to allotments in a minute. I have decided to ask the council to rotavate mine, I dug a patch last week which was do-able, but about two thirds of it is still solid grass and both DH and I have old injuries which mean manually digging it all out is impossible. Am a bit that they seem to clear and rotavate them routinely for new plotholders now but mine wasn't done when I took it over 18 months ago.

However before I can do that I need to dismantle a raised bed, somehow shift two compost bins full of clay soil which weigh a ton and remove some old fruit bushes. Also get out my two lavender plants planted last year.

WhoKnows have you seen Charles Dowding's method of clearing grass? He puts a thick mulch of well rotted compost and cardboard straight onto grass and plants into that, by the time your crop is ready it will have worked its way down into the grass layer and just grows into it, all the while the grass and roots are dying off under the mulch.

I'm off to the allotment now, raking muck around and deciding where to put raised beds. The sun has come out!

Yes, but with no car access getting that much compost up there would be very hard indeed.

Oh no - don't rotavate! Try the above mulch method or these lazy beds...

And for digging don't use a spade, use one of these...www.amazon.co.uk/Silverline-GT52-Digging-Hoe-1350mm/dp/B000LFXV2I/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1424017127&sr=8-1&keywords=digging+hoe

For every root you have now, you will have 20 if you get it rotavated. And unless you can literally hoe it off and dig out the roots for a good year, you will have a horrendous job of it.

You don't need compost, just cardboard to mulch.

No, my mind is made up, we're rotavating. Neither of us can do that much digging, even with that turning the turfs over method, DH has a dodgy knee and I have prolapses. We can't get car loads of compost up there and I don't want to wait while cardboard rots down.

Whereas I really don't mind hoeing and weeding, our garden is overrun with perennial weeds and we cope just fine with them. It's just the heavy work that's the problem.

The cardboard isn't to rot down. It is to kill the light that weakens the weeds and keeps the ground moist so that when you come to plant in year 1, you cut a cross in the cardboard and plant through. Then, when next year comes along, the weeds are weakened and the soil moist and softer due to the worms dragging the cardboard down and the roots come out so much easier.

Most of the people that leave allotments leave about 3-6 months after rotavating. My job is to teach people how to grow food and I never ever recommend rotavating.

I do have experience of this [just in case you think I'm being precious] - they rotavated my plot without telling me, and I spent half the first year on my knees digging out couch grass. We still have it. The only areas where it is 99% clear is where I originally cardboarded it in the first two years. Because when I came to plant I could pull out the roots.

One neighbour hoed the whole plot every week for year 1, and the other side rotavated 4 times in the first year because the bloke down the road told her it would kill the couch grass after the 4th time. She never cropped a thing because her weeds were 5ft by July and she never came back. The next guy had to redig the whole thing from scratch which was worse than before it was rotavated.

It's a good idea, but in reality a nightmare.

DeliciousMonster you convinced me upthread. and you don't sound precious at all, just passionate -which I love! Cam I ask another question about cardboard please? Is all card equal, or do I need stuff with less print on? Ie is the print bad for the soil?

Try and use the stuff with more brown and very little coloured print - mainly because alot of the coloured print stuff can be plastic coated. The inks are usually plant based these days.

It will certainly be better for your plot than weedkillers!

The best ones are the large brown boxes with no holes in them.

Ooh ta for answer, suspected that that might be the case.

I found an asparagus bed today! Or certainly at least three crowns - I have a raised bed on the allotment that the last owner built, was scuffing around in it today and found some crowns, so I've just covered them up again and will wait to see what comes up. I'm very pleased, it's one of the things I've always meant to plant but never got around to.

Cripes, you lucky lucky thing!

echt how lovely that you're growing now as we're just starting to think about it! And a satsuma That is a jealous face, not a bilious one, to be clear. I'd love to grow satsumas,and any citrus actually. How long will your grpwing season go to, or are you coming to the end of it now? Good to know that chard is growing crazy well out there for you too. It is a beast for me! Any exciting Aussie ways of eating chard that I should know about? I still have plenty here...

I hoe cardboard and mulch my lot too but dig it in when planting. Have to say I have seen a fair few who rotivated in my lots give up due to proliferating dock.

I cleared my whole lot that way in year one. I get weeds but they are removeable. And the whole lot was grass when i started.

Some places will deliver compost. And you can also pay someone to do the first dig.

If you do rotivate i'd suggest only doing half the lot and mulch the other half?

I started putting down my soil warming polythene today.
Compost will be ordered next week.

Well, I could try the cardboard, but we have no vehicular access to get loads of compost etc delivered, you can bring a car on site when the grass is dry (access bit is steep and at the moment you can see lots of wheel spin marks on it), but that is still 100m from my plot. So you can bring from your own car in barrowloads (hard work over grass that is usually quite long) but you can't get it delivered. This is going to be a real problem with getting the soil in better condition.

Anyway, spent an hour up there this afternoon, cut down some very old and not very productive fruit bushes, will send DH to dig the roots out later in the week. Also had a general tidy up and brought my strawberry plants back to put in the garden (they were in the remains of an old raised bed that has no soil to speak of in it and which I want to relocate and refill before planting up this year).

may i join you? i am more or less a beginner, but have been growing bits and bobs in pots in a disorganised way until we finally got a small garden last year and turned part of it into a little veg patch. hope this year to be a bit more organised and systematic, but best intentions and all that

we built a cold frame last weekend which i'm very chuffed about!

anyway, hope you don't mind me joining and picking brains

my main goal this year is for the tomatoes not to get blossom end rot