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.

Today we're starting (on our SSW facing windowsills)...

Peas
Peas
Tumbling Toms
PS Broccoli
Sweet Pepper
Cucumber
Physalis
Sunflower

Along with some companion flowers

I have microgreens germinating on a north facing window sill do they count?

So, I'm er -meeting the allotment wardens first thing tomorrow

What do I need to know /ask ?

I've read the Terms and conditions so no issues there. I need to have cultivated 'some' of plot in first 2 months so I'll need to understand how much, and what happens if for eg the ground is frozen for those 2 months. We're on heavy clay here, so it can be dreadful in winter's depths.

What do I need to know about choosing plot, if there is any choice?

If you have a choice of plots Zebra, it's a good time of year to spot any waterlogged / soggy ones, or the warden could probably tell you anyway. See if you can get one that catches the sun, so not too shaded. And one near a tap is always good.

I popped up to our allotment yesterday, before this latest lot of snow hit, and have discovered it has a healthy population of moles.

Do moles have favourite things to gobble up?

You could ask if they'd rotavate it for you too, it might help to break up the soil a bit.

I don't think moles eat anything except worms. The only damage they do is possibly uprooting stuff.

TheSpotted - agree with Two - good advice -get near a tap! even though we have big water butts, mine ran out by the end of summer with the courgette and squash watering! And not too near any big trees either if possible - they suck the moisture away. And check to see if there are any horrible weed infestations .( ground Elder and such )
Miss Mystic - I think I will pass on the blueberries, as I'm not good at container gardening , we have quite a dry climate here up on the Yorkshire Wolds, so they will always be a bit under stress I think .
Bolshy - there is a good nursery at Pickering, ( Rogers) if thats not too far for you to go ,who do good bare rooted fruit trees/bushes on a variety of root stocks, and could probably give advice. I got Sunset as the best alternative to Cox for growing in the north , and in my previous garden I had a James Grieve that was a good cooker and eater.
I just have one last big decision on tomato variety. I am doing Sungold as they were amazing last year, but I have been disappointed with my others. I cook a lot and was really looking forward to the San Marzano ones, but the crop was really small, and the slugs bypassed the cherry ones, and crawled up and ate them instead the horrors. So after 2 years of that I grew Smardar last year - not really a good tasting one despite the write up. So, on with the seed catalogues!
Cucumber - La Diva are lovely , really tasty, and quite short .
TwoLeft moles !

I think I'm going to have to Google pictures of common weeds, as Tbh I don't know what they look like . I did say I knew nothing! Ok, I know dandelions (and expect the site to be full of them, as everywhere else is), I know nettles obvs, and I eat them sometimes. But I don't actually know what couch grass is, tho people seem to have to dig it a lot. I don't know bindweed either. Or ground elder!

Good point re tap proximity. Re water butts, I've never had one of those either! (Or a compost heap.) For a button, do you just channel and catch the run off from a structure, eg a shed or from a downpipe on a house? If you don't have a shed, can you still catch water somehow?

agoodbook re toms, I always have some Gardener's Delight growing, amongst other things. I find them quite reliable and resistant to problems, even when other varieties struggle. Tasty too. I'm doing Tigerella, Roma, Black Cherry and Black Krim as my others this year, plus DeliciousMonster suggested Millefleur to fit my brief of something yellow for hanging baskets!

oh thanks - shall go and look at those x The water butt on our allotment has 'salvaged' guttering all along the edges, which is then channelled into the water butt. We only have a small shed with a pent roof, but it works a treat.
The only really bad weeds are horsetail ( poor cedar ) , ground elder and bindweed. The others are a pain, but with persistance will prevail - even bindweed and ground elder you can usually manage eventually - not sure you can with horsetail.

you will prevail, nit the weeds!

Thanks, agoodbook! Pickering is a bit of a trek, but I have garden vouchers to spend . Bit wary about bare-rooted though. With the wet clay in my garden, I daren't plant any trees/shrubs until spring as they would probably rot otherwise. Will this be too late for bare-rooted? I think I'm going to have to mound them.

Living quite far north and with no greenhouse, I don't bother with tomatoes much, it's just too upsetting when they get blight. I might plant a cherry bush variety in some grow bags on the patio though.

I'd like to grow some oriental greens again (mizuna, pak choi, mustard greens)- expensive to buy in the shops and surprisingly easy.

right , Roma it is and Marmande for back up, a cup of coffee works wonders to stop dithering

Bolshy a bit further North and colder than me - I am on the Yorkshire Wolds :) Agree about planting - need to really do it October/November for bare root while the soil is still holding a bit of warmth. Rogers do have a website and mail things - and they have them in pots as well, but I prefer to go and choose my own - you probably have someone nearer to you !
And I use Geoffrey Smiths advice on planting shrubs and trees - buy a £20 tree, dig a £40 hole
I tried an experiment last year on planting out tomatoes in the garden. Have no idea if they were any good - niceish plants, but wildlife scoffed any fruit that came along

oooh - can i join in please? Veggie plot not allotment - sometimes think the company would be lovely but it is nice to be able to nip out the kitchen door and pick stuff!.

Chard is self seeding perennial for us - and we love it (luckily). I do well with squashes (still not eaten all of last summers - I overcompensated for slugs when planting out and didn't lose a single one ) and courgettes likewise - have lost entire crop of heritage tomatoes to blight for the past 2 yrs

Please post photos of water butt/old guttering irrigation systems How do they work best?

have mums veg patch with water butt and guttering to look after

I do have apic on an earlier post with a picture of my naughty bin, alongside the water butt. I don't think you can see the guttering though. I shall take a pic next time - probably Sunday. I dont have an irrigation system set up with it - it has a tap near the bottom, and I can fill a watering can with it, or mostly I have a length of hose pipe attached , which I move around to where I need the water to go, and let it trickle while I weed/dig/harvest

thats a very big waterbutt!
does the guttering guide the water from the shed roof to the water butt?
what about from the water butt to the veg patch? is that just your hose or do you use guttering ?

At the risk of upsetting others even more on here :) - the water butt is supplied free by the allotment society, as long as you agree to have some shed/greenhouse to collect water from.
The guttering is attached to the bottom edge of the shed roof, and then there is another bit of guttering at an angle ( if you look closely, you can just make it out behind the wire crate ) taking the water and guiding it into the top of the butt, the end is covered rather beautifully with an old pair of tights to stop debris going in as well! Its just hose from the butt to the vegetables ( another longer bit than is on there at the moment), and I just move it around every 5-15 minutes to the areas I need.

Zebra - if I had a choice of one that I could get my car to versus one that I couldn't I'd take the car access one every time. Mine is right by a tap which is very useful.

zebra if there's only weeds in it at the moment, they might strim it for you, but would suggest not rotavating if you don't know what kind of weeds you have - some of them will grow from tiny pieces of root and then you could end up with perennial weeds all over the plot.

My priorities would be - within hosepipe distance of the tap, level ground, not far from the car (if driving to it), looks like someone's been growing on it (the weeds are annuals rather than brambles/nettles/docks/dandelions, etc.). And preferably not next to an abandoned weedy plot.

The main aim is to get past the "cultivation" checkpoint. For us, we have to have 1/4 cleared and dug over with things other sown, growing or just harvested within the first 3 months. So that'll be potatoes and broad beans! Then we'll take our time with the rest of the plot.

Anyone else waiting for their first seeds to shoot? OK, so I only sewed them yesterday

I was also going to say don't rotarvate a plot with weeds on. Lots of weeds will spread from a small section of root. Especially docks and dandelions so you could end up with an entire plot full of them.

We sprayed our allotment with glysophate weed killer last year when we first got it to give us a head start. This is, of course, incompatible with organic gardening but if you're not completely committed it can help give you a start. So we sprayed, covered up and have then dug gradually clearing the weeds. Needless to say one application of weed killer didn't kill everything but it helped a lot. I can tell this because measuring it against a few other neglected plots during the autumn the grass didn't start growing again as it has on other plots.

Focus on small sections of the plot and be realistic in the first year about how much you can get done.

Amentes definitely impatient, but I'd be out checking!

zebra until last week I had no idea what couch grass looked like. Trust me, if you need to learn you'll do so fast! Have spent 2 1/2 hours digging it out of a bed this morning. Don't mind so much, part of the reason I took on the allotment was for exercise. And I'm telling myself that the better I remove it now, the easier life will be when the weather is warmer and I can sit back and enjoy the sun It was quite satisfying at times: I discovered that I can kind of peel it off the paths like reverse turf laying. And I found out there's an area we can dump any organic matter, even the evil couch grass, so I can get rid of my naughty bin.

Amoung the couch grass roots, I found some potatoes and a label - they're Desiree. I'm trying to decide whether to be frugal and plant them as seed potatoes, or wary and bin them in case they are diseased. They look fine ....