Our raised beds - May

Raised planter with Pak Choi, broad beans, cabbage, radish and turnip. and two lettuce!

Yesterday was a great day, it was the first time I'd pulled something out of the ground at the allotment (that wasn't a weed or a slug!) and I was thrilled.
The first beauty to come out was a perfect Pak choi cabbage.
These seeds were sewn in the greenhouse in March and planted out in the planter in the middle of April. They're one of the quickest growing crops on the plot, from seed sewing to harvest is about 10 weeks. We'll be sewing and growing these right up until the end of September (hopefully!)

A few things have definitely aided the success of the planter these were in. The shredded paper mulch has worked so well at keeping the slugs and snails away and the cabbages obviously thrive in the raised beds. The Pak choi are planted 2 per square and that gives them ample room to grow. They're also covered by netting to stop the aerial attackers from getting in!

This beauty came from planter number 2. Planted using the square foot technique we currently have in it:
16 broad beans
20 Pak choi (minus the one I picked yesterday)
2 lettuce
16 cabbages
24 radishes
8 turnips

All of that tightly arranged in an 8ft by 4 ft raised bed!
Planter number 2 is definitely the leader of the pack and by far the most productive. Planter one is doing well though, it has sprouts, fried egg plant, some nasturtiums, onions and lettuce but it's more of a mishmash of plants as I was too eager to get stuff in the ground and didn't plan it very well!

A herb rockery made with... sinks!

This weekend we used the four sinks we had collected to make a herb rockery.

We had no plan or any idea how it was going to look or even how we wanted it to look. Which was a bit daft really. We started with 3 metal sinks, one ceramic, two bags of flamingo gravel, 10 red bricks and 10 breeze blocks. Oh and a small bag of ready mix cement. We decided it would be positioned at the front of the plot, right behind the small she'd but visible from the main path and right next to out path, for easy access for picking

Mr Allotmum and myself spent a good half hour arranging and re-arranging the sinks into different positions, muttering to eachother about how we had no idea what we were doing. It was rather comical. We'd never built a rockery before, we obviously thought we knew how to but every time one of us thought the layout looked good, it was dismissed as looking a bit rubbish by the other.

Eventually though, we agreed on a layout and set to get it all stable. We dug the ground a little way down to make a stable base for the sinks. As we laid each sink we filled under and around it with loose soil and packed it down. We also used whole and smashed up breeze blocks to wedge under them to stop them from moving around. Oncw all 4 sinks were in position, we edged around the base using some red bricks (which cost 20pence each from the local builders merchants). I planted some flowers in the ground around the sinks and then covered that with flaming stones. They're rather pretty stones of irregular shapes and different colours.

Once that was complete, we filled the sinks with compost and planted mint, thyme, marjoram, parsley, dill, chives and garlic chives, as well as some spinach beet seeds for good measure. I'd started these plants off as seeds some weeks back and they weren't too happy getting parched in the greenhouse.

I'm happy to say that they are doing much better outside!

All in all this project cost us around £20 and it's a nice addition to the plot.

Germinating Chilli Seeds on paper towel

Chillis. I love them. Crunchy, spicy, juicy, colourful, pungent, robust. They add a beautiful depth of flavour to any dish and I've been growing them for the last 10 or so years. This year I've totally missed the boat with starting my seeds off. By now I'd have at least a dozen or so plants ready for potting on but we've been so busy at the allotment that I've totally forgot to get them going. Dammit I could kick myself.

Even though chillis are quick to grow, some of the hotter varieties need to be started very early in the year, around January or February, to have any chance of their fruit ripening fully in the summer. Some fruits of the hottest varieties can take nearly two months to fully ripen and if you're late with your sowing... you're going to miss out!

As I forgot to plant early enough I've gone mainly for mild and medium varieties. I probably won't get anywhere near the usual amount of fruits that I normally grow in my little home greenhouse, but I can only try.

One thing about chilli seeds is that some species have a rather low germination rate, namely cayenne and habanero. Meaning that if you planted say 10 seeds, only a small amount of them would ever grow into a plant. This is a rather annoying thing about growing chillis. You plant lots of seeds and sometimes you'll only get 2 plants emerge but for some varieties you'll end up with all 10 germinating and more plants that you know what to do with. It really is a gamble.


This year I wanted to try something a bit different. With the help of our new snake.

Yes. Snake.

Noodle came to live with us at the beginning of May and she's being kept in a plastic box INSIDE a larger vivarium where the temperature is a balmy 30 degrees all round. It's a perfect germination station for my chilli seeds. So I decided to go soil free to germinate my chillis. The added benefit of germinating on paper is that you can see as soon as the seed has germinated without having to wait for it to come up through the soil. If there's been no action after 4 days - the seed's a dud and you should try another.

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Chilli seeds on paper towel

What you'll need for paper towel seed germination:

• seeds of your choice
• shallow plastic container with a lid
• kitchen towel / paper towel
• water spray bottle
• somewhere warm to keep the tubs

I got 5 plastic takeaway tubs, you know, the ones you get curry in from the Chinese takeaway? I never EVER throw these out because they're perfect for starting seeds off. Line the bottom with one sheet of kitchen towel. Sprinkle 4 seeds (yes just 4 because you're likely to get 2 successful germinations) and cover with another sheet of kitchen roll. Spray the paper until it's moist but not dripping wet. Put a lid on the tub and place somewhere warm. In this case, the snake's new home. You can use a heated propagator or heat mat to the same effect. I didn't omit light, the lights in the snake's tank are on a 12 hour timer and this didn't seem to matter to the seeds. Don't forget to label your tubs or you'll forget which is which as many chilli seedlings look identical!

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Tiny sprouting jalapeno seeds

The seeds I planted were: orange habanero, chocolate habanero, Hungarian wax, jalapeno, piquino, joe's long cayenne, ring of fire and razzmatazz. Some of the seeds were from last year's fruits and some were from my favourite chilli place - The South Devon Chilli Farm.

After just 2 days the jalapeno and razzmatazz have germinated and have sent little white shoots out of the seed casing, this is the first root coming out to take more water into the growing seedling. Next to emerge will be the first shoot. It's amazing how quickly they grow under the right conditions and you can plant them straight into a pot knowing that the germination was successful, without having to wait and wait for a shoot to appear. It's also a good way of controlling how many seedlings you end up with. Wait until the first green shoot appears out of the seed casing and then carefully pot into the surface soil of a pot. Don't bury it, let it grow a little more, adding compost as it grows.

You'll have a nice strong plant in no time without an influx of seedlings or the disappointment of empty pots from seeds that failed to germinate.

We've been so busy at the plot this week. The weather has taken a little break from raining and windy so the ground has been dry enough to rotovate.

We bought a petrol rotovator from Screwfix and in a few hours we managed to turn the whole left hand side of this area. It was bloody hard going but Mr Allotmum did an amazing job at wrangling the rotovator.

Once we'd finished and had a sit down this cheeky jackdaw came down picking up the worms that had been brought to the surface!

We're not sure what we're going to do with this area yet, maybe put some potatoes in, if we're not too late. I've got my bean sticks in and have put my 30 odd runner bean plants in.

What I've planted and what's growing? Week 18

greenhouse Basil

 This week I've planted in the greenhouse :

• leeks
• turnips
• lettuce
• runner beans
• sugar snaps
• rocket
• parsley
• basil (green and purple)
• chives
• coriander
• mint
• thyme
• radishes

There are a few more seeds I'd like to get started in the greenhouse but I've run out of space and pots!

And outside everything has started to grow beautifully, such as:

• pak-choi
• lettuces
• broad bans
• rasperries are starting to bud
• the cherry tree has blossomed

 Everything is starting to look lovely and green and lush. Spring is wonderful!

Pak Choi

Blossoming cheery tree

Rocket

Saving water on the allotment

Water is a precious thing. One minute it's raining for days and you long for the dryness of a sunny day. The next day it's baking hot and your poor greenhouse plants are parched and confused. That's the joys of British weather, it's unpredictable and extreme.

When it rains I try to think positively and see that it's watering my outdoor plants for me and filling my water butts up at the same time. On the plot we were lucky enough to inherit a large number of these huge blue water containers. I have no idea what they were once used for but we probably have 8 of them dotted around the plot. Sadly none have taps and most of them are filled with stagnant water that's been in there goodness knows how long. An added bonus is that many of them had lids which keeps the crawlies out.

It's great having them around to catch the rainwater but they're a little impractical as you have to dunk your watering can into them and when you've got arms as short as mine, it will be difficult to get water out of them when they're running low.

A solution was needed.

So on the weekend I charged up the drill, dug out a few large hole bits and set to work connecting up three of my water butts. To do this I needed to buy a few bits to connect them together - yet more cash spent on the allotment. These particular butts are located next to the greenhouse so will catch the water running off the roof. Thankfully there was already a guttering system on the greenhouse so it wasn't ANOTHER thing I had to buy.

I bought some new taps for the water butts and two connector kids off eBay. The taps were £1.89 each and the connector kits were two for £8.34.

I drilled holes in each butt to attach the connector hoses -ensuring that the first hole was higher than the hole in the second butt, ya know, for gravity to do it's thing. I also propped the butts up using breeze blocks to ensure the first and main butt was the highest, and then the third was the lowest.

Now when it rains and the first butt gets full, the water will drain through the hose and into the second butt. And when the second butt gets full, it will drain to the third etc etc.

Now I'm reluctantly hoping for rain to fill these huge containers up... it's almost a guarantee as this weekend is a Bank Holiday and it always rains on a Bank Holiday, right?