What I'm going to be planting outdoors SEPTEMBER 2018

September is a funny month for planting new seeds. Most of the summer crops are coming to an end so there's spaces popping up here and there when the summer plants are spent. I'll be digging up a few more beds in the next few weeks once the cabbages, runner beans, edamame and sweetcorn are all finished. This will leave me with a bit of space that should ideally be filled with some quick crops and also some over wintering crops too.

Here's a list of what I'm going to be planting outside this month:

Rocket - Wild Trizia
Beetroot - Rote Kugel 2
Radish - Scarlet Globe
Pak Choi - red and green mix
Radish - Mooli Longipinnatus
Lettuce - winter imperial

And for all the areas that will  lay dormant over the winter, I'll be sowing a green manure, probably phacelia. This will grow through the Autumn and then be dug in to the soil in January, or whenever the ground isn't too frozen.

I'm also using this month to organise my seeds and make a plan for next year.

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!