and the rain came down

• By Alison
• 29 May, 2008
• Comments Off on and the rain came down

Not that you’d know it from my radio silence, but I’ve become white the allotmentophile lately. As the days have lengthened, I’ve been slipping
down at 7pm to search and kill slugs and to dig out the remaining plots.

I gave up on the carrots since none of them decided to raise their heads above the crusted ground, but when I dug over the area I found quite a few of last
years crop. Which means that it wasn’t the best place to have planted them in the first place.

I’ve got my first lot of leeks planted out, plus the courgettes (zuchinni), winter/butternut squash and pumpkins.


The pumpkins almost met a bad end. I planted them out last
monday, which was the 12th of May. Theoretically, frost was no longer an issue. Sadly on Tuesday night the frost struck, and the leaves were badly burnt. But
out of 8 leaves, only 4 were affected so I have pruned them off. The pumpkins now live in the tent, which is roomy and i expect that they are organising
parties with the locals.

The beans were lucky, the frost didn’t affect them. Some
others on the site lost most of theirs which is very sad. The ants are farming aphids up them however! I’ve been researching homemade pest controls lately,
since a friend shared the recipe for garlic wash with me. That one was shown on Gardeners World, and so far seems to be working very well for controlling the
slugs. I have been using pellets. I’d like to switch to the garlic wash when I make it, but I put more pellets down last night when I checked my courgettes
and found that their lower leaves were stripped and patchy. I’ve got coffee grounds down, which seems to have some effect. It’s hard to tell when there
are also pellets – I really should set up a proper test with pellets, coffee and garlic wash.

Previously the tent had been over my “seed bed”. The
quotes around that indicate that it did not behave as expected! The carefully weeded bed proved to be not so carefully weeded, and among my 5 lines of brassica
seedlings I found horsetail, potatoes and a HELL of a lot of spinach. It might be swiss chard, we haven’t identified it yet. The previous owner of this
allotement, Joseph was one of the “jamacian lads” – a group of old guys who seem to farm 3 things only. Potatoes, onions and spinach. From the
seeding spinach on my neighbour’s plot I suspect that these happily growing chardlike things will be likewise.

I am keeping them – although I’ve thinned them out around my poor brassica seedlings. The brassicas that I’ve planted out – brussels sprouts, purple
sprouting broccoli and cauliflower – are not doing nearly so enthusiastically as the ones planted in the seed bed. I wonder how much moving them will affect
their growth.

The spinach planted at about the same time failed to come up in abundance. There are several small shoots now, but many gaps. I have some spinach seedlings at
home that are thriving, and now need to be planted out.

I’ve got a patch ready now for my sweetcorn to go out, that is practically bushy now, and it’s been ready to go for too long. I have two sorts so
we’ll see how they go. And my asaparagus has thrown up one spear, so I need to earth that up.