This article is aimed at helping our new plotholders to have a succesful first year and avoid some common mistakes that new starters frequently make. Firstly, you can find previous horticultural newsletters on our website. https://hallsfarmallotments.weebly.com Select newsletters from the menu, then select horticultural news The newsletters are stored in reverse year, then reverse month order. Each newsletter usually has a section at the end of things you can sow or plant for that month. The start of the newsletter is an article related to horticulture.
By now most of you will have already prepared your soil for sowing, so it is too late to go into depth about that. You should have removed all your weeds and as much of their their roots as possible. You will get Mares tail on your plot, we all have it its a persistent weed we all have to live with. Its roots go deep and across all plots so you cannot dig it out. Just pull it out when it appears about this time of year. Burn the plant and use the ash as fertilizer. Do not compost it! It grow from the tiniest root fraction. It does not seem to adversly affect your harvest. Ask anyone to identify it for you. I always think it looks like a small christmas tree, turning into a toilet brush shape.
If you have used manure on your beds, it should have been well rotted, with no smell and not show the original bedding etc. Fresh manure contains acids and ammonia which will burn your plants. If you have used fresh manure, you can try growing squashes or potatoes in that ground. I have never tried it but have read that these plants will tolerate these conditions.
You need a fine tilth on your soil for sowing seeds. If you have rough dug your plot the clods will go rock hard if left too long and not broken up. You can rough dig and a couple of days later hit the clods with a rake, hoe or whatever you have to hand. The clod will then shatter into small pieces. Don't leave it too long or the clods will not shatter.
Don’t be tempted to sow too early. This year has been very cold and the ground is just warming up. Your seeds will just rot in the ground. Wait till you see the weed seeds germinating, and then consider sowing some seeds. It’s the soil temperature and moisture that will decide if your seeds will germinate in spring. When you do sow, keep the soil moist by watering with a watering can with a fine rose. You can test the soil conditions with some radish seeds. These germinate at a low temperature and germinate quickly. When buying your seeds check the packed by date, and make sure that the year ending shows that the seed was packaged recently. I find that the sow by date is too generous by at least a year.
Sow your seeds thinly and only some of the packet, you will get better seedlings. Some seeds like lettuce, peas, carrots, dwarf French beans, radishes you can sow again when the first seedlings are up. That way you will get a continuous crop instead of a glut, then nothing. Keep remaining seeds for the following year, except for parsnip seeds. I usually scatter a few slug pellets once I sow the seeds, that way some of the slugs will be killed by the time your seedlings appear. Scatter only a few pellets, too many have been shown to work less well than a few!
Water the ground with a watering can fitted with a fine Rose, try to keep the ground moist to aid germination, keep using the fine Rose until the seedlings are big enough to withstand a bigger flow of water.
Some plants and their seed like and need warm days AND NIGHTS to live. Other plants tolerate colder conditions. We can get a frost up until about mid - May that will kill tender plants.
Squashes, pumpkins, peppers, runner beans, French beans, cucumbers are all warm weather plants. Cucumbers will likely die if the temperature drops below 13 degrees C. Monitor the night temperature, don’t be fooled by a hot day. In spring sunny days are often followed by a night frost as the ground is still cold and the lack of clouds allows the days heat to escape into space. Plant out around mid to late May, which is about the time of our last frost date
Potatoes we start in March/April they tolerate some cold, BUT NOT A FROST. Protect your potatoes once they emerge from the soil, from a possible frost by: Earthing the potatoes up (drawing up earth over the plants) Place fleece over the plants I have placed net curtains over mine successfully. If you raise the curtain above the plants, then the leaves are less likely to get frosted. I have put an up-turned clay pot over them for the night to protect the potato foliage. If the foliage does get frosted then the potato will grow back, you get a smaller harvest.
Protect your plants from the cold and pests. Fleece can raise the temperature by about 3-5 degrees. However it breaks easily. Cloches can be made from some stiff wire to make a semicircle. Push the ends in the ground and cover with polythene. This will keep the wind off and warm the air around the plants promoting growth. It does not keep the frost out.
You can make a cloche from corrugated plastic. Bend it into a semicircle and tie string around to hold the shape. You will need to also peg it down to stop the wind blowing it away.
A Cloche will act as a barrier to some pests as well. Don't forget to remove the cloche when the weather is warmer, otherwise you will overheat and kill your plants.
Pests Prevention is better than cure. Some pests are around at certain times of year and others all the year around. For pigeons, butterflies, squirrels and birds, I recommend using debris netting for your netting. Its hole size is is small enough to keep out a lot of pests as well as these. You can use a bigger holed netting for pigeons, but you probably want to stop caterpillars as well. Be aware that a lot of netting has a hole size big enough to let butterflies through, even netting sold as butterfly netting! Then you get caterpillars inside your produce.
Always have your netting higher than the size that your plants will grow to and anchored well down with no gaps. Butterflies will lay their eggs on leaves touching the netting, Pigeons will sit on the netting to weigh it down and squirrels will lift the netting up to eat your strawberries etc.
Sow some winter crops to give you fresh food in the winter. e.g. Kale, winter cabbage, swede, sprouts etc. You can sow a little every two weeks or so with many crops, that way you avoid gluts. You can also put quick growing plants like lettuce and radishes between rows of slower growing plants like Sprouts. You harvest the lettuce etc. before the sprouts get large enough to compete for light.
You can follow an early crop like early potatoes, carrots etc. with a second different crop in June/July. Start the second crop in pots then you can put the semi grown plants in the ground when you harvest your early crop. You can also sow between the rows of the early crop with the second crop a few weeks to a month before you harvest the first crop. (I did this last year with carrots followed by Climbing French Beans). We get tomato blight on site. Try not to water the leaves of your potatoes or tomatoes. It can infect your plants only if the plant is wet. You can grow blight resistant varieties.
We get carrot fly onsite. You can use fleece or enviromesh to cover your plants from the time you sow the seeds. Growing in a tub at least 60 cm off the ground can also help. The fly smells damaged foliage and then lays its eggs next to your carrots. I sow thinly so that I do not have to thin my carrots; they also grow bigger and straighter by doing this. I also do not weed too close to my carrots. Once you start harvesting your carrots you will attract the fly! Some people plant onions between their carrots to deter the carrot fly.
Things to Sow in April Beetroot, Broad beans, Broccoli, Brussel Sprouts, Cabbage, Cauliflower, Chard,Kale, Kohl Rabi, Leeks, Lettuce, Peas, Rocket, Spinach, Radish