Allotment update – 28/3/2018

I’m into my fifth year of recording seed sowing dates for both veg and flowers. It gets a bit more patchy at the pricking off stage and worse still for planting out. I thought it would tell me how far behind I am this year, but it actually tells me very little.

It feels like a late season, I suspect they all do.

I have broad beans, sown in 9cm pots in early Feb, ready to go out. I want to get early potatoes in. I will soon want to get onions, started from sets in cells, out, with seed raised plants not so very far behind. I have lettuce, beetroot and spinach beet in cells, perhaps a fortnight from planting size.

Most of my seed I get from Kings. Why? well for no better reason than that I piggy backed someone else’s discounted allotment society order five years ago, got acceptable results and if it ain’t broke, I don’t fix it. I feel unadventurous, especially when I read other people’s blogs and they’re getting all sorts of stuff from all over the place.

I have tried a bit. I did a small order to Real Seeds last year and a small order to Sow Seeds this year. It’s unfair to just pick at the margins of their ranges while getting the bulk from a big firm. I got mixed results, one out of three chilli varieties from Sow Seeds has not come up at all, against 100% on the other two. The Liria onions from Real Seeds did very well but didn’t keep nearly as well as Rumba from Kings. The sorrel is a perennial so I still have it, not that I use it much. Giant Goosefoot was not popular and the runners were nothing special.

What I want is to get a decent return for the money and effort I invest in the plot. I don’t think my growing conditions are optimal so reliability is important and a high proportion of failures would eventually make me give up. All my experimentation goes into my growing methods rather than different crops. I’d rather succeed with something common than fail with something exotic.

Last year I bought a bag of Melcourt’s sowing and cutting compost. This year I have used their regular potting compost. This is the same peat free compost as is used by an increasing number of commercial nursery stock producers. I have seen no difference between the seed and potting composts, in appearance or in results.

I don’t sow much directly into the ground as I find most things fail, usually being eaten by slugs when very small. Planting out from cells is also easier when the ground still has the remains of a winter mulch on it, which most of my no dig plot does. The ground also gets another month to dry out and warm up before I try to grow anything in it.