spring sowings and plantings

It's getting to be a busy time on the allotment now.  After weeks of tidying up and getting the plot ready for the new growing season suddenly everything seemed to burst into life in the flower areas bringing some lovely colour to the plot. The weeds are growing too, which is a sign that the soil is warming up and its time to start planting and sowing seeds.

Over the last few weeks my kitchen has been full of pots of seedlings and propagators. I started in February with chillies, then tomatoes followed by cabbage, kale, brussels sprouts, cauliflower and leeks. Now I am sowing flower seeds for a cutting bed in the garden or for filling in gaps in the other borders. Also for the allotment to attract the pollinators.

Down at the allotment I have two greenhouses but they are not heated so seeds which need warmth in the early days are sown at home where I can give them some extra care in the kitchen. Once they are potted on I then take them down to the allotment greenhouses.

Weeks ago I sowed broad beans and pea seeds. I planted the broad beans and peas out in the ground last week. They are looking good and its great to see something growing in the allotment beds at last.
Over the Easter weekend I sowed another lot of broad beans directly into the ground.  I shall be sowing peas soon too.

There's so much too do now. The greenhouses are filling up with seedlings. After weeks of bare soil the allotment is beginning to look like its coming to life and soon my kitchen will be clear of pots and propagators.

All over the place

All over the place is what my allotment flowers have been this year.  Last year I had a few beds on our two allotments especially for cutting flowers.  But this year as we are giving up one of the allotments later, we decided to concentrate on growing just on the one allotment.  We realised that we wouldn't have enough room on plot 8 to give up a bed just for flowers, so instead we have planted them in amongst the vegetables.

I got carried away with my seed sowing and did far too many. Some of them didn't grow well at all, they were very thin and straggly, some had poor germination.  I don't know if I sowed them too late or if it was the weather or the wrong growing conditions. The best ones have been Rudbekia, Calendula, Zinnia, Malope, Dahlias, Sweet peas. Cosmos has grown well with lots of foliage but is only just starting to flower. I'm hoping they will produce plenty before the frosts, I love their different shades of pink.

These Rudbekias are planted amongst the sweetcorn. They are a very reliable flower, this variety is 'Marmalade'

The sunflowers are also planted near the sweetcorn. I think this variety is 'Vanilla Ice'.it doesn't grow tall, but produces lots of smaller flowers, ideal for cutting.

This is the second year we have grown Zinnia and I really love them. Lots of pink, yellow, white, red and orange.

Calendula is an old favourite. I planted these along the edge of the long path.  They flop about a lot but keep on going despite getting knocked as we walk past.

I like growing the flowers amongst the vegetables, it certainly brightens up the plot. I shall do the same next year. And although I haven't grown as many flowers as I did last year I have still had plenty to cut for the house.

Autumn jobs on the allotment

As we move into Autumn, the work on the plot changes. No more is there a rush to get things in the ground, no more sowing, planting, staking and netting. Now we are harvesting our produce, clearing the ground, tidying up and manuring. Now is the time to start thinking about those jobs we didn't have time to do in the summer, like laying paths, cleaning out the shed, clearing that overgrown patch of ground.

The leaves are starting to fall from the big sycamore trees which overhang both our plots. Soon I will be gathering up the leaves. That's reminded me that I need to sort out the leaf bin. I recently found bindweed growing in it coming from the plant which is growing along the fence between ours and the plot next door. After I have cleared out all the bindweed roots, I will give the bin a turnover to see how well composted it is. I hope to be able to use the leaf mould to cover some of the beds over the winter. Then I will start to add this autumn's leaves to the bin. The compost bins need turning too and the manure bins will be topped up.

This week I have been pruning the gooseberries and blackcurrants. I managed not to get too many scratches from the gooseberries.  Before I tackled the pruning I first pulled up the nasturtiums which had been planted behind them to climb up the fence. They had given a lovely display through the summer but it was time for them to go and they were getting tangled up in the fruit bushes. They were easy to pull up but left a lot of seeds behind, I think we will be seeing them again next year! Having got rid of the nasturtiums and as many seeds as I could get hold of I could then see how well the climbers were doing which we had planted last year to try to cover the wire fence.  The honeysuckle, ivy and clematis are scrambling away along the fence,  the cotoneaster has berries on it which is providing both food for the birds and some welcome autumn colour. Once the fruit bushes had been pruned I weeded the fruit bed. It looks very tidy now.

There is plenty of autumn colour from the apple tree on plot 8. The tree has done really well this year after it's re staking and pruning last year. The cut flower beds are also providing colour to the plots, but they are coming to an end now. Soon we will be pulling them up.

I'm always sad to see summer come to an end, but once we are into autumn I love the colours and changes that the season brings. I love the clearing away of all the dead plants, preparing the beds for their winter sleep and having a good tidy up  It's still a busy time yet as the autumn clear up continues, but soon there will be time to slow down,  time to rest and reflect, time to think ahead and plan for next year.

A summer of flowers

I've always liked to grow flowers in the garden which are good for cutting, but quite often don't have enough blooms to cut without spoiling the display. My garden also has a lot of shade so some flowers don't do well. So now we have the allotments I decided this year that I would try having a cut flower bed.

We decided to use  two beds, one on each plot which weren't going to be used for growing vegetables this year. I ordered seeds from Higgledy Garden, then I rummaged through my seed box and found a few packets of seeds which had been given free with gardening magazines. Also, tempted by the pictures on seed packets in the garden centre I bought more.

On Plot 8 the prepared bed is  triangular in shape and has a bit of shade from a big sycamore tree late in the day. Here I sowed calendula, ammi majus, escholzia, poppies, cornflower, lavatera and nigella. The bed on plot 10b  is in full sun. Here I grew, echium, larkspur, bupleurum and sweet peas. All of these were annuals and could be sown directly into the ground. I started off some half hardy annuals in the growhouse, some of these were a bit temperamental and had poor germination. I didn't have the time to give them any special attention, plants have to be tough to grow up here in the north. But the ones which did grow were zinnia, cosmos, aster, rudbekia and candytuft. Everything had to be easy to grow because I have two allotments of vegetables to look after too. I also bought some dahlia plants from a plant fair, no labels so I had no idea of colour, height, type. Surprise dahlias!

My enthusiasm for flowers took over and eventually we had more flowers to plant than we knew what to do with. So some got planted amongst the vegetables. The flowers grew and grew and the triangular bed became a tangle of colour. I forgot to support the flowers early on so I stuck in some twiggy sticks which helped a bit. We hadn't expected the sweet peas to do well as they looked a bit weak and weary when we first planted them, but they really took off in the sunny bed. We had put in a cane and netting support for them but they outgrew that and toppled over.  We rescued them by shoving in more canes and hoisting them up. Some of  the flowers planted amongst the vegetables took over a bit causing some shade. The dahlias were amazing, they were planted in a separate bed and I remembered to stake them! The zinnias were stars, standing upright, needing no support and such variety of colour. 

 I made some mistakes--getting carried away and sowing too much, not staking, but generally I was pleased with the results.  Next year though, I will probably not grow as many, I spent a lot of time on the flower growing when I needed to have been doing other things on the allotments.


So here we are in September, the flowers are still in bloom and  I have had a constant supply of cut flowers for the house all through the summer.