Small Plot? No Problem!

Moon phase: Week 1 (waxing)

Onions are one of those vegetable groups that proponents of moon growing seem a little uncertain over - are they "root" vegetables and therefore should be sown/planted after the full moon? Does it make a difference if you are using seed (which needs to make leaf growth initially) or sets (which are already bulbed up)? So, as an experiment this year, I'm going to be trying sowing onion seed in different phases, to see if it makes a difference. Obviously this isn't going to be wholly scientific, since I don't have the time or equipment to ensure that other factors like temperature and humidity are constant, but it'll be fun anyway!

In the last 24 hours we've had 9-10cm of snow! Now I know that's not a lot by continental standards, but here in England it's the most we've had for several years.

The pekins, who have never seen snow more than a few millimeters deep, are not at all happy. I had to throw away the winter cover for their run because it had ripped in the winter gales, and so this morning the run had a 5cm-deep stretch of snow between the eglu and the section by the run exit (protected by the standard cover). Gytha "flew" over the snow to avoid getting her feathery feet too cold and wet, but Esme refused to come out. Instead she sat in the doorway of the eglu, making little worried noises. I raked away the snow and gave them plenty of mixed corn to keep them warm, but they're still not happy!

Luckily we were sent home from work early since the campus is so far outside the city, and I was able to rig up a temporary cover using a heavy-duty binbag and the bungee hooks that I'd cunningly saved from the old cover.

Moon phase: Week 2 (waxing)

Today I've been sowing onions, spring onions and broad beans indoors, and it's been sunny enough to tempt me outside! I cleared the spent plants from one of my raised beds, and dug up the baby carrots that had been sitting there over the winter.

We also went to the allotment to pick a few kale leaves to have with our sausages tonight, so I took some pictures with my camera phone. Here's the leek bed (plants bought in from ebay):

and here's the day's harvest:

Not bad for a relative beginner!

Click on the link below for more photos...

Inspired by recent posts on the Grapevine, I've decided to post a list of everything I plan on growing this year. As it's going to be a long list, I've putting it under "Continue reading" rather than turning this into the Never-ending Entry...

Moon phase: Week 4 (waning)

Checked on my seedlings today, and they are mostly coming along nicely.

The onion trial trays are germinating at a good rate, with the first seedlings showing at around 14 days and many modules having 80-100% germination after 21 days. The one-week-old tray is obviously not showing anything yet!

All the germinated onions have gone into the cage so that the cats don't nibble them, and I'm going to start hardening the oldest tray off next weekend when the New Moon comes round again.

The spring onions have been more variable: "Crimson Forest" has done very well, but the "Ramrod" not so much, perhaps because the packet was a bit old.

Elsewhere, a couple of broad beans are poking above the compost. No show yet from the celeriac, and only one "chitted" parsnip seed has a root. A couple have gone mouldy (too warm? too damp?), so I think a re-sowing straight into compost may be required after the next Full Moon.

Moon phase: Week 4 (waning)

Since it's the last week of the moon cycle and there was no planting to do, today seemed the ideal time to get on with general maintenance - and luckily we were blessed with lovely weather for it!

First off was a trip to the recycling depot at Chittering, where the company that collects our green bins makes compost available for free to anyone who can be bothered to bring sacks and shovel it up for themselves! Obviously it's not fantastic quality and probably not suitable for raising young plants, but it's great for soil improvement on the allotment. It was a bit weird to be shovelling up steaming hot compost, but I guess it was still warm from the "in-vessel" composting process!

After lunch we went back to the allotment and I forked over Bed 4, where the onions and carrots had been last year. There was a layer of soft grass and weeds, and a few invasive couch grass roots, so I tried to clear it without too much disruption to the soil - just turning over the top 5-10cm to remove the weeds. Then I dug a shallow bean trench on either side of one half of the bed, lined the trenches with cardboard and newspapers, drenched them in water and added the leaves and chopped stems from the frost-damaged romanesco that needed clearing up, and covered it with soil. Finally I sprinkled some general-purpose organic fertilizer along the trenches and on the other half of the bed, and we dumped five bags of compost on the whole lot. So, that's one bed cleared and rejuvenated - only seven more to go!!

At the weekend, after all the work on the allotment I relaxed by watching the BBC programme "A Farm of the Future" (part of the Natural World series). It was a real eye-opener, I have to say. On the one hand, I've known since the 1980s that oil was going to start running out some time around 2020-30, but nothing I'd read back then had spelt out how that was going to affect agriculture and food production. In terms of impact on the next two generations, it knocks climate change into a cocked hat!

Well, of course I felt motivated to do something, so I Googled around and found out about the Transition movement. Cambridge is already a Transition Town, with an active group since summer last year. Some of their activities are a bit hippyish for my tastes (cringes at thought of singalong evening!), but they've done some more practical things like lobbying the council into looking more seriously into the allotment situation. It probably helps that Cambridge is already quite progressive in this area, but that's no excuse to rest on our laurels!

So, I've volunteered to help with compiling the monthly email bulletin. It's an area where I have expertise, and hopefully I can get away without wearing any rainbow-striped ethnic knitwear ;)

A couple of people have commented on my growing list for 2009 that I seem to have an awful lot of seed for such a small plot! My answer to that is two-fold:

1. In many cases I don't have a full packet of seed of that variety - and even when I do, I'm usually not going to sow it all this year. Seed-saving and seed-swapping are wonderful things!

2. I'm aiming to have as much of my plot in production all year round as possible, and that does require a wider range of veg.

It's a cliché of veg growing in general, and allotmenteering in particular, that in summer you end up a glut of courgettes/runner beans/beetroot/etc and have to give it away by the carrier-bag full. That's fine if you have a big plot - but I don't. Instead I grow small amounts of everything, and I use the appropriate variety for the season so that I get at least some veg all year round. It takes more planning and a bit more investment to get started, but I think it's worth it!

As you can probably imagine from the length of my veg-growing list, my seed box is getting pretty crowded! I was very excited, therefore, when I saw this new seed packet organiser on the Harrod Horticultural website. It's a smart metal container in the same faux-Victorian style as their bulb tin but in a not-too-girly raspberry colour, and since it is slightly bigger than my current box (a hessian-covered Laura Ashley CD storage box from WHSmith), it seemed ideal.

However when it arrived, I was gravely disappointed with the design. For starters, the lid simply fits loosely on top of the tin. If you were careless enough to drop it, all your carefully organised seed packets would end up on the floor in chaos. Not only that, but it means the tin is not airtight and therefore not suited to long-term storage of seeds.

An even bigger disappointment lay inside, however. What appears in the photo to be a set of sturdy cardboard dividers, similar to the ones sold for use with index card boxes, turned out to be flimsy paper - the only reason they are standing upright is that the interior is divided into several compartments by fixed metal walls. This has a number of disadvantages. Firstly, the metal dividers reduce the amount of internal storage space, so despite being a good deal larger than my CD box, I doubt I could get many more seeds in. Secondly you are stuck with four equal sections for your seeds, and we all know that some months require a lot more sowing than others. Thirdly, the month-by-month dividers are so flimsy, they are unlikely to last even a single year of fat packets of peas and beans being squeezed into the sections and pulled out again.

Unsurprisingly, I have decided to send the organiser back for a refund. If you want an attractive gift for a dilettante gardener who is mainly growing flowers and herbs, this might fit the bill. But at £16.95, frankly there are a lot better uses for your money. Me, I've added an old (airtight) biscuit tin to my storage armoury...

(BTW, if you fancy the printed seed envelopes, a small sample of which are provided with the tin, they are a dreadful rip-off as well - £3.95 for 20!!! I got a packet of 50 plain manila envelopes of very similar size in WHSmith for £1.75.)