March Big Catch-Up

Although I haven't been posting much in March, I have been out on the plot pretty much every weekend, dodging snow and hail showers ! Hopefully the cold unsettled weather is behing us now and we can finally look forward to spring "proper".

But before I thought I'd post a bumper update of the various jobs I have been doing on the plot in March.

- Early this month, I finally did some tidying up in the strawberry bed - removed all the runners that escaped my attention at the end of the summer, pulled the weeds and cleared dead leaves and debris. I also decided to cover the whole bed with black fabric; this will keep the bed weed free and also will prevent the fruit from rotting down on the soil. I also moved the bushes that were at the back of this bed and transplanted some of last year runners. So that's me hoping for a bumper harvest of strawberries this year !!!

Before and after pictures of the strawberry bed . I have a row each of Mara des Bois and Elsanta bought from Ken Muir last year and the rest are an unknown variety, kindly donated by my neighbour.

- I finally dug up the remaining of the Jerusalem Artichokes. In the pictures below are a couple of plants worth; I planted about 10, which was enough for us to have a meal of Jerusalem Artichokes pretty much every week from October till March - pretty good, I think. As an experiment I blanched and froze the last harvest - I'm not sure if JA freeze well, I guess we'll see! I also saved 14 of the best tubers, which I replanted straight away. Two weeks on, they're not showing yet, but I didn't really expect them to anyway!

- We planted a row of red onion sets, next to the two rows of overwintering white onions and a couple of rows of shallots. They are a kind of banana shallots and we're trying them for the first time this year. I also found some stored red onions from last year sprouting in a drawer in the shed (not sure why they were left behind really ...). I have planted them up in the "odds and ends" bed as an experiment.

Top row: Red Onion - Baron and bottom row: Shallot - Jermor

- I transplanted the fig, orange and lemon trees from Lidl in big pots, wrapped them in a lot of horticultural fleece and left them outside. And yes, I know, this was a big silly gamble.

The results are rather mixed so far. The orange and lemon trees are doing great but the fig trees are clearly a lot more fragile and lost their leaves to some pretty heavy frost. I have now rescued them and brought them back inside where they seem to be recuperating well. I have spotted a few buds already and I'm pretty confident they will make a full recovery. Fingers crossed !

- On Good Friday I planted potatoes.

- A couple of weeks ago, I sowed some peas, 40 each of Kelvedon Wonder, Early Onward, Norli (mange tout) and Sugar Bon (sugar snap). Our clay soil was still a bit too cold to sow direct, they are in modules in a cold frame. No show so far but it's been so cold, I can't blame them!

- Today I also sowed some broad beans. And to contradict myself, they went in direct! But I have a pretty good reason for that; last year, the mice ate all the broad beans in the cold frame but didn't touch the peas - I know, funny mice ... But they also didn't touch the broad beans when they were planted direct. I do not try to understand how Glaswegian mice work. I just learn from past casualties!

- I also did a few tidying up jobs around the beds, building and rebuilding path and bed borders. But as it started hailing when I was finishing I didn't hang around to take pictures! You'll have to wait to judge my bricklaying skills!

And finally, the usual view from the top of the plot taken this afternoon in between two hail showers.

Good Friday potatoes

On our first summer, a few eyebrows were raised when the "old boys" found out we were not growing “tatties”. Our excuse was that we got the plot too late for planting potatoes but we could tell they were disappointed. To redeem ourselves, we tried to plant some “Christmas potatoes” at the end of the summer. But we lost them all in “The Big Flood - episode 1”. So last year, we were determined to grow tatties!

Potato bed, early June 07

I thought potatoes were simple things. Until I looked at the seeds catalogues. Pages and pages of them. First earlies, second earlies, early and late main crops, salad potatoes, blight resistant, eel worm resistant (what the heck is eel worm anyway?!), frost resistant, high yielder, grow better in the North, white, black, red, blue … My head was spinning!

Last year , we picked small amounts of a few varieties to experiment with, see what would grow well on our plot and which ones we like more. Well, one year on, we are still none the wiser as we lost our entire crop in "The Big Flood - episode 2". So this year is the real trial !

I got them all from Alan Romans, a family run business based in Fife. By the way, they also sell a good selection of seeds at dirt cheap prices - much recommended!

Our choice this year is:

- Red Duke of York and Duke of York for the first earlies

- Charlotte, a second early and salad potato

- Cara, a late maincrop, which I believe is blight resistant

- Pink Fir Apple, which is also a late maincrop. They are knobbly looking and a heritage variety and despite being very tasty, they are rather hard to get hold off in supermarkets or greengrocers.

- Mr Little's Yelthom Gypsy, an early maincrop but also a conservation potato. This is my "fun" potato of the year - I absolutely love the name and it is apparently the only known potato to show blue, white and red together in the skin.

Clockwise from top left corner:

Pink Fir Apple, Cara, Charlotte, Red Duke of York,

Mr Little's Yetholm Gypsy and Duke of York.

With regard to planting, there are two schools out there, the “chitters” and the “non-chitters”. Chitting potatoes means getting them to sprout before you plant them, like they do when you forget them in your veg basket. The "chitters" argue it speeds up the growing process. Last year, I didn’t chit mine, not on purpose, I simply forgot. And when I remembered it was too late. But it didn't seem to bother my potatoes too much and they grew regardless. This year I got them a bit earlier and I was a bit more organised so they have been chitted.

Once again, I decided to stick with a gardening tradition in which potatoes are planted on Good Friday. So, this Friday, the potatoes went in despite all my concerns. After all Easter is very early this year and we could still get frosts and awful weather. Although I'm glad to read that such an early Easter is not going to happen for at least another 150 years! The bed in which they went is now covered with black fabric, hopefully keeping the soil warm enough ...

Thank goodness for the blogosphere (and Lidl)

As I was just finishing the fig and cinammon jam my wife's cousin gave me for Christmas, I was thinking one more time how much I would love to have my own fig tree. Where I am from, figs are in plentiful supply in summer and autumn, but here, when the shops have them, they cost an absolute fortune. I mean £2 for 4 figs, what are they made of, gold?

Fruit tree extravaganza - Fig, orange, lemon and fig again (and potatoes chitting away)

The Urban Bumpkin brought to my attention early this week that Lidl were having one of their big gardening extravaganza this week and were practically giving away fruit bushes. Lucky she did as I was convinced it was next week and would have certainly missed out.

After a first failed attempt, I went back on thursday night and got a couple of fig trees. At £2.99 each, it's almost too good to be true, so we'll see how they get on. But I am already dreaming of fig and cinnamon jam!

And because I was prepared to pay a lot more at a garden centre, I also treated myself to a lemon and an orange tree. They will probably have to come back in during the winter or be seriously "fleeced". We'll worry about that when the time comes!

The weather forecast for this weekend looks atrocious and I don't think we would have done much on the allotment. Just as well we are off to Budapest tomorrow - although my birthday was at Christmas, this is my belated birthday present! Very excited!

I leave you with a couple of dwarf daffodils which flowered, right on cue, on St David Day.