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The days are starting to get longer and spring is on its way. There is not much to harvest from allotment s between January and May – the so-called “Hungry Gap” but there is still plenty to do.
Outdoors this is the time to plant fruit bushes, onions, garlic and hardy beans, and it’s a good time to start working on the soil – removing weeds, adding nutrients, digging in organic matter and taking advantages of the frosts which will help break down the soil.
Seedlings can be started under cover, and you can start chitting potatoes which can be planted out when soil temperatures rise above 7°C. It’s also a good time to plan for the year ahead: thinking about what to plant where, how to adapt our plots including the introduction of raised beds and other constructions. It’s easier to erect climbing frames and re-establish borders/edges when the soil is soft.
Outdoors - garlic and shallots, broad beans, fruit trees and bushes
Under cover - hardy peas, spinach, broccoli, tomatoes.
Prune berries, prepare frames/ cloches/ fleece. Weed, remove large stones and rake seedbeds and apply fertilisers. Dig bean trenches.
Winter salads, kale, Brussels sprouts, swedes, cabbage, leeks, parsnips.
Salad crops develop quickly, and there are a wide variety – sorrel, lettuce, endive, kale, radicchio and mustard leaves - to suit various conditions.
They can be grown in seed drills, broadcast over an area of ground or grown in containers. Either way, they offer a fresh and tasty alternative to bags of supermarket salads.
As salad crops can outgrow weeds, watering and pests are the main concerns for salad growers. Watering every two days may be necessary during long dry spells if salad crops are grown in compost rich beds (daily watering may be necessary if they are grown in small pots).
Slugs are the main pest, and can be treated with pellets, nematodes, or regular picking off. Ants and aphids can also be a problem – ants can be kept in check if the surrounding soil is kept moist. Aphids can be squashed by hand if they are not tackled by ladybirds or beetles.
Regular collect leaves when they are ready to harvest. If leaves start to sag after harvesting they can be recovered by soaking in cold water.
A well planned plot will have some well-developed brassicas as we head towards winter: various types of kale, cabbage, sprouts and broccoli. Give them a helping hand by:
Chitting Potatoes
February is time to prepare seed potatoes for planting by ‘chitting’ them – storing them in such a way that they start to sprout before being planted in the ground.
The potatoes should be spread out over a single layer in a cool, dry place which is free from the risk of frost. Large, unused egg boxes are ideal for this, allowing air circulation between each seed potato.
Ideally the storage area should be bright but the seed potatoes should be out of direct sunlight. After a few days the potatoes will then grow short stubby shoots which will help the potato plants to grow when they are planted out to get them off to a fast start when planted out. St Patrick’s Day is the traditional day of the year to plant potatoes.
There is some evidence that you can grow larger potatoes by breaking off the weaker shoots just before planting, leaving only the three or four stronger shoots to grow.