Vegetable Growing Newstream

[George Latham]

Following on from the Food Foraging newstream - here is a discussion forum to share tips on what you are planting/pruning/growing/harvesting/eating from your veg patch/window box/allotment... I'm really not sure what I should be doing in mid-November but Careen tells me that its the perfect time to plant Chard... George x

[Rob Grover]

I am new to this so please forgive me if I contravene group etiquette. I have all of four years experience of an allotment near Roundwood Park

As its now January, its too late to answer the above, but if the question had been asked in October, when the ground is still warm, I would say peas and broad beans (Aquadulce). The plants will grow until the frost comes and develop their roots to provide an early crop in May. They are completely hardy.

TOP TIPS for January
Don't dig the ground if it is frozen! Even if you can turn the soil, your activity will bury the frozen ground and it will take weeks or months to melt.
Get your muck/compost heap sorted! I think the minimum is to have two heaps so one is rotting while the other is being built up. So if you have not got one, now is a good time to prepare two compost bins. Please don't buy green plastic 'daleks' they slow down the decay process. Two square 3ft x 3ft bins 3 or 4 ft high is good for a medium-sized garden. Some people use pallets or other scrap timber. You can even buy them in kit form! If you already have a heap, now is a good time to dig it out, spread the soil-like material on frost-free ground and use the unrotten material to start a new heap. When you come to sow in the spring you can fork in the compost.

Rob Grover

[George Latham]

Thanks for your advice Rob, I think that your etiquette is perfect! I thought I would use your thoughts on composting as an excuse to mention my 'envirocycle' - which, although admittedly expensive, is very good for accelerating the composting process in a drum that you spin around to aerate the material... George

Rob Grover said:

I am new to this so please forgive me if I contravene group etiquette. I have all of four years experience of an allotment near Roundwood Park

As its now January, its too late to answer the above, but if the question had been asked in October, when the ground is still warm, I would say peas and broad beans (Aquadulce). The plants will grow until the frost comes and develop their roots to provide an early crop in May. They are completely hardy.

TOP TIPS for January
Don't dig the ground if it is frozen! Even if you can turn the soil, your activity will bury the frozen ground and it will take weeks or months to melt.
Get your muck/compost heap sorted! I think the minimum is to have two heaps so one is rotting while the other is being built up. So if you have not got one, now is a good time to prepare two compost bins. Please don't buy green plastic 'daleks' they slow down the decay process. Two square 3ft x 3ft bins 3 or 4 ft high is good for a medium-sized garden. Some people use pallets or other scrap timber. You can even buy them in kit form! If you already have a heap, now is a good time to dig it out, spread the soil-like material on frost-free ground and use the unrotten material to start a new heap. When you come to sow in the spring you can fork in the compost.

Rob Grover

[Rob Grover]

TOP TIPS FOR FEBRUARY.

If you want to be ready for the spring sowings, its important to complete any digging ASAP. Assuming you have clay soil, you want to leave some time for the frosts to break down the surface. The effect is almost miraculous.

The sun was warm enough last weekend to melt the frost (see January Top Tips), so I was able to finish digging the last of my vegetable beds on the allotment. The ground used to be covered in couch grass. This is a perennial grass with long stringy roots. The plant can re-grow from the smallest piece of root left in the ground. Rather than labouring to dig the roots out of the heavy clay, I covered the area with old synthetic carpet and cut holes here and there for courgettes and butternut squash. I think the key to success was peeling back the carpet and spreading compost on the ground at the start of the summer and then re-covering it. Over a couple of years, the carpet killed all the weeds, so digging was ten-times easier. Works to clear almost all types of weeds.

The important thing is NOT to use a rotavator that cuts up the roots and spreads the weeds!

After moving the carpet to another area that needs clearing, I spread leaf mould from the park on the surface of the soil, so it gets dug in as I progress, And my boots stay a lot cleaner! As the ground is still very clayey, I'll be adding more leaf mould later in the summer, perhaps as a mulch to smother the weeds and keep in the moisture.

Happy digging!

Rob

[Simon R]

Green Daleks

Hi there - Thanks Rob for the Green Dalek concept - that made me laugh!

However having re-homed a couple of Green Daleks, if you have one I would suggest this - if you have the space to make a bit of mess, empty and turn it from time to time - I only do mine every couple of months or so. (Hardcore composters tell me that if you do this weekly, you can get good compost in about 3 months??)

My limited reading and research matches what Rob said: left to themselves big plastic bins can be 'slow'. The reason seems to be that composting requires the mix to have enough air gaps in it. If it settles too much the heap can't breathe, especially if it is in something impermeable like a plastic tube. This of course is less of an issue if you have a timber composting box.

Like Rob, having two bins works for me. One for fresh waste and the 'mature' bin. My personal system is a bit time consuming but reflects the small space I have... I empty the mature bin and seive the contents - the result is what I call rough compost. The the stuff that doen''t go through the sieve I then mix with more stuff from the fresh waste bin. That mix restarts the mature bin and then you just keep adding to the fresh bin. Repeat as neccessary or as your energy levels dictate!

This RHS page might be of interest to anyone wanting more basics.

Any one ever tried a wormery? Love to know what people think of that?

[George Latham]

Simon - I did have a wormery once - but found that the tap got clogged and the worms effectively drowned, so it didn't really do it for me. I now have a spinning drum which gets the air into the compost to accelerate the process, and I find that it seems to get full of worms naturally... George

[George Latham]

I noticed on the gardeners world website that they have a page called what to do now - which has a section on Fruit and Veg:
http://www.gardenersworld.com/what-to-do-now/
Also I believe that they have a series coming up which is specifically focused on 'The edible garden'...
George x