Up to March 2010 Updates
Hi there to all Lottiebloggers, we have woken from our winter slumbers back to the allotment for another season, we all await with baited breath as to what crops and events may happen in the up and coming season.
The year started very cold with some of the harshist snow that Northampton has seen for many years, with every snow storm seeming to drop at least 4 inches of snow. As you can see from the image below the allotment looks almost invisible compared to high summer only 5 months previously.
'Snow strikes'
However with all of the snow that did fall we were able still seem to be able to pull great crops from the plot, with leeks, parsnips, carrots and brussell sprouts supplying all of our families for many a month all the way through until the plot was cleared in march.
'Crops Keep coming'
One of the biggest successes of last year has to be our first true brussell Sprout stalks, although we have had Brussell's previously we have never had an entire stalk. The image below shows a complete stonker and fed all of us for 2 roast dinners. These were truely nutty and delicious.
'Brussell's at last.....'
After the last crops were pulled, the time on the allotment was turned into a more work based event. Our manure pile which has been rotting quietly for 18 months was ready and had rotted brilliantly from the straw filled mess that we aquired all those months ago. This 'small' pile filled a third of our allotment perfectly and compliments our crop rotation system.
'Rotten Muck'
With the muck spread and the beds marked out fro the fore coming season the allotment was truely ready for the first crops to enter our soil. The images below show the before and after images.
'Before and after'
One of the biggest dissapointments of previous years has been our strawberries. What ever we had done it seemed to be wrong. 1) Planted them too late. 2) Rabbits have eaten them 3) not enough runners to replace the parent plants. So with this in mind we have made a true monster a 3 meter sqaure section just for the straberries. Plenty of muck and plenty of the early spring rain has meant that at present the strawberries are looking better than ever before.
'Jam Jam Jam'
The first few crops always to enter the soil at the start of the year are the broad benas and the potatoes. These were both started off at home. The Broad beans in a heated propagator and then hardened off before they enetred the soil and the potatoes were left to chit in the warm but dark 'back of the fridge area' and as you can see these chitted perfectly, with the eyes not too large.
'Broad Beans'
'Perfect chitting'
We planted them in deep drills and filled them with chicken manure and shredded paper to help conserve the water which has served up rpud over previous years.
The end result is 8 wonder hills of soil brimming inexpectation and we await the first shoots in areound 3 -5 weeks.
On a sad note however the rhubarb only broke the surface on 27/3/10 this is a good 5 weeks later than last year and shows that this winter truely has been a cold start to the year. We hope that the weather can catch up so that the ever short growing season isnt made shorter. Crumbles should be only a fortnight away and we cant wait.
'Crumble is coming'