Allotment Diary–Monday 05 September 2016

I was on baby sitting duty this morning and then rain kept me home for a while, but I eventually set off for the allotment at around 11am.  I went in the car and popped into Liddell on my way and picked up 5 large grow bags for £1.29 each, quite a bargain.  These are now stacked up next to the winter hotbed and will provide the growing medium, that will sit on top of the manure.

My first job was to turn the cooling compost heap (currently 50 C), the hot heap (60 C) needs to be turned tomorrow.  So right now I have two empty bins.

Then I decided to plant up the autumn hot bed with slow growing salads and perpetual (cut and come again veg) salads.  The slow growing stuff will take until November before they are ready to be cropped.

First in went three rows of red oak leaf lettuce, it needs to be in the hot bed as it doesn’t cope well with multiple frosts.

Then three rows of bulls blood beets, these are being grown for their lovely dark leaves, picked as a cut and come again crop, not for the roots.  I have some planted already that are maturing, the leaves go dark red when it gets cold.

That filled bed one, then in bed two I put in three rows of perpetual spinach, this is a variety that doesn’t bolt and I should be able to keep picking it until January.

Then a couple of rows of salad burnet, which I’ve not eaten before, but is very hardy

I also squeezed in a row of radish and a row of peas, that will be gone before anything else matures.  I’m really loving the baby pea leaves in my salad and they are incredibly quick to grow.