What I’m Sowing and Growing in May
April is my busiest month, huge harvests, lots of sowing, but even more planting and lots of beds to clear and recondition ready for May planting, so it’s quite a relief to get to May. I have dozens of seed trays full of healthy plants now and many of the March and April sowings are in the ground. The main challenge has been clearing all of the brassica and green manure beds!
A lot of my sowing decisions are driven by having enough space to germinate and pot on seeds/seedlings and as we start May that’s definitely the case. The little greenhouse and seedling bench in the polytunnel are full as are all of the window sills. Within two weeks though a lot of space will have been cleared and I will be focused on harvesting again.
In fact from now on the allotments become very relaxed as we potter around, watering, planting and harvesting, with no real work to do until late September/October when we transition everything over for winter veg.
In this video I show you the progress of my March and April sowings which are doing very well. The peppers are all doing well, the early tomatoes seem to have been worth the effort and the main tomato sowing destined for the polytunnel has all germinated well. The early courgettes and cucumbers are planted or potted too. The early brassicas are in the ground and succession sowings are growing strong.
In the video I also spend a few minutes on the computer to show you the databases that I’m using to capture all of my knowledge about the 250+ varieties of fruit and veg that I grow and also the details of what I’m sowing.
Before we get to the video though you might like to check out my latest tour, which shows everything that’s growing.
You might also like to see some of my March harvest highlights you can check out the following video:
So finally we get to the video for April sowing and growing.
This video shows several databases that I’m using to manage my allotment this year.If you would like to find out more about these databases please take a look at the following video, and it’s associated description:
If you want to get a copy of the tools that I demonstrate in this video please click on this link and create an account. Once you have an account then click on this link to browse all of my databases, if you want, you can take a copy of the databases to use for yourself.
If you want to download any of the following views to a spreadsheet you can clock ‘download CSV’ to get your own private copy, or use the web based database I’m using by watching the video above.
When looking at these databases please bear in mind that they are live views onto rapidly evolving data. The content and design is being constantly improved. If you want to look at snapshots and/or take your own copies, please look at the video above and it’s associated description.
Here’s a complete read-only view of the sowing log and varieities database with all of my data:
Here’s a read-only view of everything that I sowed in April:
Here’s a view of everything I’m planning to sow in May:
For completeness here’s a view of my sowing database with all the details!
Watch out for the next video showing what I’m sowing in June!
These tools are wonderful. The amount of time that you have put into researching and implementing this Airtable App as an allotment tool, is amazing. In the past several years I have input recurring planting dates in the Reminders on my iPhone. The Google calendar planting plan that you set up was amazing…all the data that you entered about the different plants was very interesting. I especially enjoyed reading all the “History” notes for the different vegetables. Now with the sowing table database, it gives a running timeline. I have already downloaded and am using it to record my sowing and harvesting information. This is going to make this so much easier for me, starting NOW! Thank you so much.
As far as cucamelon is concerned, have you ever dug up the tubers in the Fall and held them over winter? When I cleaned out my garden beds a couple of years ago, I found these small tubers that seemed to be part of the dead (killed by frost) cucamelon. I put them in a plastic bag and meant to take them to the Agricultural Extension office to see if anyone knew about them. Unfortunately, I forgot about them, and the next time I remembered them, they were too far gone and had to be thrown out. So this last fall, when I pulled out the dead plants, I paid more attention. the tubers were definitely associated with the cucamelon. I potted three of them up and put them in an east facing window in my garage. They spent the entire winter in there. I forgot about them, Did not even water them (October -March). I recently found them and though they looked dead, decided to start watering them. Leaves have sprouted from one of the “dead” plants. Two others still look very dead. I’m hoping to be able to plant the one that is producing leaves outside in my garden when the weather is warm enough. I wonder if it would produce cucamelons sooner than one planted from seed?
I’m so pleased you are finding the tools useful. I couple of rainy days over winter paid off and I have good ideas to improve them this winter. I always have trouble getting cucamelons to germinate so I will definitely look out for tubers this autumn!