Allotment Diary (September 2020 – Week 2)
I’m away hiking next week so I’ve mainly focused my attention on sowing, clearing beds and planting. As a result I’ve spent 12 hours on the allotment and 2 hours sowing seeds, bringing me up to my average of 14 hours and it’s been wonderful. I’ve only managed a couple of big walks.
I really like this time of year, clearing almost everything and replacing decay with young healthy plants that I will be tending for the next 6 months. My main focus – sowing wise – has been onions, salads and spinach for the polytunnel, with a few experimental kales to grow under cover for an early spring crop. Planting has been similar, but into the open ground or cold-frames/low tunnels.
I also made a start on clearing the polytunnel. In previous years I’ve cleared all of my low tunnels (peppers) and polytunnel (tomatoes/peppers/cucumbers) in October, which has made for a very busy month. Even worse because we also bring in the potato, squash, carrot and beetroot harvest and prep for store.
This year everything is different. I’m doing everything in stages: a bed every week or so, a few buckets of potatoes at a time and the beetroot can stay in the ground until November now that we are giving up the plot and hence not replanting. It all feels very relaxed! One of the first things to clear were the polytunnel sweet peppers, which makes the tunnel very light and airy, perfect for ripening those last few tomatoes!
I’ve also started sowing for winter with a vengeance now, here’s what I’ve sown this week. If all goes to plan I’ve now finished sowing for September!
As already mentioned I’m well on with the planting now, this is what I’ve planted this week.
We also had our biggest ever harvest last week, which is always nice, although fortunately it was spread over a few days, here’s one of them.
I also received a big parcel of free seeds to try out from one of the generous companies that I work with, Gerry at Growseed is a real plantsman and he’s a delight to work with, he grows almost all the seeds he sells and has a personal recipe for them all.
One of my viewers commented recently that although I publish all of the varies that I grow, I don’t make it easy to find the seed supplier. Well I do my best to please. I now have a public view onto my database that lists every seed packet I’ve used in the last few years, as well as those I have in stock. You can find it here and embedded below.
It’s worth noting that these embedded views are very powerful, you can search, sort, filter and export from them.
Here’s our harvests for the year so far, with the most recent at the top.
Here’s a list of the preserves for the year.
I always like to keep a track of or first harvest dates and you can find a summary of those here:
Youtube videos for the month can be found here:
Those are healthy looking transplants you’ve set out. I agree that it’s very heartening to remove the weary plants from the warm season garden, replenish the soil and plant healthy, young plants. I wish our weather would cool reliably so I can direct seed some of my crops.
I’m with you, I do like this time of year. I’ve got the greenhouse cleared out ahead of time, and soon I will have plants ready to set out in there. I hope you have an enjoyable time hiking!
I’m on the cliffs right now Dave, it’s great