Allotments and Amaranths
Part of the joy of an allotment is the space it offers for experimentation. Over the years, I've given house-room to all manner of unusual and historic crops, often with completely inedible results.
Some were complete failures, including the named variety of dandelion sown for its radicchio-flavoured leaves that didn't come up. How could this happen when in my lawn they need no encouragement? Or scurvy grass, a repulsive-tasting plant which was traditionally grown by sailors for its life-saving vitamin-C rich leaves. Thank goodness for oranges is all I can say and if you should ever come across scurvy grass juice for sale, take my advice. Avoid it.
Fortunately, there have been some very worthwhile successes too. The golden sun-dried seed-heads of the bread-seed poppy make super winter decorations for the house and Purple Grain-Amaranth (Amaranthus hypochondriachus 'Burgundy') has kept the birds fed in my garden long into winter. Amaranths are giant versions of the bedding plant Love-lies-bleeding. The variety 'Burgundy' has leaves the colour of blackberry juice and is blessed with the ability to produce vast amounts of seed from its long and fluffy tail-like flowers. I first grew the plant on my allotment hoping to get enough seed to grind up and make tortillas. I did get lots of seed but being short of a windmill to grind it into flower, this project is on hold. Although I collect the ripened seeds for drying in my shed some always escapes and comes up again the following year, so it's become a useful self-sustaining crop for the bluetits and chaffinches.
Talking of our feathered friends, I was interested to read the other week about the amazing intelligence of rooks. In recent university experiments they were found to be able to make wire keys which could retrieve locked-up food. This comes as no surprise to me as the crows and rooks at Greenacre are proving just as canny. In a bid to keep them off our newly-sown sunflower seeds, I thought a net held off the floor with willow hoops would be enough but the birds have outwitted me. They now throw rocks onto the net to weigh it down so they can get at the seeds. It's annoying but you can't help but admire their ingenuity!
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Hi all
I started a veg plot last October (approx 20 feet by 12 ft) on an old lawn. We used a guide written by Hugh Fearnley whatever in his River cootage cookbook as I had never owned or had the urge to buy a gardening book (sad life I know). For 3 months we just dug and dug and then dug in of a metric tonne of compost and all we had to show for it was 20 bags of weeds and stones dug out of the old ground. Come the new yr and yet more digging and more mud this times hard as it was early in the yr.
Come end of March though when we could start sowing and planting it felt like we were getting somewhere. And the excitement when my first few salad leaves germinated was fab. I am know the proud and I mean that owner of a veg plot containing a rows of carrots, a row of garlic, a row of 40 onions, 20 savoy cabbages, some celery grown indoors then transplanted, some corainder, parsley, thyme, rosemary and a bayleaf, a plot of Kale sown for cropping in Dec, some sprouts just germinating for Nov, Dec and Jan. We have had salad leaves with our BBQs and I have known sown the second lot of those to continue on in the season. I have 2nd carrots ready for late Summer.
In the dark winter nights I received as a present a book that Carol (Klein) had written called Eat your own veg. While inspiring me to what I had hopefully to look forward to cooking I needed to know what to sow, how to sow etc. Carol's original book "How to grow your own veg" came to the rescue and thanks to her brilliantly inspiring book, plus lots more digging and lots of weeding once everything started to appear and attention to watering etc I have a veg plot that looks real! such a fantastic feeling as I did it myself. I am overwight and had got very lazy. I can now honestly say I now cant wait for Sat morning to get out there and spend 3-4 hours sorting things, planning, (and the boring bits - weeding) and am absolutely hooked. Each evening when I get home I go out and have a look, pull a few more weeds and just stand there brimming with personal pride. I am also now an avid watcher of the show on a Friday night. Again this is a first.
Keep up the good work and thank you all expecially Carol K
Michele Younger
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Hi, I am in the process of developing a Children's Centre allotment which has been a lot of hard work.Joe's allotment book was very useful. We have raised beds with a good variety of veg growing well. We laid a lawn last week but now seem to have a plague of moles working frantically to uproot it! I don't want to kill anything as I want the children to enjoy all the wildlife, so what can I do? None of the gardening books I have read mention moles.
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Hello all,
I'm looking for a bit of advice regarding my onions. Some of them produced seeds. I have cut the seed 'pods' off and placed them in an envelope in my greenhouse. Is this all I need to do to store them and plant next year? If so, when is the best time to plant these seeds for onions and/or scallions?
Regards, Marc Carson.
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