The allotment’s waking up now
A riot of fruit blossom has made a change to the whole panorama!
Having spent most of my adult life on this allotment, I’ve seen lots of changes to the landscape and gardening methods. When I started, there were no buildings on the land, but now they’ve sprung up on every plot, breaking up the ‘open-plan’ landscape. Also, for many years, the edges of some plots were where fruit bushes resided – blackcurrant, redcurrant and gooseberry, for ease of harvesting.
But the modern plot has changed, and the skyline is punctuated with tall fruit trees. What a glorious sight this is at this time of year! The allotments are a riot of fruit blossom, rising up into the air to make a splendid change to the whole panorama. So you see, even an allotment looks better with some changes.
This warmer weather has woken dormant pests that have been waiting for the green foliage of their favourite meal to be ready. The broad beans look as if they’ve been attacked with a pair of pinking scissors as their leaves have roughly notched edges, clear signs that the bean weevil has found its way to a host plant. There’s no organic means of controlling this munching pest, but if the plants are strong and healthy they’ll continue their growth without serious harm to cropping.
The slugs and snails are also close by, ready to snack on tender leaves of the lettuce and cabbage I planted a few weeks ago. The ground is warm enough now to apply a natural slug control called Nemaslug. This releases many thousands of nematodes into the soil, which seek out and control the population of slugs hiding there. It’s a natural control and has no harmful effects on wildlife. Snails, on the other hand, are not deterred by these and have to be sought out and controlled by more manual means!
One of my favourite crops is sweetcorn.
I’m growing a variety called ‘Sundance’. Seeds are sown individually in root trainers filled with good multi-purpose compost and are sown about 2.5cm (1in) below the surface. They’re lightly watered and covered with a plastic lid and placed in my airing cupboard for three days. They’re grown on into strong plants before planting out in late May. The long root trainers allow these plants to be removed from the chambers with minimum root disturbance.