LAURIES ALLOTMENT

Laurie Lavender

THE PLOT THICKENS

I have been a gardener for over 50 years and have worked professionally around the southern counties of England as well as France and Bulgaria (briefly). My new challenge is to write a column that is both informative and hopefully amusing.

For the last three years I’ve been cultivating an allotment in Hove and have had many successes and a few failures, some lovely fruit and some gorgeous dahlias. At the moment, after a prolonged wet spell, the ground in many areas is still quite water-logged so at the time of writing I’ve been preparing soil by digging in my own compost and some green manure which I planted last autumn and had grown to about 6”/15cm. I cut it with a Dutch hoe (called Sven), cut it up with the same hoe and turned it in with a spade. This adds nitrates to the soil the same way farmyard manure would. It’s a lot easier because you plant it where you need it and there is no lugging around of heavy ‘stuff’.

So far I’ve planted early spuds in pots (this is an experiment as my ground spuds last year seemed to develop some little wormy pests) and some peas. If you have a cold-frame you can start off salad vegetables from seed, also sunflower seeds and sweetcorn. Outside I’ll start off root veg like beetroot, parsnip and carrots, also more beans and chard.

Brassica (sprouts, cabbage, cauliflowers, kale etc) – I tend to buy these as bare-rooted online from a company based in Cornwall.

I realise that a lot of you will either have small gardens, a balcony or even just a window box so a full range of vegetables isn’t a viable project. If you’re lucky enough to have a sun-kissed balcony then tomatoes, peppers, radishes and strawberries could prosper. Also salad leaves (pick as required) and a variety of herbs, mustard cress and spring onions are possible. You can use growbags, pots, round and/or oblong. If your pots have no holes in their bottoms then you must make them yourself with a suitable but safe sharp instrument (take care!). Gravel, small stones (not from the beach as this is illegal) or broken crockery (keep in with your favourite Greek restaurant, mine is in Preston Street) will provide drainage to the balcony below.