Welcome back my allotment friends! This is the May update of my first year in the allotment x potager garden. Things have been really hotting up, literally! The weather has improved and we have had some glorious days already. Long may it continue! This has really kick started the growing season and this month I have been able to get to the allotment and plant out quite a bit of fruit and veg.
Introduction
Last month I mentioned that that even though I end up with loads of little plants, I still never seem to have enough. Well its happened again!! 😤. I can’t work out whether it is my bad planning, or that the amount of space in the allotment is deceptive. But, we are still in spring astoundingly, so I have plenty of time to sow more.
Anyway, back to the awesome allotment May update. This month, as always, I will be showing you the progress I have made over the last 4 weeks, and how I have done it. Hopefully you have followed along with some of the things I have done on social media and even had a go yourself? If not, you can still follow me by heading to my social media pages HERE.
In this update, I am going to show you the plants that I have sown and grown, some of ways I have tried to protect my baby plants and some of the issues I have had. It’s not always fair weather in the gardening world!
As always, if you want to see where I started you can read the previous instalments of my allotment x potager journey here.
Allotment recap
So lets recap on what the objectives were for April and how whether I actually achieved them!
🌱 Most, if not all of my baby plants out in the allotment ready to grow away ✔️ So nearly all of the plants that are ready to go have gone in. We have had some issues which I will tell you all about!
🪴Start building mini greenhouse out of salvaged windows (I’m keeping this in here as I really want a mini greenhouse!!) ✖️ Nope. Nada. No progress whatsoever. I don’t think this is going to happen over summer, as the growing season is in full swing and there is so much to do! I am still hopeful I may have one for next though, ever the optimist🤞.
🫛 Repeat sowings of plants I eat a lot of such as salad leaves ✔️&✖️ I have done a bit of this but not nearly enough. I will be pulling my finger out the next few weeks though 😆
🥙 Recipes from the produce that is ready! ✖️ nothing is ready yet, other than herbs. I really hope to have some produce ready in the next few weeks to be able to start cooking. At the very least I will have some botanicals to use as cocktails🍹
Planting and sowing
Planting
Well, the last few weeks have been very productive! I have planted out quite a few varieties of vegetables and flowers and have not stuck to the traditional one species one bed rule. I have used companion planting where I can.
Brassicas
- I have planted sprouts, broccoli and kale in the same bed. I also added rosemary and onions.
- Scarlet kale, savoy cabbage, and spinach have gone in together, surround by marigolds.
Beans
- Broad beans I have planted with beetroot (which I sowed direct) and celeriac which I grew from seed.
- Borlotti beans and runner beans are growing with nasturtiums and ipomoea. I have also added chives and fennel to either end of this bed. This is also the bed where the pear is growing.
Tomatoes
- I have grown these in both the greenhouse and the allotment. This year, I am having a little experiment as I am using the same tomato variety’s for both, and I am interested in seeing what the difference is. I have got several varieties including, Roma, San Marzano, Marmande, Yellow Pear, and Red Cherry.
Allotment Perennial vegetables
- I have planted globe artichokes at the end of the squash bed with fennel and sunflowers
- There is one lonely asparagus plant that I dug up from my garden and transplanted to the allotment. I planted savoy cabbage around the edges of this bed, but they have really been chomped on by pigeons. I’m leaving them in and seeing if they recover. This bed also has some marigolds.
Squash
- Yellow courgettes, butternut squash and pumpkins have gone in the same bed. I am intending on growing the butternut and courgettes up the squash arch. The artichokes have been planted at the end of the bed and have interplanted some fennel as companions. I put some peas in between the sunflowers, but again they have been munched. Be interesting to see if these recover but I am not holding out much hope!
Allotment Flowers
- The flower beds have now been edged with lavender that I bought as plug plants and grew on.
- In the first bed, I have have cerinthe, cornflowers and gladioli. Now the cerinthe I put in early and it got eaten (there is a theme here). But it has recovered so I should be able to start cutting at the beginning of next month. The gladioli are doing well and so-far-so-good for the cornflowers.
- I initially sowed the cornflowers direct, but it didn’t work. Perhaps this was because I sowed them too early. So I resowed in the greenhouse, grew them on and then planted them out.
- I have planted sunflowers at the back of the flower beds, as they will grow nice and large, give a great view and will cover up the compost bins. Their seeds will be used to feed the birds in winter.
- My sweet pea tee pee is up and running! I was impatient and planted them early. Despite being worried that they might get eaten/frost bite, they have actually come on leaps and bounds! I have interplanted them with strawflowers and the edges are planted with lambs ears and lavender.
Greenhouse
- I have several plants potted on and growing nicely in the greenhouse. Including chillies which I started off really early as they need a long growing season
- I cheated and bought two aubergine plants as babies, and they have now gone in the greenhouse beds.
- Now, I sowed some melon earlier in the year. I have never grown these before, but they are doing well. Support will be provided for the fruits as am intending to grow them vertically. I am hopeful!
- Tomatoes as described above.
- Cucumbers. I have 3 cucumber plants, one is a Bedfordshire, the other is a gherkin and the 3rd is a mini muncher. I sowed a few more seeds of each, but they didn’t germinate. But this should be ok as these plants normally produce a lot of fruits. Am looking forward to seeing what they taste like!
- Herbs. I LOVE basil. So I have sown lots of these little plants and am doing my best to succession sow. It’s important to try new things so I am trying purple basil this year. I have also sown some coriander, dill (another favourite herb) and some lemongrass.
Raised beds at allotment
- I have never grown lettuce in the ground because I just don’t trust they won’t get eaten. So as per usual I have got some lettuce in raised beds at allotment.
- I also sow carrots in raised beds, because if you sow 20cm above the ground, carrot root fly can’t get them as they can’t fly that far off the ground!
- This year, I have sown some parsnips in raised beds. And then interplanted them with radish seeds as the radish will be eaten long before the parsnips are ready. Parsnips are notorious difficult, so will see how they do.
Sowing
2 sowings of Calendula seeds have already failed so far 😖. But, ever hopeful I have sown some more as I really want to use these flowers to make my own face cream this year. And the seeds are freshly bought this year, so I must have done something wrong. It happens, which is why I am also so grateful when I do have germination!
Fruit
My fruit trees and bushes have done really well! Even the apple tree has now grown. My little cuttings are still growing but I will leave them until the end of the year before I lift them. I had my first strawberry of the season today, tasted fabulous! And there is fruit forming on the raspberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and gooseberry bushes. I’m not sure I will get a massive yield but it’s a step in the right direction.
Issues
So, some of the issues that I have had in the last month comes from slugs, snails and birds! As you all know this is the first real year of working on the allotment, so a lot of things are trial and error.
The things I have learnt this month:
🐦⬛ Young veg makes a really tasty meal for birds, and we have lots of birds at the allotment, in particular pigeon’s. I lost my first planting of savoy cabbage, cerinthe and strawflowers. My onions were also nibbled on which I was really surprised about. I had just enough netting to cover the broccoli and sprouts so they have done well and are growing nicely.
This week, I have also roped Nick into helping me make some bird deterrents. We used plastic bottles, old CD’s and string. Hopefully this will make a little bit of a difference.
🐌 Slugs and snails. Now this I expected, so I used strulch, straw and organic slug pellets. As always, this was largely successful, although I did lose some plants. But I was anticipating this and kept back a few plants to replace those I lost.
⏳ Impatience! I was a bit too keen at mid April and planted out some runner beans, cerinthe, and cornflowers a bit too early. I lost most of them to pigeon’s, slugs and a bit of frost. My own fault, and hopefully I will be able to read this back next year and not make the same mistake!
Conclusion of May allotment update
So that’s the end of my may update! I hope you were able to get something from it
My objectives for next month are actually quite simple:
1️⃣ Keep my plants alive
2️⃣ Try and sow more succession plants
3️⃣ Enjoy my produce!
See you next time!!
JT x
