May is such a hectic month on the allotment especially as we now have more than triple the space to grow in!!! Keeping an organised diary seemed to get away from us so I decided to record a few videos a couple of weeks ago on each plot instead.
To cut a long story short EVERYTHING is now planted in, with literally no space for anything else. I finished direct sowing the last seeds mid May and all the plants are now out too. Some seeds have germinated already and we’re still waiting on others…
We’ve had some problems with a particular variety of butternut squash where if the slugs haven’t got them then they just seemed to have gone out with a whimper. The nights have been cold and we think it’s more the cold than problems with the soil as the other variety is doing fine. For the most part though everything is doing well but it’s hard not to take failures to heart even though you’re surrounded mostly by successes. We have seeds germinating to replace some squashes in particular. Next year I think we’ll do our squashes and courgettes even later in the greenhouse and plant out late May.
Slugs and snails have been a real problem so we’ve been going down at night to hand pick them - Vicky has probably removed over a thousand from various hiding places over the space of three weeks - there’s no doubt it’s made a big difference and really the only sure fire way to get rid of them. We’ve made a really juicy pie with them, full of nutrients, we’ll bring some into class for you all to try, it won’t be warm but we find it tastier cold - Vicky will always give you the recipe after class if you like it.
One bed of potatoes seems to be yellowing prematurely which may be down to potatoes having been in the same spot last season or might be due to the sun. I think it’s the sun as the bed affected is a bit more exposed with less rows. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks. The first early potatoes are just starting to look like their leaves are beginning to turn so they look like they will be ready on schedule. As the potatoes come out we’ll be planting various cover crops in their place to start building up the soil and likely make the potato bed the place for what we try to grow over winter.
We hope the videos below give you a good idea of what it’s like on the three plots. They were taken a few weeks ago now, and much of the direct sown seeds are now well and truly up!
By the way, I was joking about the pie!!!
Video 1 from our first plot
Video 2 from our second plot
Video 3 from our third plot
What the sick need is teachers not treaters, health schools not hospitals, instruction not treatment, education in right living not training the sick habit...