The gardening week (March - Week 4, 2024)
Spring arrives
Spring has arrived for me
Spring weather finally seems to be arriving for me in Lytham St Annes, although it’s more like April - with all of the showers - that the usual sunny March that I’m used to. Even so almost every day has brought some sunshine and my glum mood is a distant memory. Spring arrived in the garden (under cover) back in late February, but it takes another month to arrive outside.
Since I’m essentially all planted up on my allotment plot, I’ve got very little gardening to do, so I’m contenting myself with just popping in on my way to somewhere else, just filling in the odd gaps that open up, opening up the covers (which are permanently vented) to allow in more fresh air and sunshine and a lot of harvesting.
I’m gradually filling up the kitchen garden now, some beds are getting catch crops that will give a small harvest before the main crops go in, other beds are just being prepared ready for the main-crops, which go in during April and May.
Debbie’s plot is mainly planted out in April and May, so right now it’s just standing idle, with very little to harvest, it just needs a good weed and mulch with well composted farmyard manure and then it’s ready to go.
The polytunnel got its last few plants this week and now it’s going to be just abundant harvests until mid-May, when the summer crops start to go in. Just the spring harvest from the polytunnel is enough to pay for it to be reskinned in a couple of years.
Finally the greenhouse, it’s desperate for the early tomatoes and peppers and they are ready for planting now, but with night time temperatures down at 3-4c next week I might hold off for a week for some of them.
I think I will plant up half of the peppers and 2/3 of the tomatoes. The rest I will keep inside the house, just in case I loose any. This will help out no end, giving the remaining plants much better access to light. I’m slightly disappointed that the greenhouse isn’t quite full to bursting with plants right now, but all of the strawberry, peach and apricot flowers are making up for it.
Me, I’ve been hiking or cycling almost every day and popping into lots of garden centres, to see if they have any veg plants that I don’t have. I’m always looking for ideas for new things to grow. I’m suffering a bit with an aching back, having had to push my bike for about 3 miles, after a puncture, that I wasn’t able to resolve by the road.
Gardening problems this week
Each week I will highlight any problems I’m having and this week I’ve only a few.
Last week I was frustrated to see some of my early cauliflowers starting to flower, over a month earlier that planned and before they have enough leaf area/sunlight to support growing a big head. This week I noticed one of the next succession starting to flower too, this plant is even smaller, but it’s in the polytunnel. Interestingly only the white varieties are currently flowering, no sign yet of the purples, but the leaves are starting to curl, so it won’t be long.
My tomatoes are now ready for planting, they are already in the biggest pots that I have, so I think they will need to go into their hanging baskets or tubs. This is not - in itself - a problem, but we still have some cold nights ahead and I’m not sure whether it’s worth heating the hole greenhouse just for 8 tomatoes. I might just end up fleecing them, or moving them inside for a few nights.
Last year I decided to grow all of my salad onions outside, about 80% of them survived ok, but they are so much tougher than the tender/sweet onions that I’m used to eating from my under cover beds. This is generally true of most veg grown outside, compared to veg grown under cover, but it’s surprised me a little. I think I’m going to have to grow about 300 salad onions under cover next year.
Last week I reported that after a month, none of my early carrots had germinated in the polytunnel containers. This week a few finally started to appear, but I’m unsure yet whether I will be better off re-sowing. I chitted samples from the carrots packets that I’m intending to plant in March and April and they all germinated though, including the packet that ‘failed me’ so I think it was more conditions, rather than seeds that was the problem. I’m now going to plant out those chitted seeds.
What I’d Change - work/leisure space
This is a new series - that will take me well into spring - where I will share all the things that I’d change about my allotment, if I had the chance to do it again.
When I did the final design of my allotment, I was also helping out with my middle daughters plot and so we decided to make that the family plot and focus mine on maximum productivity. As a result that plot got a small lawn and patio and it had a big shed, so in there went all of the chairs/tables etc. We put in nice long paths, perfect for little ones to run around safely. I expected to have this plot in the family for a long time.
Then another baby arrived and I got a lot better at gardening. My daughter and her husband were too busy to help look after their own plot and I was busier too, with a lot of babysitting to do. Fortunately I was also growing so much food by then, that I was quite happy to downsize as well.
The only issue was then that I had no space at all on my plot, every square metre was filled with beds, shed and compost bins. This proved to be very inconvenient. I had nowhere to do construction projects, nowhere to sit out and relax, no space for family picnics or temporary storage of compost, the list goes on.
In addition to being a freedom junkie, I’m also a space junkie, I love to have more space than I need, so last year I made a start on rectifying this problem and creating, what will eventually be a large entertaining and project space on my plot.
I’m able to do this, in part, because I’m a better gardener now, but also because I now have a heated greenhouse, with grow lights. I already have more than enough growing space in summer, but I’m short of under cover space in winter, or at least I was. I’m now planning to use one of my greenhouse grow benches for winter spinach, lettuce and salad onions in large trays. This will free up a lot of allotment space.
So having made this decision I now have a small empty space on my plot, by winter I should have doubled this space and by next summer I think I will be well on my way to having a lovely family space again.
Improvements
I’ve finally completed by guides to different growing environments. This has been a huge effort. Previously the only way to understand what to sow when, depending on where you would be planting things, required you to open up my individual growing guides for each type of veg. Now it’s so much easier, just open up the guides below, for the environments you have and you get ranked suggestions for the best things to grow for each season. You are then one click away from the relevant guides, which give you actual dates etc.
There’s always a lot more work that can be done, but for now I’m happy that this winter project has come to an end, but if you find any mistakes please let me know. Next winter I’m going to focus on tidying up all of the different places where “what to sow when” advice appears, so it flows slightly better. Right now the flow from big picture advice to specific dates and varieties is a little fragmented.
Anyway, enjoy …
Guide to growing in a conservatory
Greenhouse Design and Growing Guide
Polytunnel Design and Growing Guide
Cold frame and Low Tunnel Growing Guide
Guide to Growing Outdoors Under Fleece
Guide to growing outdoors unprotected from the elements
Old new stuff
Here’s a few reminders of things that are already in the database/book, but that anyone who’s started to follow me recently might not know about.
This week I wanted to talk a bit about how I plan my allotment and to understand my approach I you need a bit of background. Throughout my working career I did lot of large projects, not huge projects, but often a few million pounds of investment and 20-100 people to manage. I learnt many hard lessons over the decades, which I will summarise here:
I learnt that I am not cut out to manage projects, but I was very good at managing a portfolio of projects, what we called a programme and that I was also good at laying out the vision, strategy, objectives, solution and milestones, but managing tasks was beyond me
I also learned that it’s all too easy to become a slave to a plan, to follow a plan too rigidly, the plan then becomes a hindrance rather than the plan being a tool that helps.
A good plan anticipates risks and identifies areas of uncertainty, it identifies key milestones and interdependencies and includes contingencies. This is the way I use planning in gardening.
Over the years I’ve developed a set of template planning tools:
I have a good feel for how long each stage of a plants lifecycle takes, at different times of year, which is critical for growing year round
I have a good feel for how many beds of each fruit/veg I need at each time of year
I have a few key milestones that I work to achieve, things like:
having the polytunnel completely clear in early October and reconditioned and replanted by the 10th of October
clearing and replanting my three pepper beds, one per week, through October
having my plot clear of winter crops and replanted for spring by mid March
I also know where all of the anchor crops will be planted, these are either the crops that will be in the ground for close to a year (brussels, kalettes, red cabbages) and where the crops we grow in bulk will go (potatoes, main crop onions, storage beets, peppers, tomatoes).
Nothing else gets planned. I just sow the amount that I know we will need to eat and find somewhere to put it as I go, fitting around the anchor crops. This often means lots of compromises, creative interplants and sometimes a few more containers than I’d like but I generally squeeze it all in somewhere.
This keep focus on the big picture, the key milestones and the critical crops and gives me loads of flexibility to adapt to all of the uncertainty that’s involved in year round gardening. This approach is very different to the way you might garden if you grow only - much more predictable - main crops, but it suits my very low tolerance for being organised and my very strong desire for freedom and flexibility. It also helps to have a little more space than I need.
For more on my approach to planning and the tools that I use and my planning database, see this chapter of my ebook.
Spring planning overview
As mentioned above, you can now browse my seasonal guides for each type of growing environment that you have, you can find those here.
Sowings for March
Here’s my new sowing guide for March, as always, significantly updated since the preview that I did last month. You can find my database for March here too.
Sowings for the week
Nothing this week, except the carrots that I chitted as a germination test. Here’s everything sown to date, in more detail.
Not germinated yet
Last week I moved the small potato pots into the conservatory and they broke surface within a few days, after a few weeks sulking in the greenhouse. It just goes to show how important a couple of weeks of heat is to early potatoes.
Germinated this week
It’s been a good week for someone who likes to watch new seedlings break surface!
Pricked out
I’m on holiday next weekend so I’ve pricked out a bit earlier than usual, so that I can get the plants well established before I leave.
Potted on this week
Just the cucumbers this week. I have two batches, one for the conservatory and one for the greenhouse. The conservatory ones could be planted in their final pots,
Greenhouse progress
All of my strawberries are now in flower as is my apricot and the peach tree burst into leaf last week and started to flower this week. Both successions of peas are well on now too, and one container is in flower, much further on than the ones in the low tunnel. I’m still planning to move the trees and the peas outside in mid-late April, to make way for cucumbers, melons, French beans and tomatoes.
Everything else is growing well and I’m now growing all of my cool weather seedlings in there, once they’ve germinated in the house, so that’s brassicas, peas, alliums, lettuce, spinach. That leaves all of my in house grow lights for tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, beans and courgettes.
Planted this week
My potatoes are growing on exceptionally well, so I’m now hopeful that I will have them ready, before I run out of potatoes from last year. I’m popping early celery out now too, into gaps in the polytunnel as I harvest radish. Celery is best kept well above zero, but once the plants mature they can cope with cooler conditions. My earliest (September sown) spinach is now showing signs of going to seed, so I’m pleased to be getting new plants in the ground, these should be ready in a few weeks for baby leaf harvest, meaning I can leave the older plants to grow on for cooking leaves.
Here’s everything planted this year so far.
Waiting to be planted out
My “waiting to plant” list is rapidly filling up again now, everything is really waiting for April and I will use next week to start hardening the plants off a little. At the end of the list you will see the first cucumbers and tomatoes are now ready for planting!
You can see all of the details here, note the links to growing guides have been added.
Sowing’s for next week
Not much left to sow this month now, I will try and find a few cuttings to take off my Taunton Deane perennial kale, which the pigeons have been enjoying this month. Then the first few climbing French beans, which will replace the early peas in the greenhouse. The peas will move into a sheltered spot outside.
You can find all of the details for March here, make sure to look at the notes section, and the details of where I’m sowing and where I’m planting etc.
Growing guides for March
This link takes you to all of my monthly guides, where you can find a lot more than just my growing guides. I particularly like the list of videos produced in the relevant month in years gone by. Click here for March’s guides.
Because I’m always experimenting you might find me sowing a few things that are not on this list, but you can always look those up from the complete list of guides, which you can find here.
Downloadable resources
Last year I experimented with providing downloadable versions of my database, I’ve updated these below with the latest information. Please feel free to give me feedback on these.
For even more details and a more up to date list (I’m always tweaking things) check out my live data March and April
Start planning for April
I always try to plan a month ahead, mainly for myself, but also to try and help everyone else. Here’s my preview for April:
You can find the associated database view here.
Weekly Harvest
Here’s last week’s harvest, the first tree return to abundance. We are coming to the end of the celeriac and we no longer have red cabbage, but we have loads of alternatives.
