Growing tips

Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds: Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare.

While we may struggle from time to time individually, our collective knowledge of fruit and vegetables is considerable. Given that the essence of allotmenting is sharing and being neighbourly, these top tips have been provided by plot-holders for the benefit of everyone. There are sections on fruit, flowers and vegetables, as well as a general section. Please send in your tips to webmaster@trapgroundallotments.org.uk.

Fruit

• Prune summer-fruiting raspberries when they've finished fruiting but autumn-fruiting varieties in February
• When you start picking gooseberries, take them from all over the bush rather than from one or two branches as this encourages the remaining fruit to grow
• Although you can plant raspberry canes throughout the winter, November is generally regarded as the best month to do so
• Rhubarb plants should be divided every five years to keep them productive

Vegetables

• Pea and bean seedlings are prone to eating by rabbits, so grow them in pots first in a cold frame and plant out when at least six inches high
• To prevent carrot fly, sow rows of spring onion and chives between carrot rows
• Pull up mature onions, shallots and garlic when it's very hot and sunny, so they'll dry out quickly on the soil
• You can plant carrots in rows only two inches apart, even if it says a foot apart on the packet
• You don't need to make a hole for each leek plant; just use a trowel and plant them as any seedling
• If short of seed potatoes, you can cut them in half as long as each piece has one or more shoots
• When planting potatoes, you don't need to dig out a trench; using a trowel, just plant each potato six inches deep
• Plant sweetcorn among other crops or in a block by themselves
• Sow sweetcorn seeds in toilet roll tubes - one per roll
• Applying a mulch to the shoulders of parsnips will prevent them shrinking and cracking, and will cut the chances of canker infecting them
• Rather than pull out broad bean plants once they've cropped, cut them back to a small shoot near the base; you may get a small second crop
• Bury carrot thinnings and tops deep in the compost heap; leaving them on the ground will attract carrot fly
• You can get a second crop from a cabbage stalk; when you cut off the head, leave the stalk in the ground and cut a shallow cross about a quarter inch deep on the top...new buds will appear as long as there is plenty of moisture
• Sow spinach close to taller crops that shade it, thereby reducing the amount of summer watering required
• Lift runner bean roots in the autumn and store them in a cool dry place over the winter; plant out once the soil has warmed up and you may get some early runners
• Apart from a lot in the early stages, you don't need to keep watering vegetables once they have established themselves
• You can store potatoes in hessian or brown paper bags, but also in plastic bags with compost in a cool cellar
• If your sweetcorn are getting eaten, be prepared to erect strong defences or give up; it's probably the small colony of roe deer and muntjak which love them.

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Flowers

• Before planting Dhalias, soak the tubers in water for half a day and, when planting them, don't do so too deep; a thin covering of soil is enough

General

• To avoid an accident with a plant stake or pole, place an empty Activia/Benecol pot over the end. You're less likely to poke an eye out.
• Put bonfire ash on soft fruit, onions and leeks
• Don't rotavate your plot if there any perennial weeds such as couch grass and bindweed
• Don't sow seeds too early; later sown seeds tend to catch up
• You're less likely to get pests and diseases on the allotment if you keep it tidy; things left lying around, such as old boxes and carpets, will act as breeding grounds for slugs, etc
• You can buy potato sacks from Boswells kitchen department (basement). Otherwise, you can store potatoes in layers between newspaper in a large box in a cool, dry place
• For really good crops, you need to dig in lots of manure/compost for three or four years in a row
• Do not compost perennial weeds and try not to let weeds go to seed
• Most old seed (but not parsnip) is viable much longer than the date shown on the packet
• If compost/manure is limited - though both are now available from Trap Trading - restrict use to peas, beans, sweetcorn, courgettes and cucumbers

Diseases

Tackling potato blight

The warm spring and wet summer in 2007 created the ideal environment for potato blight to flourish....and it did. Even if the July floods had never happened, many plot-holders would have lost their entire potato crop because of this rapidly-spreading and destructive disease. The bad news is that, because we had potato blight in 2007, we are very likely to get it again in 2008. So what can we do about it?

All the experts are agreed on tackling potato blight. This is what you do:

1. To prevent blight, spray Bordeaux Mix (or other copper fungicide), pbi Dithane or mancozeb over each entire potato plant in early July.
2. Repeat this spraying once or twice at three-weekly intervals, but more often if heavy rain washes away the spray.
3. If blight attacks your potato plants, extra earthing up may help prevent the disease from spreading to the actual tubers. You should certainly cut off and bin all infected foliage, but never put this on your compost heap. Remove it from the allotment site.
4. Try growing blight-resistant varieties, such as Maris Peer, Pentland Crown, Sarpo Mira or Sarpo Axona.

NB. You can buy Bordeaux Mix from Trap Trading. Also note that potato blight may infect tomato plants.

Other diseases

• Cover cabbage plants with fleece to prevent whitefly - also available from Trap Trading
• Environmesh protects against carrot rootfly, as does not leaving them in the ground too long in autumn

Pests

The allotments are bounded by a nature reserve, Burgess Field, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, Port Meadow, and the canal/railway wildlife corridor, which backs onto the Trap Ground Reed Beds. In other words, what is a horticultural plantation to us is a marvellous free cafeteria to some of our neighbours. Although it is fashionable to set apart parcels of cultivable land for wildlife, in our case it is hardly a requisite, and our priority is finding ways to discourage the species that cause most damage.

Rats

These are the only pests which the City Council has a statutory duty to control. Rats will always be present but they can be a particular pest in the winter months when they take refuge in sheds, infest compost heaps and savage root crops like parsnips and beetroot. If members are concerned they should report the nature of the infestation to the Committee, and visits by the Council Pest Control Officer will be arranged. Some members bring household and kitchen waste to their compost heaps. This ought to be put only in sealed compost bins, or directly buried in trenches.

Deer

Most years there are incursions by small families of muntjac. They have a particular penchant for sweet corn, but will browse on almost anything. The only solution is to fence off vulnerable crops with wire or strong plastic netting. A height of a metre or so seems to deter them. We have had visitations from roe deer from Burgess Field. These are somewhat bigger.

Rabbits

Local authorities are supposed to control rabbits but are deterred from doing so by the sentimentality of members of the public. They are our most persistent pests and can wipe out entire rows of crops. They can be deterred by locating and digging out warrens, blocking burrows under sheds, and preventing thickets of undergrowth and briar patches from forming. Remember Brer Rabbit? Rabbit netting is of limited efficacy unless firmly anchored and buried in the ground. Also the Association keeps some live rabbit traps, which may be borrowed by members.

Birds

The two worst offenders are pigeons and pheasants. Pigeons will strip any unprotected brassicas and peas during the growing season. Pheasants will work their way along rows of freshly sown peas and beans. Without holding shooting parties the only solution is lots of firmly pegged netting.

Badgers

It is against the law to disturb badgers. Unfortunately they are abundant, and there are setts all along the railway embankment. They, too, are particularly fond of sweet corn. A determined badger can bulldoze its way through almost any protection. Generally their damage is limited to digging up holes in plots and paths either to search out worms or excavate latrines.

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Other critturs

There are plenty of mice and voles around, some years in vast numbers. They are an obvious nuisance in winter and spring. If large seeds like peas and beans go missing mysteriously it is probably mice to blame. A particularly irritating habit is digging down alongside broad bean seedlings to chew up the bean beneath, thus decapitating the plant. There are lots of old gardeners’ nostrums like dipping seeds in paraffin before sowing. I have tried this on plants left in cold frames to over-winter. The mice got in and chewed the lot within forty eight hours. The only answer is not to plant out pot-raised plants until they are quite tall and the beans have begun to rot, plant them deep and preferably through slits in plastic mulch. And keep a few in reserve; you will always lose a few plants.

Finally we have quite a few goodies around though you are lucky if you spot them during the day. We have both weasels and stoats, particularly along the railway embankment and there are always a few foxes which can be amazingly tame. The year we allowed bottle diggers to renovate abandoned plots, a pair of them developed a taste for hand-served sandwiches. As their normal diet has become the contents of black bin bags rather than mice and rabbits their contribution to our welfare has been lamentable. Perhaps the introduction of wheelie bins will help them return to a healthy organic diet.

Favourites

Please let us have details of varieties of vegetables and fruit that grow well on the allotments and that taste good. E-mail your favourites to webmaster@trapgroundallotments.org.uk.

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