Growing tips

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

  • Store potatoes in paper sacks or 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

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. Or badgers!

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