Brilliant Broccoli

I just love broccoli, and now I have (more or less) mastered growing it on my allotment, I grow enough that I can eat broccoli every day for 9 months of the year.
I'm lucky as it likes my clay based heavy soil and tolerates long dry spells, but there are lots of things we can all do to support a good healthy crop.
After the photos are my top tips for growing fantastic broccoli

Baby broccoli in the green house
these are now big enough to plant out

5 week old broccoli plants, just planted

New broccoli - behind are older plants
both beds fenced and netted together
The fence is to stop the foxes digging
The net to keep off pigeons
Left is a mature bed, just coming into flower

Bless,
under bottles for the first night in the cold!

Mature broccoli bed, I'm picking these now

My "how to grow brilliant broccoli" tips

Prepare the soil as best you can before you plant

• Weed really well
• Give the soil a good feed with as much home made compost as you can spare
• Add whatever slow release fertilizer you like using and dig it in
• Water the ground really well every day for a few days before planting so that the deep ground is wet 
• Rest the soil a week or so after digging so that it firms up
• Slug pellet a few days before planting to kill them off beforehand

Take care planting

• Water the seedlings well just before planting 
• Don't bother to plant weak plants - they are always a problem
• Plant the seedlings after the main stem has hardened off (they get darker) usually after the growth of the 4th true leaf
• Plant deep - I go half way between the first true leaves and the pot soil 
• Plant for as much sun as you can
• Plant sightly closer together than the seed packet says
• Plant in double offset rows so they support each other
• If your soil is light then consider staking. Push your stakes in when you plant. The roots and leaves will grow around the stakes and then tying them in later will be easy
• Firm them in well - form a fist with both hands and push the soil down with your fists all around the small plant, If you are not strong, lean on your hands and use your body weight to push the soil down. 
• Slug pellet right away
• Fence and net them right away- nothing more heartbreaking than going for a cup of tea and coming back half an hour later to find pigeons have pecked them to death!

Aftercare

• As soon as they get big enough that you can comfortably scratch about underneath, do so and
• Water well if it hasn't rained in the last week
• Mulch with grass clippings to keep the ground moist and weed free
• Sprinkle some slug pellets on top of your mulch to keep them at bay
• If your soil is light, stake as soon as they are tall enough. This will stop root rock. Wobbly broccoli will not flower well.

Before the crop

• If you watered well before you planted, then don't bother to water again until the flowers start to form. This will encourage the roots to follow the water down. Deep roots will help the plants stand up strongly in windy weather and hard rain
• I don't spray - good soil preparation and  planting care always give me strong enough plants to stand a some caterpillar action,
• If you are having a dry spell, water as soon as you see the flowers form. This will give you bigger flowers

Getting more from your broccoli plants

• Broccoli will give you more flowers if the ground is moist and fertile. These will start forming as soon as you pick the main flower. If the ground is dry after the first pick then give them a good water to get these going
• If you are a lazy gardener like me, then leave the broccoli in the ground after the second pick. As long as the soil is fertile and moist you will continue to get more small broccoli heads right up until late autumn. To encourage this I give the plants a tonic of tomato fertilizer once or twice (depending on when I planted them), Snap off any flowering heads that you miss before they set seed, otherwise the plant will not bother to make new ones 
• I often don't need the land that the broccoli use until I'm ready to plant peas in late spring. So I leave at least two beds of broccoli in the ground over winter. The ones that survive the winter cold will surprise me with a flush of new small broccoli well before any spring planted ones are ready to crop.

This is old broccoli - planted in march
It's still giving me flowers in September

New flowers on old broccoli

Blue ground cover flowers - a lovely garden success!

This is one of my favorite late spring flowers. I love the combination of dark reddish leaves and bright blue flower spikes. (Blue Bugle or Ajuga reptans ‘Braunherz’ - thank you +Doodle Maier )
Bees love it.

It’s a ground covering plant and to grow it successfully, it needs some of the day in the shade. These are growing around a hollyhock and the big leaves give the shade they need to thrive.

It's growing very happily in a few places in my garden. Now it is well established and spreading I can use the largest patch as mother plant, taking out rooted plugs  to move to other areas.

I find it best to do this when it is flowering. The flowers grow above a well rooted, independent plant. This makes it simple to work out where to cut the plant out using my bulb planter. I place it above a flower, push it in with my foot and hay presto! It cuts the whole plant straight out of the ground without disturbing the roots. The planter also slices through any runners and giving me an easy to handle plug, easy to pop into its new home. 

I'll plant these slightly deeper than they were growing, this encourages the plant to root sideways really
quickly. I do this by breaking off about an inch of soil at the bottom of the plug so it drops  further down into the new hole.

I planted some around the pond earlier in the year and these are doing very well. Some are already flowering and sending out runners. They will grow in the gaps between the bricks around the pond soften the hard edges of the bricks by the end of this summer. I really like the contrast of dark leaves against the orange bricks.

I'm transplanting these new plants to the back of my pond underneath the stick hedge. It’s a difficult area for me to reach and weed, so I'm hoping they like it there and that over time, they will form a dense mat and suppress the weeds. 

The Scots call Kale “Cattle Fodder”! - I think its a superfood.

The Scots might call Kale “Cattle Fodder”! but it’s my favourite “grow myself” vegetable. Here’s why:

Fantastic off season food

This is my Kale bed, in August last year

I planted them in April last year and have been eating them since September, all through autumn, and all winter, right up until this week.

They are amazingly easy to grow, trouble free (once they are high enough to get away from slugs) and the best value plants in my vegetable garden. Chopped kale leaves in my local supermarket are shockingly expensive – over a pound for half a kilo!

Kale gives you more

The bright green side shoots are the flowers
 they are a bit like sprouting broccoli

After the first flush of new spring leaves the Kale will try to flower. The flower erupts from the top of the plant. Snap this off and eat it. Yum. These flower sprouts are delicious.
The flowers look similar to green sprouting broccoli.  
A few weeks after eating the top flower the plants will sprout a load more flowers from the sides between the leaves. I take the plants out of the ground when these flowers are finished, usually by mid April.

Lots of food from very little space

I've just planted out 28 plants for the coming year. It sounds a lot, but this winter I could have eaten at least twice as much kale as I was growing.

Here they are all planted.

One row of large curly kale and two rows of Italian black Kale. Planted about 25cm apart in three staggered rows. Lots of food in very little space. 

all sitting in a little puddle! Bless

Cheap and easy

I planted these from seed in the middle of January and kept them near the windowsill in my kitchen. As soon as they had grown two real leaves I moved them into bigger pots and seed trays and put them out into the greenhouse for a few weeks.

This year is the last year I follow this traditional method. It’s too time consuming. Seed has become so reliable that I can plant one seed directly into small pots and nearly all of them will come through.

I've never liked the cell seed trays that are all joined together. The small plants are hard to get out without disturbing the roots and so suffer when putting them into the ground.

Tapping little plants out of small pots is much easier, the roots are less stressed and so they do better when planted out.

In seed tray cells - I don't like these as the baby
plants get stressed when pushed out

baby plants in little pots seem to grow on better and
suffer less stress when planted in the ground

If you don't have the time or desire to do this you can easily buy baby plants in most garden centres or DIY garden departments from the middle of March and they are very cheap when they are small.

Easy to plant out

The soil was dug over and weeded a week or so ago and I added some organic seaweed pellets to the soil. Kale belongs to the Brassica family and are hungry plants (thats why they are so good for you) This extra feed will make sure there are enough trace minerals, nitrogen, phosphate and potassium in the soil for a good crop.

Here’s the planting sequence

1. Pop out of pot or tray

This little plant has been pushed out of a cell tray

2. Dig small hole slightly deeper than the plant root ball

The two little heart shaped side leaves are the first leaves
and will drop off as soon as the plant is established

3. Fill the hole with soil and a little the over the top of the soil from the pot. Use your fists and push the whole root ball firmly into the soil so it moves down into a little depression.

Yay - out in the real world!

4.Shuffle around the plant pushing down with heels to create a well around the plant and compact the soil slightly. Kale are tall plants with big leaves and need to root in firm soil to prevent them rocking about in the wind. 

Yes those are my wellies

5. Fill the depressions with water (old gardeners call this puddling in) and away they will go!

Climate change is effecting everything in the garden

First the good news

OMG - my tulips are flowering on April 2nd.

I just love spring!  I planted these lovely Yellow-with-a-bit-of-Red tulips last year. This means the wonderful early and cheerful burst of yellow flowers that starts with crocus and daffodils, will continue that little bit longer. Hooray.

Now the bad news

The local government that provides my vegetable garden has decided to meter our water. First they measured the amount of water the allotment gardens use, then they banned using a hosepipe for watering. Now we have push button standpipes instead of taps. These mean we gardeners have to stand and push the button in to fill our buckets and watering cans. These taps will be locked in drought conditions.

Seeing these taps is such a sad day in a country where it rains so much! The now private water companies have not invested in ways of storing enough of the free rain to make this unnecessary.

How things are

In my garden I have 14 raised beds, all narrow and long. I can reach across all of the bed from the path and  I don’t need to stand on the soil.

Over the years that I've gardened here, the soil level  in my beds has risen between 4 and 6 inches.

I like this way of gardening. The soil stays open as its not compacted by my boots and I don’t need to dig with a spade.

Instead I can turn the soil easily with a fork. This is much better for the worms (and my back) and doesn't create a break with the subsoil at spade depth (called a pan).

The one downside of gardening like this is that the top few inches and the bed edges dry out very quickly so small plants and seedlings need to be watered more often than with other ways of cultivating the soil.

All change

Now I have to carry my water its harder and slower work. I need to change to a way of gardening that conserves more water otherwise I will spend all my time walking back and fore to the tap.
The first thing to do are:

• Add more organic matter to the soil. The more organic matter contained in the soil, the more it stores water, so my first job is too add loads more compost to the soil. Luckily I was given enough garden waste to make two huge composts last summer. 

Digging out compost from last years now ready pile

• Reduce bed edge evaporation.  I'm removing every other path, which will half the amount of the bed edges and reduce the amount of  dry edges.

First side planks removed and path dug through

• Reduce wind evaporation. I’m going back to the traditional humped bed where the soil at the edge of the bed is more or less the same height as the path and the bed rises towards the middle. This will keep the wind from drying out the soil.

Compost added and height equalised -

Thats my first two beds combined, although I  still have a bit of work to do. The last third needs turning over and I will add a few more loads of compost. Then a good rake and with luck, some rain and it'll be ready for planting.
As soon as its warm enough I'll plant French beans but while I wait for the summer to arrive, I'll plant some quick salad crops.

Out with the old, in with the new

In love with leeks

Leeks are great food to grow, no trouble in the ground and I get lots of them from a very small area. They are easy to grow in the UK's not too dry and not too hot climate. I love growing them - they taste so much better fresh from the garden and as they are expensive to buy. Seeing them standing, so resolute and  so exhberant makes me smile.

I normally grow about 50 a year, this guarantees me enough leeks in the autumn and winter to eat about four a week.

A few weeks ago I planted a whole pile of seeds in trays and put them in the cold greenhouse and they have already germinated.

Seed trays with leeks - you can't see them yet,
but they are there - tiny weeny little leeks just
unfurling from  their seeds. There are also broad bean
 seeds in the toilet rolls. 

New bugs  make growing things very difficult

As the climate in southern England changes we are becoming home to all sorts of new pests and plant diseases. Leek moths are one of them. 

I've never seen a leek moth, but I'm not impressed. They lay their eggs on leeks and when they hatch the maggots eat tunnels back and fore inside the leek and spoil them. I lost all of my leeks to this pest this autumn. No leeks to harvest this autumn and winter just gone.

:-(

It seems the only way to guard against leek moth it is to plant leeks in ground that has been free of leeks for at least 5 years. The only area of my garden that hasn't grown leeks in the last 5 years is my strawberry beds. So I am digging out one of my strawberry beds to grow leeks.

Out with the old

Its no big deal, old gardeners wisdom says that strawberry beds should be dug out every third year or so. As the plants get older they become woody and more prone to throw out runners instead of fruit. My oldest strawberries have been in for six years so I am going to dig out that bed and grow leeks there.

My strawberry beds are the two closest
beds after the first bed (flowers)
 Here they are netted to protect the fruit from birds

In between one rain storm and another I dug through the oldest bed of strawberries. Strawberries are very tenacious plants. Just like their cousins buttercups, they grow deep woody roots with loads of fibrous offshoots. Its very difficult to pull them out so they have to be dug up.

I chose the right hand bed to dig out as this
bed has been in the longest and was
 overcrowded with old plants

The woody roots of strawberry plants.
They all went in the compost

All gone!

In with the new!

The baby leeks won't be ready to plant out for at least two months, so instead of leaving the bed empty I will plant some mini broccoli as soon as the soil is warm enough, fingers crossed for the the middle of march. To help the soil warm up and dry out I'm cheating - I'm covering the soil with a black plastic sheet to keep off  any more rain and absorb heat from the sun.

These mini broccolis (called sprouting turnip tops here in the UK) are quick to grow, I'll be eating them at least a month before the standard type broccoli will be ready to harvest. Yum! they are delicious and I have never seen them for sale in the shops.

These grow 6 to 10 inches tall . They are cool weather plants, one
variety for spring and one for autumn sowing.

The death of a cherry tree - and "oh god my back aches"

Sad news of an old friend going.

I lost the old cherry tree outside the front of my house. Months of brutal high winds and rain this awful winter took its toll, causing a split in the trunk and dropped branches. I will miss it this spring - the blossom was beautiful.

Blossom from the cherry tree from spring 2012

Silver lining in the black cloud

In between one storm and another, our local council sent some people to cut down the tree, chip the branches.and remove the logs. It was my day off work - Luck that I was here when they started the job!

I bribed the workmen with big mugs of builders tea and they were kind enough to dump the spoils outside the allotment garden gates.

Me and my mate Doug spent the rest of the day moving wheel barrows of chippings the 500 metres or so from the allotment garden gate to various places in our gardens. 26 loads later...... God my arms and back ached the next day.

My old wheelbarrow - Dave, on top of
a pile of wood chips

I have a love/hate relationship with my wheelbarrow. It's a very old, solid wheel type. Its made from spot welded galvanized steel sheets - indestructible (which is why I love it) and heavy as hell (which is why I hate it). It was left to me by the old guy who had my garden before me and is named Dave after him.

Using the wood chippings

I spread a good two inches of home made compost first, and then used some of my share of the chippings to cover my two raspberry patches and the soil at back of the pond with a good 2 inch (5cm) layer.

Wood chippings like this make a fantastic weed suppressing layer (Posh word is "Mulch").

Mulch works by stopping the light getting to weed seeds so they don't grow.

The chips will slowly rot away and leave behind a layer of light soil full of worms. Great stuff.

I expect this layer to last a year or so, depending on the weather.  

my two raspberry beds

I have two raspberry beds. 

• The nearest one is autumn fruiting and the new canes will pop up some time in March. I cut the old canes down in early December after the last of the leaves had fallen
• The furthest bed is summer fruiting and these canes came up in late summer after the old canes had finished fruiting. I cut out the old canes in August so all the growth would go into the new canes.

Raspberries are woodland margin plants in the wild and they like light humus rich soil. (Humus is the posh word for rotted down plants)  I normally mulch them with a two inch (5cm) thick layer of leaves in early spring, These wood chips will do the job just as well.

Behind the pond

I'm not sure that mulching behind the pond was such a good idea. I covered over a whole load of bulbs that were just showing. They'll now have to fight through a thick layer of chipping which may hold back their growth or swamp them, some might be too small to push through - especially the small crocus and iris

chippings covering the bare soil behind
my new pond

Waste not want not

I'll use the unused chippings underneath my fruit bushes to do the same mulching job..... Just as soon as we get a break in the weather.

I have no idea what I am going to do with the logs, but there will be a home for them somewhere.They are such a fantastic colour and given a few months to start rotting into the soil, will become a great home for bugs to feed my birds.

Fantastic bright orange cherry wood logs 

"If you can't go up, then go down" - the no dig pond.

I always wanted a pond on my allotment garden. Trouble is I have a huge tree that takes up a lot of my space and the tree roots make it very difficult to dig a deep enough hole. So instead of going down I went up.

This pond took me almost three years to do. Finding enough soil to use to make a bank and enough bricks to make the wall took me ages. I finally managed to finish it with a lot of help from my friend Shanti in October 2013. Just in time to plant the bank with some spring bulbs.
The amazing winter rains have filled it, so all thats left to do is find some toad spawn this spring and cross my fingers...

my lovely finished pond

In the beginning

It all started with somewhere to put the sticks and wood, you know, all those branches that are too thick to put in the compost and too much bother to cut with a saw. I stacked them under my big tree on a slight bank, where it was too dark and dry to grow any food.

Feed the birds

As the pile grew I noticed that it became a haven for small birds, especially wrens, robins and sparrows. They feed off the small insects that live in the rotting wood. 

I deliberately collected wood for the hedge and over the last few years I've created a very substantial stick hedge. It's a natural bird feeder and windbreak for the cold east wind. It also blocks the view of some ugly buildings. 

You can see the hedge in the background of the following picture. 

I've pushed some very large branches through the hedge and its stable - still standing firm after all the wild windy weather this winter. 

Finished! I had just enough bricks.

Toad envy

I've always wanted a pond somewhere in the garden. For the toads. Toads are the best slug replant there is, they can eat their own weight in slugs every day in the summer months. Even though I'm an organic gardener I've only ever seen one in my garden. 

I'm not killing them with sprays or pellets but its difficult to keep them as they won't stay in a garden unless there is a year around water source.  

The pond problem

Putting the pond under the big tree is the best place for me. Its such a large piece of unusable ground. The tree takes all the moisture from the soil in the summer and nothing much grows other than woodland flowers. But there was no digging down. My god - the tree roots! And the last thing I wanted was to stress my lovely old tree by sawing through roots. 

A problem shared

A friend suggested that I build up instead of down and I started collecting soil and bricks to make the bank in front of the stick pile wider. I built the wall and the bank bit by bit over three years! Finding free wheelbarrow loads of soil was not so easy.

As I built I tilted the bricks backwards into the bank and stepped them into the bank as the wall got higher. This is an old way of facing a bank and means that the bricks needed no mortar to keep them in place.

The pond is ridged. Formed of a big plastic pot from a tree which made it much easier to build around.
Its lined with builders damp proofing plastic sheet. 

the brick spacing is not perfect,
 but then very few of them are the same size and I'm not a bricky!

The final touches

The top layers of bricks gave me a bit of a headache. How to stop them slipping into the pond? Backwards tilting bricks into the soil at the back of the pond worked very well, but wedging the front ones together is a bit flimsy. We'll see how that holds up over time.. 

Later in the year when I have some money I will plant the pond with water iris, rushes and grass. :-)

The top bricks
 all I need now is some plants to soften the edges

I'll plant house leeks and
some other wall lovers  in between the bricks