The self-sufficient Allotment
[This article is still incomplete and will be finished off as soon
as I can find the time. However I wanted to get the basics up here for those
p[people who attended my Buddahfilds workshops in min-July 2016,{and indeed 2015}
and to whom I promised this article.]
1.
What do we mean by
Self-Sufficiency on an allotment scale?
Exclude:
a)
cereals (eg oats, wheat)
b)
Fresh tender crops out of
season (eg fresh tomatoes, aubergines,
Include – everything normally grown or raised on an allotment
2. Limitations of allotment
We must work within the limitations
of an allotment:
a.
Limited space A full-sized allotment is10
poles in size!! This is 250 sq m, or the approximate size of a doubles tennis court.
However nowadays first-time allotmenteers are usually offered a smaller plot
b.
Limited Power Most allotments don’t
have electricity
c.
Limited water Some allotments
don’t have mains water
d.
Restrictive regulations:
Some allotments don’t allow sheds,
Some councils require immediate
cultivation of 60%
Some don’t allow livestock
Some limit or exclude fruit trees
3. Ideas for allotment planning;
If possible measure up and mark out where you want things before you
start. You will need:
(i) Some
beds for annual vegetables
(ii) Some beds for perennial vegetables
(iii) An area for some
soft fruit bushes: preferable a fruit cage.
(iv) Some beds for other soft fruit (strawberries, raspberries)
(v) A seedbed & nursery bed
(vi) A Greenhouse
(v) Some Compost bins
(vi) Somewhere for tool storage
(vii) An area for livestock
(viii) Some fruit trees
So you may want to have, say, 16 beds for annual vegetables, grouped
in 4 lots of 4, to aid your rotation. You can separate these by some beds for
perennials, such as asparagus, rhubarb and globe artichokes, and also some beds
for soft fruit that is not suitable for a cage, such as strawberries and
raspberries. You can have a fruit cage
for eg gooseberries and blackcurrants in one corner, and an area for hens and/or
rabbits in the other. Maybe you can squeeze in a beehive. You need somewhere for your compost bins. You
can save space by dispensing with a shed and using a garden cupboard. And find
room for a greenhouse. You can grow tree fruit along borders as fans or
espaliers or cordons, or even along paths as step-overs. The important thing is
to design your allotment so as not to waste any space. Self-sufficiency on an allotment is a tall
order, and needs thorough planning.
4. Designing your allotment
Design your allotment on the fixed-bed
system.
Grow in Beds not Rows. Your beds should be 4’6”
– 5’ wide, depending on your reach, and 12’-18’ long. (Any longer and you will
be tempted to cut across).Your paths should be wide enough for you to kneel on
while facing along the path. It might be
worth deciding on your kneeler first, then making the paths that width.
Why Fixed Beds?
a)
Walking on paths not soil, avoids
compaction
b)
You need less manure – you manure
only the beds, not the paths in between as happens when growing in rows
c)
You need less water – you water only the
beds. Also many plants create a canopy which retains water
d)
You can plant your veg closer
together in the beds because you don't need to leave space to walk between
them, thus increasing productivity
5. Follow
the No-Dig Method
(For a full discussion on the no-dig
method, see my post “The No-Dig Allotment”}
Summary
of advantages to the no-dig method:
(i) No Dig preserves soil structure
(ii) No dig gives earlier crops
(iii) No dig results in fewer weeds
(iv) No dig results in slightly fewer
pests
(v) No dig results in approximately equal
harvests
(vi) There are better things to do in winter!
Limitations of the no-dig method on an allotment:
Occasionally
however you have to dig;
a)
How else do you extract an 18”
parsnip?
b)
Lifting old brassica stalks
c)
Wherever you grow raspberries
there will be unwanted runners growing nearby. These can be easily pulled up
but will return. If you want to prevent new runners, you need to go down and
remove the root. Personally I just keep pulling them up by hand.
d)
Sometimes you need to extract
stubborn weeds.
e)
If you don’t dig over your bed
after harvesting potatoes, you risk finding a forest of rogues growing through
the following year’s crops. This is especially an issue in lighter soils.
6. Feeding the
self-sufficient Allotment
The traditional approach is to feed individual plants. However a better
approach is to feed the soil.
In principle add a layer
of manure or compost to each bed every year, usually in winter, when a bed is
empty. I don't add any other fertilizer.
I do modify this approach
very slightly. Potatoes benefit from as
much manure as you can give them whereas alliums are said to like soil which
was manured for a previous crop. So I give a double dose of manure to spuds,
and don’t manure for the alliums that follow them.
To Lime or Not to Lime
Traditionally, gardeners lime the
soil before growing brassicas. I prefer to lime every time I have harvested the
potatoes. I am not absolutely sure that liming is necessary when using compost
& manure rather than artificial fertilizers, but I do it anyway to be on
the safe side.
As lime and
soil do not do well together, as the lime locks up nutrients in the manure, I
don’t manure when I have limed.
Sourcing compost/manure
So how do you get enough organic matter to put this layer on your
beds every year?
(i) Keep
3 compost bins at allotment. All weeds (minus seedheads) and debris
from harvests go onto the compost bin.
You need one you are making, one you are using, and one that is stewing. You can speed up the conversion on compost by
sorting ingredients, and turning regularly, but you still get the same amount
in the end. I prefer to simply throw stuff on as it comes and use it when it is
ready naturally, which is a year or less.
(ii) Keep
Hens! If you have hens you can throw everything that you need to
compost at the feet of the hens first. They with peck at it and eat it and
tread on it and pee & poo on it and it will very quickly become brown
powder. The level will rise over the months, so, every few months, when a
compost bin is empty, you dig it out and put it all into the compost bin.
(Incidentally, if hens are kept on the same
soil for a long period of time, there is a risk of a build-up of pests and
disease. However this way, the hens are living on a constantly renewed surface
so this is less of a problem.)
In winter, when less greenstuff is
available from the allotment, it is worth collecting bags of autumn leaves.
These can of course be left to make leaf mould, which is a good soil conditioner
but low in nutrients. Or you can throw a bag or 2 a week at the feet of your
hens, and they will scratch and peck away as they do, and convert it into
something which is far richer in nutrients.
Where I live I found suburban streets with
rows of horse-chestnut trees where the residents bagged up the leaves ready for
the council to take away. So I arrived
before the council and collected the bags instead.
(iii) Keep compost bins at home for kitchen waste.
(iv) Collect Neighbours’ Green Waste Increase the amount of home
compost you can create by getting green
waste from your neighbours. They are often pleased to avoid having to pay for a
brown bin for their lawn mowings. I find lawn mowings, scrunched up newspaper ,
kitchen waste, with urine as an activator, works well.
(v) Import manure In the
countryside there are often farmers who are happy for you to bag up and remove
cow manure. For a small charge they may well deliver it for you. In cities
there are riding stables where horse
manure is an unwanted by-product that they are only too happy to get rid
of. Again they will often bag it up for
you to collect, - I recommend a trailer or pick-up though – my wife puts her
foot down at the thought of bags of fresh manure in the car!
I buy my manure a long time ahead so that it is well-rotted in the
bags when I need to use it.
(vi) Council Soil Conditioner Some councils will make available the soil
conditioner from the green waste collected in brown bins. In Norfolk I used to
be able to collect as much as I wanted from the recycling depot on production
of an allotment contract. Some councils will deliver soil conditioner for
collection on a prearranged date in a local park, You can find out if, where
and when this occurs from you local allotment association.
(vii) Buy from garden centre (But only as
a last resort!)
7. How to
maximize productivity
To approach
self-sufficiency you need to avoid, as far as possible, having empty
unproductive soil. So try to arrange as far as possible for something to go in
whenever something comes out.
I have 16 beds
for annual vegetables, grouped in 4 lots of 4. I manage to get 6 crops from
each or these 16 beds over a four-year period.
I follow a
system which works for me, with my family’s requirements and my soil. I will
outline it here as a suggestion. But please design your own rotation to suit
your requirement.
Break 1: The
Potato Break.
The soil will
be manured heavily for the potatoes. I like to get the manure on as soon as
possible the autumn before and, once it has been rained on a bit, cover the
beds with black plastic (the only exception to this is the soil where parsnips
have been growing). Over the winter the worms enjoy the slightly warmer
conditions and I find that by the time `I remove the plastic in the spring,
they have already pulled some of the manure into the soil.
It is usually
recommended that seeds for earlies are chitted, which means being stood in a
light-frost-free place to allow small shoots to form, but I like toi chit all
of my potatoes.
To maximize
yield (and with the exception of 1st earlies) I grow 12” apart in 3
rows 18”-24” along my beds. There is not enough room to earth up when grown
like this, so I put the tubers in a few inches deep using a bulb planter and
grow them on the flat. This is probably why I need to dig to hunt down the
rogues afterwards. If you want to avoid
this, then use just 2 rows along the beds and earth-up as usual, but the yield
will of course be lower.
I get more
green potatoes this way, but put them aside for use as next year’s seed
potatoes. I find I can get away with using my own saved seed potatoes twice
before I need to buy anew
Bed 1 First
Earlies I
usually have one bed for first earlies.
These will be harvested young and small so can be grown 12” apart in all
directions if you have enough seeds.
Bed 2 2nd Earlies These are my favourites. I
love the taste of Charlotte It has a wonderful flavour and bulks up early, so
even when the blight strikes, as it did in late June this year, there is
already a sizeable crop under the ground when you have to cut the haulms down.
Bed 3 Early Maincrop My favourite of these is Kifli. Although it
has not been available for the last couple of years, the seed merchant keeps it
on their catalogue, listed permanently as out-of-stock It has a wonderful new potato flavour while
also being largely resistant to blight. maincrop. Currently I use Lady Christi (1st
early), Charlotte (2nd early
Bed 4 Maincrop Sarpo Axona (my insurance policy). This
is from the Sarvasi breeding probramme (as is Kifli) and is totally blight
resistant, so can stand and grow through blight. It has an unexceptional flavour, but work well as a
masher and roaster and at least you have them when everone else’s crops have
died! They are slow to get going though, so do need to be chitted like earlies.
However this does have the advantage that they are slow to sprout in storage in
the spring.
After
harvesting the potatoes I dig the soil over to hunt down rogues, and lime the
soil. I do not manure after the potatoes.
Break 2: Alliums
This includes
onions, leeks, garlic and shallots. As
soon as the alliums are lifted the beds can be covered with a layer of
manure/compost, if you have some ready. Alternatively the soil can be fed after
harvesting the alliums, just before the tender legumes,
Bed 1 Leeks The first to go in are the
leeks. These are sown in late winter/early spring in rows in a seedbed. They
need to be planted out by late July.
Even if the first-early potato bed is not empty, it is time to get the potatoes
out of the ground and the soil prepared for the leeks.
Bed 2 Onion Sets (Autumn) By late October you can put your
autumn onion sets in where the second early potatoes were. I like to grow 3 sorts, one yellow variety
which mature very quickly, for use the following May, another yellow variety
which stores reasonably well, and one red variety. You can plant them 4” apart in rows across
the bed with about 9” between the rows – enough to get an onion hoe between if
needed.
Bed 3 Garlic & Shallots
Garlic Garlic too can be planted in the autumn shortly after the onions, as
soon as any early maincrop potatoes have been lifted. I like to give at least half a bed to
garlic. I like to give some space for
elephant garlic, which gives huge, mild cloves suitable for roasting.
Shallots These fill the rest of the garlic bed, and can be put out in the
autumn or the spring. I put aside
several of the larger bulbs each harvest for re-use the following year.
Bed 4 Onion Sets
(Spring) I put
these out in late February/early March depending on the weather. Same spacing
as for the autumn ones. These will follow the maincrop potatoes, which are
harvested too late in the year for anything to follow the same season.
Break 3 Tender
Legumes & overwintering salads
This includes
French beans and runner beans. These
crops are not frost-hardy so cannot be put out until all risk of frost has
passed, usually late May.
As soon as the
tender legumes are finished, manure the soil, if you didn’t after the alliums,
and cover the beds(I use black plastic) to prevent weeds from growing and to
protect the nutrients in the soil.
Bed 1 Runner Beans As soon as the last of the
leeks are eaten in spring, I manure the soil and build a structure over my bed
for runner beans. I build in the shape of a ridge tent from poles which reach
almost to the path on either side. In
the last week in May seedlings which have been started indoors can be planted
out just inside and underneath the poles.
I have had large yields by spacing my poles about 10” apart and having 3
seeds in a pot which I plant out without separating.
I grow eating
beans on one side of the wigwam and beans for drying on the other. I know it is
not usual to grow runner beans for storage, but there is a variety, “Czar”,
which gives large white seeds of good flavour that can be used as butter beans.
These can be sown directly in late May, as can the eating runners if you are
not in a hurry.
The unused
space underneath the wigwam can be used to grow some squashes, which are happy
to clamber around in dappled shade under neath. They need to be kept inside
though - give them a severe talking to
if they venture outside the wigwam.
Bed 2 Climbing French Beans By mid-June, once the
autumn-planted onion sets have reached full-size, they should be lifted to
vacate the bed for French beans. They
can be dried off under cover somewhere else – indoors in a sunny room, or on
your greenhouse path, or against a fence with glass leaned over.
Ideally the
beans will have been started off under cover a couple of weeks earlier so that
you have viable plants to put out in the same way as the runners.
For maximum
yield, construct another wigwam in the same way as for runners, and grow your
French beans up the poles. If you get
them in by mid-late June they will have plenty of time to produce a large
crop. I like to grow some borlotti beans
for drying up one side of the wigwam, and a pencil pod up the other.
Again squashes
can be planted underneath.
Alternatively
you can grow dwarf French beans 4” apart in rows 12” apart across your beds.
The yield is comparable (as opposed to runner beans, where the dwarf varieties
do not produce anywhere like as many) but they are harder to harvest. And you
don’t get the squashes.
Bed 3 Dwarf
French Beans
As soon as the garlic and shallots are ready they should be harvested
and dwarf French beans sown in their stead.
I use 10th July as my cut-off date for sowing dwarf beans in
order that there is enough time to get a decent crop. This is too late for
climbers, however.
Bed 4 Overwintering salads
I usually start
these off in a seedbed in early August and plant them out once the spring-sown onions are lifted later
on. However you can sow them direct if you harvest your maincrop onions
early.
I grow hardy
lettuce, like “Valdor”, which I leave over winter and transplant once they
start growing again in spring. Even if they get cut down by the frost, they
will usually grow again. I also grow rocket and mizuna. I also sow the chards:
spinach chard, perpetual spinach, rainbow chard, here – I find they fill a gap
nicely when there is not much else in the spring.
Over-wintering
spring onions can go here, or you can use any tiny shallots instead to produce
leaf onion in the spring.
Break 4: Hardy
Legumes and Early Brassicas
NB With all legumes, don't forget to keep some back at harvest time for next
year’s seed.
Bed 1: Broad Beans I like to sow 2 varieties at different times to
extend the season. This bed will follow on from the runner beans. After these
finish, take down the canes and tidy up the bed. If you have had squashes
clambering underneath, leave them to ripen until the 1st frost is
forecast.
Cover half with
black plastic and sow overwintering broad beans in the other half in early
November. Then sow the other half of the
bed in early March with a spring variety of broad bean.
These beans
will be the first crop to ripen in the spring, and are very welcome. As the
first variety comes to an end, the spring-sown ones will start producing. When these are over the beans can be cut down
close to ground level ready for the brussel sprouts that are to follow.
Bed 2: Peas (Maincrop) These will
follow on from one of the French Bean beds.
I have tried growing 1st earlies and 2nd
earlies, and they are great for an early treat,
but the really big yields come from climbing maincrop varieties. To grow
these, erect another wigwam, but this time with
fewer canes, and tie some pea netting to the structure. Cover the soil inside with plastic or cardboard,
because it is hard to get at any weeds once you have the netting in place. Put your peas in an inch or 2 apart just
underneath the bottom of the netting.
Now pea seeds under the ground are vulnerable to being eaten by
mice, who love the swollen seeds. The old trick of swilling the seed in
paraffin doesn’t work at our allotments – mice learn at their grandmother’s knee
to ignore the smell. Once the runners have survived the mice, then when the
small shoots are emerging, the birds like to have a nibble. The traditional
remedy is to tie cotton on pegs between the seeds, or to lay bracken over the
emerging seeds.
To avoid both of these problems I like to start my peas off indoors.
I soak the seeds then grow on in a bean sprouter, and when they start growing a
tail, I plant them out in potting compost. A piece of old guttering is meant to
be good. Then when they have grown a couple of inches, and are no longer of
interest to mice or birds, they can be planted out.
There are several varieties of climbing peas nowadays, but Alderman is
a reliable old favourite.
By July the peas will be harvested and the soil can be cleaned up
for the cabbages to follow.
Bed 3 Peas (early, mangetout and marrowfat)
Early Peas These can be grown either
up wigwams or up hazel sticks, choose your preference and varieties
accordingly.
First early peas, like Feltham First and Meteor, are round-seeded
and largely self-supporting.. They can be sown in late February/early march and
will mature quickly, but don’t have the flavour of the later wrinkled-seeded
varieties.
Second earlies like Kelvedon Wonder and Hurst Green Shaft need to
wait a couple of weeks, and need supporting with netting or hazel sticks. ((I
have found the more robust raspberry canes cut down in the winter work as well,
providing they are not a prickly variety.) But they do taste better.
Mangetout these can be sown the same
time as the maincrop peas. There are
dwarf varieties for growing up wigwam, or dwarf varieties for growing up
sticks. They need harvesting regularly.
Marrowfat. These are the peas for drying and serving as mushy peas.
Bed 4 Early Brassicas.
Here we are bending the rules of crop rotation a bit by having 2
brassica crops one after the other. This is only to be tried if you don’t have
problems with pests or disease specific to brassices, eg cabbage root fly or
club root.
In this category are summer cabbage, cauliflower, and calabrese
I like to start these off early in the warmth, and when the
overwintering salads have been eaten or planted out to the salad bed, and the
seedlings are large enough I plant them out. I
harden them off at first by draping a fleece over for a few days.
In my household, we only eat one or 2 of these early brassicas fresh, as there is an
abundance of tasty and interesting veg around at that time. However they do
freeze well, and are welcome in the winter.
Break 5 Overwintering
Brassicas.
These plants will have been started off in March either indoors or
in a seedbed. And then, when a few inches tall, transplanted into a nursery bed
about 6” apart. Here they will have been growing happily through the spring and
early summer, under their netting. But by early august they will be lacking
elbow room and need to be planted out. Fortunately brassicas seem to enjoy
being transplanted (except maybe cauliflowers, or at least I have more problems
with them than the others). Each transplant allows them to be put in deeper, up
to the first set of leaves. The soil can
be firmed down round the transplant, as is recommended in the old books,
because when you need to lift the old stalks at the end of the season you will
find it impossible without a fork, and so the trod soil is loosened again.
Brassicas will need netting against birds.
I like to mulch around the transplants with manure or compost after some
rain, rather than mulching before transplanting, but I doubt it makes much difference.
Bed 1 Brussel Sprouts I like to get these in first, following on
from the broad beans, as they need to get a move on in order to be ready for
Xmas. By March these will have been
eaten or frozen and the bed prepared for the roots to follow.
Bed 2 Cabbage and
Cauliflower
I favour cabbage over cauliflower because I find them easier to grow, but maybe
that is because I have very sandy soil. These can follow the maincrop peas
Bed 3 Kale I like to grow several
varieties of kale – the traditional curly leaved green varieties, Russian Red,
which looks great and is lovely in winter salads, and the Cavolo di Nero,
the dark green Tuscan kale. Kale is one of the most problem-free
brassicas, which is why I choose it as my rule-bending crop to follow the early
brassica crops.
Bed 4 Sprouting Broccoli This is invaluable in late spring when there is
little else around. I try to extend the season by growing an early white variety
as well as a later green variety.
Break 6: Mixed and Roots
This is where I grow everything else that doesn’t fit easily
anywhere else.
Bed 1 Roots In this bed I grow my carrots, parsnips and
beetroot.
I don’t usually mulch this bed, because carrots and parsnips are
usually sown in situ, and so you need to be able to create the legendary “fine
tilth” to sow the seeds into. If you do mulch this bed, make sure it is with
some weed-free compost of a fine, maybe powdery, texture.
However I intend to try starting the carrots and parsnips off
indoors in the cardboard tubes that are at the centre of toilet rolls. This
mainly because of the problems I have had with germination, and with slugs.
These tubes function as bio-degradable pots and can be put straight into the
ground when the seedlings are large enough. Particular care will need to be
taken with watering however as the cardboard will hinder water from reaching
the seedlings from the soil until it starts to disintegrate.
Beetroot have much larger seeds and can be sown directly into
compost. However I like to start some off in modules early March under cover
and plant them out late April when the weather is warmer.
Carrots need protecting from carrotfly. One way is to keep them
permanently covered with a mesh. However I have had success by keeping a
watering can by my side when I harvest. As soon as I lift carrots I water both
the harvest and the soil around where they have come from, to keep the scent
down.
Bed 2: Salads and guests
Once the cabbages and cauliflowers have been used, the bed can be
manured for salads.
Saladings The overwintering lettuce
sown in August will start showing in March and can be transplanted to this bed.
Also any spring-sown lettuces to follow. I quite like to grow a variety of non-hearting
loose-leaf lettuce, because they are so slow to bolt. I find that if I have 10
plants, say, and take a lower leaf or 2 from each plant every couple of days,
it takes the plant much longer to build up the reserves it needs to throw up a
seed stalk and bolt. Thus a higher yield from each plant. Whereas hearting lettuce seem sometimes to be
bolting almost before you have noticed thay are ready to eat.
Chicories I grow hearting chicory in
this bed –sown in the 1st week of June, either direct or
transplanted – rude roots don’t matter if you are only eating the leaves. Sugar
Loaf is a variety I use successfully.
I also sometimes grow forcing chicory, which needs to be sown a bit
earlier, in May, and grows steadily until harvest in the autumn. It can then be
stored horizontally in sand until winter when I force several at a time in my
largest pot, covered with binbags to keep out the light, in the cupboard under
the stairs. The little chicons are great in salads or braised, far less bitter
than those from the greengrocers that have been exposed to light.
Celery This bed is where
to grow celery if you want to – self-blanching in a block..
Cucumbers I grow outdoor cucumbers
here, both the warty snozcumbers and the more attractive burpless tasty
green. They do need watering regularly
but I find easier than trying to share a greenhouse with tomatoes.
Courgettes These can either be grown
here or at one end of the squashes bed.
Bed 3 Sweetcorn Once the last of the kale is finished and
the stalks lifted, some manure can be spread ready for the sweetcorn. These will
have been started off under cover and planted out in the last week of May about
18”-24” apart in all directions
Bed 4 Squashes Once the last of the broccoli is finished and the stalks lifted,
some manure can be spread ready for the squashes. I generally start these off indoors and plant
these our 8 to a bed, in 2 rows of 4. However on those occasions when my
seedlings fail for some reason, I have found the by just putting seeds directly
in the ground there is still time to get a good crop.
I have found that butternuts, which is the squash everyone wants,
take a long time to mature and are often a disappointing size by harvest time.
However a couple of round varieties with a superb flabour are “Sunshine” and
“Ishuki kuri” which bulk up more quickly.
The rest of this article is
still being written, sorry
To come:
-
variations on my personal
rotation
I have been experimenting with growing first earlies in
bags in the greenhouse until the space is needed for summer crops, after which
I put them in a sheltered spot just behind the greenhouse. This frees up a bed
which I use for sweetcorn (another fairly acid-loving crop)
-
greenhouse
-
soft fruit
-
propagation
-
storage of surpluses
-
avoiding pests and diseases.
-
Anything else I think of
