This break is where I fit anything that I have not managed to squeeze in elsewhere.
Here I will grow my roots: carrots, parsnips, beetroot, forcing chicory & celeriac. Many rotation plans have an entire break for roots. However, I don’t eat anywhere near enough roots to warrant this, so I prefer to have them as part of this miscellaneous break.
Also here will be the warm weather crops, such as sweetcorn and gourds. If I were growing them outside, I would also put tomatoes, aubergines, and sweet & hot peppers here, but I find I get more reliable crops in the greenhouse.
I will try to find room for those herbs that grow best in rows, such as dill and coriander. Also I will put aside some space for a seedbed where late brassicas can be sown in spring. And finally if there is any room left I will try the odd experimental crop, such as celery, Florence fennel, salsify – things that I won’t grow every year, but might like to try out.
Bed 1: Carrots and Parsnips By March the last of the winter cabbages will have been eaten and the bed left vacant for Carrots and Parsnips.
I find these quite difficult to grow. They are both slow to germinate – parsnips even more so than carrots – and the seedlings often get lost in the forest of weeds that spring up in my beds much more willingly. In future years, following the undug-for-several-seasons brassica bed, most of the weed seeds near the surface should have already germinated, grown, and been fed to the hens. But I haven’t got to that stage yet. This last year I tramped all over my brassica beds, as recommended in the old books, and consequently need to fork them over before growing anything else, thereby bringing up a fresh batch of weed seeds.
This means of course that parsnips and carrots would be ideal candidates for starting off indoors and transplanting. However, these particular plants hate to have their roots disturbed, and if transplanted they fork. You can get some amusingly-shaped “rude roots” this way, but not roots suitable for the kitchen.
One solution is to transplant in decomposable pots, thereby avoiding root disturbance – I will use that system this year with the parsnips. Another is to allow weeds to germinate and then remove them very gently, careful to disturb the soils as little as possible. A third idea I have though of, but haven’t tried yet, is to spread a layer of weed-free soil conditioner over the surface and sow through this. Hopefully the weeds will not germinate through the layer, but the vegetables will. Leaf mould would be good for this, as would made compost from home. Rotted manure and my chicken compost may well themselves contain weed seeds and are less suitable. Bought soil conditioner or compost is also possible, but costs money.
In February I will place a cloche or coldframe over one end of the bed, to warm the soil. Then in March I will sow some early carrots underneath. There’s nothing like the taste of freshly pulled carrots in early summer, and in this way I can gain a couple of weeks on the unprotected sowings. A few weeks later I will remove the protection and, at the same time, sow some more rows of early carrots, until I have used up a third of the bed. These will be the carrots for eating fresh during the summer & early autumn.
The next third of the bed I will allocate to carrots for storage. In the past I have used Autumn King for this, and they have produced large crops of well-shaped. beautiful-tasting carrots for me. But they are particularly susceptible to carrot fly, so I may try something else this year.
The final third of the bed will be for the parsnips. I don’t need huge roots, so a small variety that can be planted closer together will be fine. Avonresister is suitable in this respect, and has the benefit that it is resistant to canker, a common disease that sees the tops of plants blackening and rotting.
This year I lost most of my crop. They just didn’t seem to germinate, or if they did were smothered by the weeds before I noticed them. So next year I intend to try the toilet roll system again. This involves using the cardboard inners from toilet rolls as pots and sowing the seeds in a propagator in March. I have tried it twice before unsuccessfully – the first time I planted them out too early, and the second I went away for a few days and some sunny days fried them. Third time lucky! I will sow 3 seeds in each “pot”, thinning out the weakest, and keeping them indoors until they are 3”-4” tall before hardening off and planting out.
Incidentally, I have noticed that they germinate in just a few days this way, rather than the several weeks taken for outdoor sowings. This makes me think that soil temperature is as much an issue as anything else. Maybe an early April sowing outdoors of a smaller variety might get away fast enough to beat the weeds?
This bed will need to be cosseted under a layer of mesh, carefully weighed down with bricks, to avoid the dreaded carrot fly.
The carrots are harvested as and when they are ready, lifting those for winter storage in October. Parsnips should stay in the ground until the first frosts, to improve the flavour. In November, when it is time for their bed to be manured again for the following year’s spuds, the parsnips can either be harvested and stored or heeled in in a spare corner of the allotment.
Bed 2: Miscellaneous By April the last of the kale will have gone to seed, and the spent plants lifted and thrown to the hens.
This bed will now be the miscellaneous bed, and the first thing we need to establish is a Seed Bed for the brassica plants which will not go into their final homes until August.
To overcome my weed seed problem, I need to prepare this bed very carefully. Firstly I will need to remove the first flush of weeds as they germinate in the spring, by gentle hoeing. Then I think I will invest in a bag or 2 or soil conditioner (or cheap potting compost) and spread it out over this part of the bed, an inch deep, say. Then when I sow the seeds, I will be marking rows in the compost, rather then the exposed soil. As with any mulch, it is important to wait until the soil is nice and wet before sowing, as the mulch will prevent water from reaching the seedlings. But I will water the rows beforehand anyway. Within a few weeks I expect the mulch to vanish as the worms drag it down into the soil. By the time the weedseeds underneath start germinating, the brassica seedlings should be showing.
In the seedbed I will sow late cabbages and cauliflower, brussel sprouts, sprouting broccoli and kale. The plants will not be here long; by the time they are a few inches tall they will be getting overcrowded and need planting out into the holding bed. (This may be the best place to grow on leeks too, until the early spuds have been lifted.)
Here too I can grow some of the less unruly members of the gourd family. The summer squashes can go here, such as Courgettes and those Patty Pan Squashes that resemble yellow flying saucers. I will have to ensure I buy bush varieties, which are more compact, so they don’t start invading the seedbed. Courgettes will turn into Marrows if left unpicked, and it is worth leaving a few to do this at the end of the season. I have to say I prefer courgettes though.
Also I will erect a wigwam at one end of the bed and plant out some outdoor cucumbers here. I will prepare the planting spots with compost in the same way as the pumpkins. Then, as they grow, I will tie them into the wigwam.
I will also try to make room for a row of two of Dill and Coriander. (We follow the Scandinavian custom of putting lots of leaf dill in with our new potatoes. That what happens when you marry a Finn. And yes I had to build a sauna at home too!) These herbs don’t fit easily into the herb garden at home and are best grown with the vegetables in rows. However, when I sow indoors and transplant, they just seem to go to seed quickly. I will try to beat the weeds and sow in situ next year and see how it goes.
Bed 3: Sweetcorn The sprouting broccoli will be eaten and gone by early June when it is time plant out Sweetcorn which will have been growing in pots under cover. They need to be planted out carefully, as the roots dislike disturbance.
This year I tried the three sisters method, traditional to certain American Indian tribes. This involves interplanting corn, beans for drying and squashes. The corn goes in first, then the beans are sown beside the corn, so that they can use it as a support. The squash is planted between, so that it can crawl around underneath, providing ground cover.
Perhaps I didn’t choose my varieties wisely or explain the situation well enough to the plants. I only put out two squashes in a 12’ bed, but they didn’t seem to understand that they were guests of the sweetcorn, and staged a take-over bid. A bit like having an elderly aunt visiting who won’t go home, or even stay in her room, and spreads herself and her things all over the house. I had to work hard to get any corn at all, hacking back the squash vines weekly. And the beans were given no chance and didn’t germinate at all. So next year it’s back to growing the sweetcorn alone, in their own bed!
There are sweetcorn varieties which have been bred to provide a good crop even in the fickle weather of UK summers, and I plan to try one of those.
Bed 4: Beetroot, Celeriac & Forcing Chicory This bed will have been vacated by the brussel sprouts by the end of the winter.
At least half of this bed will be down to Beetroot (I like beetroot!). I plan to follow Monty Don’s suggestion and sow an early crop in modules in the greenhouse in early/mid March, about 3 seed clusters to a module, planting out a few weeks later when the seedlings are big enough and the soil warm enough. Fortunately beetroot don’t fork when transplanted. The idea is to leave the seedlings unthinned in the modules and to grow them as a clump. This should provide lots of golfball-sized beetroot earlier in the season when fresh veg from the garden is at a premium. At the same time I can sow more beetroot in rows. This later sowing will be for winter use: some more globe beetroot for storing in sand, and a cylindrical variety for slicing and pickling.
As mentioned elsewhere, I lost most of this year’s crop to, I think, rats. So I must protect the plants in some way as they mature, by mesh I think, and maybe put rat bait down underneath.
A quarter of this bed will be down to Celeriac. This is a crop I have only tried once before, with no success. Celeriac needs a long growing season, so the seeds need sowing in mid-late March and potting on so that they can be planted out in mid-June. It’s not an easy crop to grow, but easier than celery.
The remaining quarter of the bed will be down to Forcing Chicory. In the past I have sown this in situ in June, but have ended up with huge gaps – my annual weed problem again. This year I might try planting in modules in late May and planting out when they are big enough. I expect the roots will fang, like carrots and parsnips, but that won’t matter as they are to be used for forcing rather than eating.
Sown at about midsummer, they grow strongly and by November the (unforked) roots resemble large parsnips. They are lifted before the winter and stored horizontally indoors in sand or compost. Then they are forced which means they are planted in large pots of compost and kept indoors in the dark (I enclose the pots in a double bin bag.) After a few weeks a number of blanched chicons will have grown which can be used in salads or braised.
I always try to find room for chicory. as it can provide fresh saladings in the depths of winter when everything else is buried under a blanket of snow. It is admittedly slightly bitter, but this can be reduced by keeping the chicons growing in the dark, and ameliorated by using a sweet dressing, such as honey & mustard.
Bed 5: Winter Squashes and Pumpkins This bed will have been the brassicalean pot pouri through the winter and spring, so it is a suitable place to put those plants which don’t need to go in until late, such as the Pumpkin family. There may be a few spring cabbage struggling on at one end, but they will be out of the way by the time the new arrivals need the space.
Last year I grew Winter Squashes and Pumpkins together with the cucumbers and the summer squashes, but they were too invasive and smothered everything if they weren’t hacked back all the time. So next year I plan to grow them in a bed of their own, with more space between than this year. I should be able to notice when they start creeping across the path to the next bed, and amputate the offending limbs accordingly.
The secret to successful squashes, I have discovered, is to prepare a planting hole beforehand and dig in compost. I use 1 spit wide and deep. The compost is then covered with the removed soil and marked with a stick.
The squash & pumpkin plants can be sown in situ, but I prefer to start them off beforehand indoors and put them out as sturdy plantlets once all risk of frost is past and the soil is nice and warm. For the first few weeks, until established, the transplants need a lot of water at the roots, so I usually use the pot they have arrived in, and dig it into the soil next to the plant. Then it is important to water into the pot regularly, until the plants start growing strongly. I generally stop watering like this once the leaves start hiding the pot.
And then we are back to the beginning again, and it is time to apply manure ready for a new season’s potatoes and a new cycle.
