Organic Allotment

Dicentra spectabilis - Bleeding Heart

At this time of year Bleeding Heart (or Dicentra spectabilis) is one of my absolute favourite plants. Originating in China, it is a beautiful perennial plant with gorgeous foliage that is interspersed with graceful, arching fronds of delicate, heart shaped flowers. As well as being beautiful it is also very hardy and easy to grow. It prefers a site that is in full sun or partial shade and is tolerant of just about any soil that a garden or allotment may have to offer.

Clumps of Dicentra will happily return year after year without too much bother, but if you want to increase your stock they can easily be multiplied by taking root cuttings in spring. And this is exactly what I'm planning to do with the plant in the picture sometime soon so that I can have a bit more of this pretty and troublefree plant in my garden in future years.

Wild About Salad

A couple of weeks ago I was over in Lancaster for my Permaculture course. As part of the lunch that we share a fellow student bought in an amazing foraged salad made up entirely of leaves and flowers that she had found growing wild on the estate where she lives. The salad was delicious and inspired me to think about being a little more creative when I'm making salads at home. The one in the picture above is the first example of this newfound creativity.

I'm not quite as confident as Robin who created the salad I ate in Lancsater but taking inspiration from hers I decided to add common lettuce we are growing with more unusual leaves. On that basis this tasty little bowl contained mixed Italian Lettuce leaves, Radicchio, Sorrel, Nasturtium leaves and flowers and Calendula petals. Needless to say, the salad was absolutely delicious and went down a storm in my house! In fact, I'm already planning what I'd like to add to my next one. I particularly love the taste and look that flowers and petals add so any suggestions on other edible flowers would be much appreciated.

A Splash of Colour

Although vegetable plots and allotments are essentially functional spaces I am a great believer that they should also look beautiful. Of course, beautiful can, in turn, also be functional but I'll come to that later...In my search for the perfect horticultural aesthetic I've developed a few different strategies over the years to try and make my plot as gorgeous to look at as the produce is to eat!

The first thing I do is try to plant in a way that is as relaxed and informal as possible. In practice this means mixing different crops together in a patchwork of colour and texture and avoiding planting large blocks of one crop on its own. For example, I love planting things of different heights together to give a real interest in levels, meaning you'll frequently see lettuces growing at the bottom on bean poles on our plot. On a practical level this way of planting also helps protect crops against pests and diseases as plants that are not planted in large, mono-cultivar beds seem to be much less prone to attack. If you want to know more about tried and tested planting combinations that will help keep your plants happy and healthy I suggest you take a look at Bob Flowerdew's Complete Book of Companion Gardening which is an absolute mine of information on this subject.

My pursuit of all things beautiful also means that you're always going to find lots of flowers growing all over the plot. Some of these are purely for show like the tulips that are in full bloom at the moment, a number of which may also end up as cut flowers in the house. Others are also great companion plants that play an essential role in attracting beneficial insects to the plot and having a key part in protecting our crops from attack - again Bob gives bags of advice on what to plant where and when.

Some of these companion flowers are perennial plants that come back year after year, but the vast majority are annuals that need to be planted each season. If you haven't planted any already, now's a perfect time to do it. And here's a selection of some of my personal favourites.

Cosmos is an absolute beauty that will flower for weeks on end, with large flowers that bees love.They vary in colour from pure white to bright pink and their loose, relaxed flowers look wonderful as a cut flower.

French Marigolds are one of the easiest flowers to grow. Their leaves have a delicious, distinctive smell. They are known to repel soil nematodes and whitefly from tomatoes.

Nigella Love in a Mist has both flowers and seed heads that make excellent cut flowers. Sowing them near or in carrot seeds is believed to keep the crop free of carrot fly.

Pot Marigolds are the queens of companion planting. They attract bees, butterflies and hoverflies. If you let them go to seed each year they are also happy to spread themselves all over, popping up as the weather warms up in Spring.

So, there's a couple of my favourites. Any I've missed out that are absolute essentials on your plot?

 

A Sense of Expectation

Lots of flowers are beautiful but, on many occasions, the bud that comes before them is worth a look as well. Take this Papaver Orientale for example. I know that the bloom is going to be an absolute wonder but the bud is something quite special as well. With its fuzzy, soft exterior it's hard to imagine that such a big flower could be contained within, but it's only a matter of days before one will unfurl quietly without a crease or a sign of damage. The way that they are held aloft on the plant's stem is a feat of nature as well.

The buds appear without fuss, one by one, and are quite a sight in the garden in their own right as they wait for the perfect moment to flower. Another good reason why I love the allotment so much at this time of year.

Hats Off For Tulips

I love tulips. Every spring I wait in eager anticipation until they start coming up; a real sign that winter is over and the time for growing really is just around the corner.

I have a few growing on the allotment but most of my tulips are stuffed tightly into pots in the back garden, right outside the kitchen window. When you're planting them this way you really need to squeeze them in much tighter than you would for planting in the garden so that you get the best possible display of blooms all tightly packed, side by side. Just perfect!

I'm not going to say too much on this subject though because I think this beautiful pink tulip says it all better than I ever could.

Starting From Scratch

There are many hard core veg growers out there who don't leave space for any flowers on their plot. It's  a kind of old fashioned and macho way of thinking to say that a plot has to be purely productive and that any space taken up by pretty things is a waste. Some of these horticultural despots may find space for a couple of rows of dahlias but apart from that it's function, function, function all the way. I mean, these lot are so strict that they only grow veg in straight lines - can you imagine?

I love growing veg and agree that a plot should have some degree of function so that you can make it as productive as possible but I love growing flowers and think that anyone who doesn't find space for them is really missing out. Aside from many flowers playing an essential part as companion plants keeping pests at bay as they try to attack your other crops there's nothing better than a veg plot that looks as delicious as the veg it produces tastes!

Take these cosmos for example. They're easy as anything to grow from seed and will keep on looking great all summer long if you're sure to keep dead heading them. They'll even produce enough flowers for you to liberate at least a few to take home and make your house look beautiful. You may not be able to eat them but I'd say lovely flowers like this should be an essential part of any veg plot. It's the first time I've grown cosmos from seed this year but I'll certainly be planting plenty more next time.

It Isn't All Good News You Know...

Sometimes looking at this blog and others that cover similar ground you could be fooled into believing that nothing ever goes wrong on allotments and gardens all over the country. I'd like to be able to say this was true but have to confess that I as much as the next blogger could be accused of missing out the gory bits, and only sharing my successes with the outside world. Okay, so I have shared with you snippets of information on the pests and diseases that I have encountered but, on the whole, the news has tended to be mainly good...

Well now, it's time to get a bit nasty and I want to share with you the brutal truth of this evening's visit to the plot. Firstly the resident rabbit has been munching his or her way through my parsnips seedlings that, until this point were doing pretty well. I wouldn't be so offended if he actually ate the leaves but the fact that he chews them up then spits them out really infuriates me. Then my squash plants that I promised myself would pick up when the weather got better still look dull and depressed, and the celery that I was so proud of a matter of weeks ago looks like it's giving up the ghost. Finally, and most annoyingly, I spotted the first signs of blight on my precious tomatoes in the greenhouse. I have pulled out the offending plants and hope that I've got in there early enough but I'm not holding up much hope because blight tends to be so persistent once it rears its ugly head.

I'm sure that all you growers out there can relate to the feeling of the visit to your plot when it feels like it's just one bad thing after the other. Fortunately my flower bed is thriving in the heat so I was able to pick this glorious little posy of flowers to console myself in the face of so much bad news. Lovely aren't they?

Ipomoea - My New Favourite Plant

Ipomoea has to be one of my favourite annual flowers. These seedlings are only three weeks old but they're already absolutely beautiful- a hint of what's to come as they grow over the coming months.

Ipoemoea, or Morning Glory as it is also known, is a half hardy annual whose wiry stems twine around upright supports. It has heart shaped leaves and large trumpet-like flowers that look great growing over trellises and fences in the summer with foliage that is light enough to make it perfect  to weave its way through other shrubs and trees. The trumpet shaped flowers     only last for a single morning but, once they start flowering in mid summer, they produce new blooms day after day.

The certainly aren't the easiest plant to grow but, if you can find room for them in a sunny, well-drained and sheltered spot in your garden they're well worth the effort. I'm growing 'Heavenly Blue' this year which produces lovely light blue flowers and can't wait to see the first flowers that should be here in July.

Keep On Flowering

Dahlias get a bad press. They're seen as being out of fashion and the stalwart of the old school allotment holder and I have to confess that I only grew dahlias in my first year because they had been left in the ground by the previous plot holder, but now I grow them every year and I love them.

They come in a huge variety of different colours and shapes and are a perfect flower to cut and bring into the house, and the more you cut them the more they come back. They're easy to grow as well and will flower well into autumn until the first frosts start hitting. Once that happens and the leaves go black they need to be cut back and the tubers dug up and stored in a frost free shed in dry sand. If you live in a milder part of the country you may get away with leaving them in the ground if you give them a good covering of straw and compost - I wouldn't get away with this because my plot gets too wet in the winter and the tubers would be too likely to rot.

When spring comes and the tubers start sprouting it's just a matter of digging a big hole and putting them back where you want them. Simple! What's not to like about that?

Autumn Flowers

It's been a real wash out of a summer on the pt. The long, sunny evenings that normally make it so great to be there at this time of year have been virtually non-existent and the damp has meant that the weeds and slugs have had a field day.

Despite this it isn't all bad news because the cutting flowers have been glorious for the last couple of weeks. This is a bunch that I picked for my Aunt and Uncle last weekend. A mixture of rudbeckia and dahlias that are a common sight in bouquets. I also like to be a bit freestyle about what I pick so there are some things in there as well that are much less common - bronze fennel, garlic chives and artichoke leaves, amongst others. Basically, if I like the shape and colour and I've got enough to spare I'm happy to pick them and bring them into the house.