Tips and hints on how to get the best from your plot

After all that cold weather it seems like Spring is now arriving fast! Down on the plot our hut was busy with the first day of trading last week. It was time to stock up on potatoes, onion sets and shallots. We picked 3 sorts from a selection of first earlies, second earlies and main crop. They’re now chitting up in egg boxes in our garden shed. Put the buds face up and in a few weeks they should be starting to sprout. It gives them a head start when you plant them around the end of the month.

The onion sets can go in over the next few weeks. When our winter onions are ready in early June we’ll be able to have Summer ones to follow on. Elsewhere on the plot the garlic is looking good and the spinach is reviving with the mild weather. The rhubarb has benefited from the upturned pots put there a few weeks ago to force some early pickings.

But the bad news with the better weather is that the weeds are creeping into the beds – there’s no alternative but to get down and root out all those bits of couch grass before they get too firmly entrenched.

And there’s a new delivery of fresh manure so its time to top up the compost heap. Don’t put fresh manure on the beds. Let it rot down on the heap and you’ll see the benefit later in the season when you’ll be turning the heap and using the finished product to enrich the beds ready for new plantings.

As well as manure good organic fertilisers are liquid seaweed feed and seaweed meal, both of which you can buy from garden shops and suppliers. Check out Chase Organics, for example. Chicken pellets are also good and should be readily available.

By now you should have finished pruning the soft fruit, but if not don’t forget to cut the Autumn-fruiting raspberry canes down to just above ground level. With the Summer fruiting ones, cut out all of last year’s old stems but leave the new growth.

It’s time soon to think about starting sowings of tomatoes, etc at home but more of that next time.

David Bays

Are you green fingered? Have you any gardening advice/hints? Please send to the editor and we can include in a regular Gardening section on Ealing Today.

16th March 2011