Page 10 - ALG Issue 3 2018

General
Lettuce & Spring onion
On the Kings Plot...
March to the end of May 2018
I’m sure, like me, you found March and April challenging this
year as the weather was very cold and the soil too wet to do any sowings outdoors until around the third week of April. Although this was a late start, with a few early sowings made under
glass and waiting to sow outside once the soil had warmed up sufficiently, it has still given me a plot that I believe is equal to any other year. I achieved this by starting a few more of my vegetables off early under glass, which would normally be started directly outdoors. I sowed a cluster of beetroot and
spring onion seeds into modules. These
were kept as a cluster and planted out on the
plot once hardened off. I find these sowings
give an early crop, and when I require spring
onions for a salad I lift one or two clumps of
seedlings and that’s enough for a meal. The
beetroot is left un-thinned and again can be
pulled as required as baby beet, the only
difference being that these will often have one flat side where the roots have grown against each other in the cluster, but the flavour is the same.
I planted my onion sets into modules in the cool glasshouse and, once they had started to shoot and form enough root, I planted these out in the plot, otherwise if I had waited to plant direct it would have been very late in the season. I must say these sets grew away very well once planted, and this is something I would certainly do again. Peas Twinkle and Avola were sown in modules in March and were ready to plant out in April, and by the end of May they were
on flower and starting to form pods. Lettuces were sown every two weeks in pots in the greenhouse then pricked out into individual modules. This guarantees fresh salad throughout the summer and
into autumn. This year by the third week of May I was cutting my first Lettuce Analena, a superb butterhead lettuce. Summer brassicas and Brussels sprouts were sown in March and pricked out into modules and planted out in early April. Once hardened off, these did not look back and grew well under my net covers for bird protection.
Once the weather improved towards the end of April, activity on the plot was non-stop, sowing carrots, parsnips and radish, along with main crop peas and more beetroot to follow on from those
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Peas Twinkle and Avola were sown in modules in March and were ready to plant out in April
sown earlier in modules. All the early sown modules needed planting out, potato tubers were planted and, as they grew, earthed up, and by late May looked very healthy.
Once May arrived my exhibition Onion Globo and leeks grown from pips were planted with a protective windbreak surround. I often interplant this crop with lettuce as these can be cut before the onions and leeks get too
large and need the extra space. French beans were sown in modules along with a row direct outside; these emerged within seven days
as the soil was warm. Runner beans were sown into six pack trays, two seeds per cell and planted out on the plot at the end of May. My second sowing was just coming up in the greenhouse. These were followed by a third sowing in mid-June, to give fresh beans time to harvest up until October.
Parsnips were ready for thinning by the end of May; these are always sown into holes that have been punched in the ground with a long bar and filled with compost so I get straight parsnips. As these can take a while to germinate I always sow a few radish seeds in between as a row marker. Germination, due to later sowing of Parsnip Gladiator this year, has been superb. The Carrots Eskimo