Page 22 - ALG Issue 4 2024

ON THE
KINGS PLOT
From May to mid-August 2024
By Andrew Tokely, Horticultural Director for Kings Seeds
Easter. I also grew some small onions from seed.Those were sown in modules in February and planted out in early May.This year I grew red onion Magnate and brown onion Fasto. Both have made some lovely small bulbs and should store for several months.The large onions Globo (sown
at Christmas under glass and planted out in May) were a really good size by early August, with many over 1.2kg in weight. These are grown next to my leeks, under a scaffold net tunnel to try and deter the allium leaf miner.
This year I had a good crop of peas.The Douce Provence cropped well for an early crop, followed by my main crop peas Hurst Greenshaft. Once these were all harvested, the ground was forked over and filled again with purple sprouting broccoli to harvest next year, along with some late cauliflowers for harvesting this autumn.
I always grow plenty of runner beans, dwarf French beans and climbing French beans.They’re a family favourite, plus any surplus is always easy to find a home for.
What a cold, wet start to the growing season! But May was all systems go, sowing and planting as quickly as I could and despite the late start, this year’s crops look great. Beetroot, parsnips and carrots have all germinated well.
Some plot holders had difficulty
with early sowings of carrots, including
a colleague at Kings that sowed in his allotment four times before he got a good row of carrots.The carrots came up and then disappeared! He had sown some in
a box for his grandson that grew well, so
it was a puzzle. Eventually, he discovered that due to the wet spring he had a high population of slugs eating the tops off a row of carrots in a night.As I am on heavy soil, I always take out a deep drill about 10cm deep, fill this with some compost and tamp down, then I draw a shallow drill in this, water the base of the drill so the moisture is where the seed is required, and then sow the carrot seeds and lightly cover over. Once sown, the rows are immediately covered with a tent of enviromesh to
keep carrot fly away from the crop. From late June, I have been pulling some superb Carrot Romance and Eskimo. At the end of June, I made a further sowing of Carrot Eskimo which germinated just as well, and these will be ready to pull for Christmas.
Brassicas have grown well this year. I
have been harvesting Calabrese Stemia
for many weeks, plus cabbage Vivaldi and some of the best cauliflowers I have ever grown. For my local show, there is a class for heaviest Kohlrabi; I grow the variety Kossack, which were a good size by early August and hopefully will be even bigger by early September and show day.The Brussels sprouts look good, already developing tiny buttons and I hope to harvest a bumper crop.
Every year I grow plenty of onions.The sets have grown well and are a good size even though they weren’t planted until
22 | Issue 4 2024 | Allotment and Leisure Gardener
“I always grow plenty of runner beans, dwarf French beans and climbing French beans”