"There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments"

Janet Kilburn Phillips

The new growing season starts here.

Hi Everyone.

Have you made a gardening New Years resolution? I have, the same one I made for the last four years and that is, I must label my plants better so I don't get them mixed up or completely forget what I've planted. Let's see how that goes ha!

I hope you all had a restful time since I last wrote and you are all ready to get growing again.

So what have we got in store for you this month?

What to sow and grow in January.

Composting - Natures way of recycling.

Do you really need grow lights and heat mats?

End of year fruit and veg total.

A little reminder.

And lastly, Lottie news.

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What to sow and grow in January.

Because of the cold, wet and low light levels at this time of year there's not much you can sow direct outside at the moment. If your soil is not frozen or waterlogged you could still sow some Broad Beans, but personally I would sow them in root trainers or toilet roll tubes and have them germinate either on a sunny windowsill, or in a cold frame, greenhouse or poly tunnel. And if you haven't got any Garlic in the ground yet it might be worth popping some in and hoping for the best.

Onion seeds and some Leeks can be sown in pots or module trays now and again left on your south facing windowsill along with some herbs like Chives and Parsley. Once germinated they will need to go in a cold frame or greenhouse.

Lettuces are good to start as well, varieties like Lollo Rossa and Winter Density. Mixed salad leaves are great for the windowsill as are Peas for shoots.

A couple of things that can be started now as thet needs a long growing season and a bit of heat to germinate is Aubergines, Chillies and Peppers. I'm trying out a new F1 Aubergine variety this year called Genie as it's supposed to be an early cropper.

Composting

The whys and the do's and don'ts

There are many ways to compost, from several, metre square compost bins to Bokashi bins on a kitchen surface, from hot fast composting to slow and cold. However, all these different ways have one thing in common and that is composting turns organic waste into a nutrient rich organic material that our fruit and veg can utilise to grow strong and healthy. It also has many other ecological benefits to both us and the environment.

Compost is basically a pile of organic waste, that would otherwise go to landfill or incinerators and over time breaks down or “decomposes” into a nutrient rich soil. Something us gardeners can't get enough of, I'm sure you'll agree.

The compost pile is usually made of a mixture of “green” organic materials like food scraps, garden trimmings or fresh manure and “brown” organic materials like dead or dry leaves, cardboard, wood chips and shredded paper. The “green” materials contain a chemical called nitrogen and the “brown” materials contain a chemical called carbon. These chemicals, plus air and water, make the perfect living conditions for tiny organisms, like bacteria and moulds, as well as creatures like worms and insects. They feed on the organic matter and help to break it down.

The composting process is part of the cycle of life. It happens naturally on the forest floor when dead leaves fall and decompose, protecting and nourishing the soil underneath.

Composting tips

Here are a few tips I've learnt over time about successfully making compost for my allotment. These tips are for small scale, square compost bins or round Dalek bins as they have come to be known, that you would find on allotment plots or back gardens.

The smaller you cut up your compost material and food scraps the quicker it will decompose.
Keeping your compost aerated by turning or mixing it will speed up the decomposition.
A rough 50/50 ratio of browns and greens should be measured by volume not weight.
If your compost becomes smelly, add more brown material ie: Shredded paper, torn up card board or dry leaves and give it all a good stir with a fork or compost aerator/cork screw*
Save up and store your brown materials in the winter and Spring for when you get lots of greens in the summer and autumn.
Find out if your tea bags are made of plastic as a lot of them are.

* Yours truly with my corkscrew compost aerator. A very handy tool that can be bought online.

What not to put in your compost bin.

Shiny paper or glossy cardboard.
Dog or cat poo or cat litter.
Cooking oils.
Grass cuttings that have been sprayed with herbicide.
Animal products - meat, dairy, fish and eggs.
Weeds with seeds or perennial weed roots like couch grass or bindweed.

Are grow lights and propagators necessary?

At this time of year you may be feeling the itch to get a head start with your seed sowing. Things like Aubergines, Peppers and Chillies that need a long growing season are usually the first on the list to be sown. However, the one thing that us food gardeners don't have at this time, which our seedlings need, is...READ MORE

It all adds up.

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Apart from having the days getting longer and the start of a brand New Year, there's one thing that I really love to do at this time and that is, tally up the weight of all my fruit and veg that I've grown in the previous year. Yes, I weigh everything! I weigh what I've grown to see if I've grown more than the year before. Why? Because I want to see if I'm utilising my plot in the best way I can so as to grow enough fruit and veg to keep me and the Geezer hubby going right through the year. This does of course mean we have to eat seasonally and preserve a lot of what we grow, which I find fun and challenging at the same time.

Unfortunately, with the way the world is going I feel that it is vitally important that as many people learn to grow their own fruit and veg as much as possible. With climate change, biodiversity collapse and many other things affecting our food security we should be doing everything we can to become more informed about how food is grown and where it comes from.

Anyway, the results of 2023's fruit and veg tally was way beyond my expectations. This is my fourth year of doing this and the past three years I've gotten roughly the same results, but this year was way above. The total of both fruit and vegetables grown on my allotment and the two small beds in my back garden was...293.58 Kilos which is 647.25lbs 🤪

A little reminder...it's pruning time!

If you are lucky enough to have an Apple or Pear tree in your garden or on an allotment, now is the perfect time to prune them. It's best to prune them when the trees are dormant, but if you don't fancy doing it right now, the latest it's advised to leave it is early March.

For Cherry and Plum trees the best time is mid-summer, July-Aug time.

For Apricot and Peach it's early spring, March-April.

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Lottie News!

The seeds I ordered recently started popping through the letterbox with two Bean varieties I'd not grown before. Yin Yang Bush Beans and Greek Gigantes soup Runner Beans, both from the Real Seeds company and both grown specifically for drying. The Real Seeds Co. website is well worth a look as they have so much info and lots of unusual veg seeds.

My Oca was finally harvested and unfortunately I was rather disappointed. So what is Oca? I hear you ask. Oca is a South American plant related to Wood Sorrel, long cultivated in Peru for it's edible tubers. I didn't expect to get much of a harvest from the six rather small tubers I planted back in April, but the ones I did get had been nibbled by something so I was only able to save a small handful for next year so as to repeat the experiment. I did a bit of research on them and there are a few things I could do differently next time so watch this space!

A couple of weeks ago I made the decision to dig up my Desert Gooseberry bush and donated it to a Lottie neighbour as I wanted to use the space it was taking up to put in a couple more pots with Blueberries in. I'm not a big fan of Gooseberries, but Blueberries I love and managed to get almost two kilos of them this year...hopefully even more next season.

The Spinach that should have gone in the ground back in September had it's third sowing because of a combination of slug and fox damage and finally got planted in my poly tunnel. I very much expect it will bolt (go to seed) as soon as the weather warms up, but I'm hoping I'll get at least one reasonable sized harvest of leaves before it happens, fingers crossed.

I was really happy today to finally see my Elephant Garlic show through the compost in the big tubs where I've got it growing. This however means I've got to get my act together and buy some extra fine mesh to go over them to ward off the Allium leaf miner flies. More about those next month.

And last, but by no means least, a couple of months ago I entered the Kitchen Garden magazine 'Plotter of the Month' competition. I had to answer several questions and send in 10 pictures of my allotment. Twelve people are picked to feature in one of each months two page article...and I've been picked, I've won! 🤩 They haven't decided yet which winner will be in what edition, but as soon as I know I will let you know. I'm so excited, I never win anything haha!

If you have a food gardening question you'd like to ask just pop me an email and I'll see how I can help. I don't proclaim to be an expert, but I will do my best to answer any of your questions.

In the meantime, if you know of anyone who might like to become a FG4A member do feel free to forward them this email and get them to visit the website and sign up, it's free!

Or you can always catch up with what I've been up to on Facebook or instagram.

Keep safe.

Christine x

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