Finally the hot weather arrives. No rain so I make sure the plants are regularly watered in prolonged dry spells. I also apply an high potash, liquid feed.

Apart from keeping the slugs away (I use pellets) and weeding, there doesn’t seem to be much else to do. The rubbish weather in spring and early summer means that I don’t even need to water them. I give them one feed of Maxicrop in mid May, but otherwise they are left to their own devices.

And here I hit upon another snag. Because the raised beds are in the back corner of the garden, which faces SE, the majority of incident sunlight comes from the right side of the plants. I notice in late May that they have all developed a lean.

Leaning onions

I read that the top exhibition growers use rings to hold the foliage vertical, and I wished I had thought of that when planting out. Anyway, in June I make my own rings out of 3mm fencing wire and try to persuade the onions to stand more upright. My understanding is that the bulbs really begin to swell after the longest day, so I want to make sure that the feeding of the bulbs from the foliage is evenly distributed. This could be complete myth but I think it is worth a try. Consequently, some of the onions now looked a little bedraggled and abused.

In addition to the onions which are misshapen, those at the back of the beds are suffering from reduced ambient light and attack from slugs. These weaker plants will never make show quality and so I’m down to about 14 onions to choose from.

Spring has definitely arrived in the allotment.  With the longest day less than a month away and the sun high in the sky we are really getting some warmth into the ground and the plants are taking off.  As the picture below shows, the spuds are now growing quickly and we’ve pretty much finished earthing them up and we’ve decided that it is finally warm enough to get the sweetcorn out.

Original Plot 23 May 2016

The fruit cage, which looked pretty bare back in March is now packed with life and even though some of the plants are quite new, there is the promise of harvests to come.

Fruit Cage 23 May 2016

The greenhouses are planted up and the assorted tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and aubergines have all settled in and are starting to grow away.

New Greenhouse 23 May 2016

Competition for space in the cold frame is hotting up by the middle of April, so even though it is a little earlier than recommended by Robinsons, my precious onion seedlings are planted out on 19^th 

Before planting out, I lightly fork over the beds, remove all weeds, and rake in a dose of chicken manure pellets. The top 10cm or so is primarily made up of the well rotted organic matter that had been added previously. Spacing is a bit of an issue – I want to give each of my seedlings a new home but have 46 plants to fit in (26 white and 20 red).

In the end I go for a staggered row arrangement. I plant the seedlings 25cm apart in each row, and the staggered rows are 20cm apart (approx). I water them in and then wish them well.

Red onions planted out

White onions planted out.

It has been another pretty soggy autumn/winter, which has slowed down our efforts to get the new allotment plot into shape.  We have however, managed to finish the latest (and last?) major construction project – a fruit cage.  There are some soft fruits that simply have to be protected from birds if you are going to get a decent crop and some of our favourites, like strawberries and redcurrants fall into this camp.

We have gone for the largest cage that we could assemble and fit into the available space on the grounds that filling it up would be no problem.

Fruit Cage 28 Mar 2016

The cage is 9 metres long, 2 metres wide and 3 metres high.  we built it around the existing primocane raspberries and have added a strawberry bed, gooseberry and jostaberry bushes and plum, redcurrant and whitecurrant cordons.  To try to keep the maintenance easier we have used weed suppressant membrane (topped off with bark chips) to make internal paths, along with some interlocking tiles liberated from Lynn’s Dad’s garage.

Fruit cage 28 Mar 2016

By late March, every spare inch of windowsill and staging in the greenhouses at the allotment is occupied with seedlings. Consequently, the onions are amongst the first crops to go into the cold frame for hardening off. After three weeks in the cold frame, there is little difference in size between the two sowings.

Onion seedlings in greenhouse