The Mammoth Improved Onions are the first to show (after 8 days) and germination rate was 80%. Mammoth Red Onions are a little later (after 11 days) and germination rate was slightly lower, 75%. I think the fast germination and lower germination rates are caused by my seeds being on the bedroom windowsill rather than the constant, controlled 12 C recommended. Robinsons recommend potting off the seedlings into a slightly stronger JI compost at the crook stage. Since my seedlings are already in quite roomy 9 berth modules, I decide to leave them alone.

Onion seedlings

We’ve always grown for eating rather than showing.  However, this year we’re going to have a go at a few “giant” vegetables.  We’ve laid in seed for onions, leeks, pumpkins and tomatoes and Lynn sowed the first of these earlier this week.

Progress reports to follow (with photos if we’re successful).

Every Christmas morning, we each have a Christmas stocking to wake up to. Mine is ancient (it was a present for my first Christmas from my Godmother) and small. So Santa’s little helper has to be quite creative to find things that can go in it.

This Christmas, Santa’s elf did himself proud. Included in my stocking prezzies are a selection of seeds from Robinsons of Preston (http://www.mammothonion.co.uk/):

Mammoth Improved Onions and Mammoth Red Onions. Now the pressure is on to grow a whopper for the village veg show in September!

Father Christmas (in the person of Mark’s sister Laura) gave us some scarecrows last December.  They have stayed indoors during the worst of the weather, but have come out to play now that summer is here.  They are guarding our sweetcorn.

Scarecrows 7 July

The sweetcorn got trashed last year, along with virtually everyone else’s at the allotments.  Inititially we thought that it was deer that had done the damage, although the final consensus on the allotments was that it was badgers, as someone had tracked the trail of debris.  The animals had in some cases dug under fences, but in our case actually clambered over the fence, pulling it over (along with a couple of fence posts) in the process.

Trashed sweetcorn

The scarecrows, won’t stop this sort of attack, so the fences have been repaired and strengthened and we are using “Grazers” spray http://www.grazers.co.uk  to deter predators.

We had some ‘Durham Early’ Cabbages growing over the winter and while a few got damaged to greater or lesser extents by slugs/snails, a couple got through unscathed including this one, which weighed in at about 4lb.

Kingly cabbage

Of course this is a long way from the world record of over 10 stone (see the link below) but we were pretty pleased with ours.

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-cabbage

We’ve been doing a bit of infrastructure work on the new allotment plot over the winter. You may remember that it was a bare canvas last summer.

Looking South 4 May 2014

There is now a sturdy fence to keep the rabbits out, a support frame for our autumn (primocane for the pursists) raspberries and we’ve constructed a new (and larger) greenhouse on this plot.

The new greenhouse 3 April

By mid-May the sweet pea cordons were up, the raspberries and potatoes were starting to show and the fruit trees were coming into leaf.  Of course the weeds were also starting to make their presence felt.

New plot 17 May 2015