Roehampton Garden Society

Tag Archives: Brassicas


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November jobs on your allotment

Maintaining soil and structures and planning ahead

  • Continue to clear all plant debris from plots. Do not add blighted tomatoes to your compost, but burn or take to the dump.
    Empty compost heaps and use the well-rotted dark crumbly material.
  • Apply a 5cm layer of well rotted compost or manure to bare plots or cover bare areas with brown cardboard weighed down with damp grass clippings.
  • Prepare a winter compost trench for next season’s moisture loving plants such as sweet peas, runner beans or squashes. Dig a trench a spade deep and fill with kitchen vegetable waste covering each additional layer with soil.

Sowing and planting

  • Continue to sow overwintering broad beans.
  • Sow hardy peas either straight into the ground under fleece or 3 to a 9”pot to be planted out when the roots reach the bottom.
  • Sow a gutter of peas in the green house or under cloches for salad or risotto at Christmas time.
  • Sow cut-and-come-again salads in a sheltered spot or green house.
  • Finish planting onion sets and garlic.Garlic needs a chilling period so plant now. With current wet winters plant on a ridge to aid drainage.
  • Sow dill, chives and parsley now on a sunny windowsill.
  • Order bare root trees now for the best selection.
  • Fix grease bands to fruit trees to protect against winter moth. To help control pests and diseases spray fruit trees with winter wash on a calm, dry day.
  • Once leaves have dropped and before bud break in February spray fruit trees with winter wash on a calm, dry day. Spraying helps to reduce overwintering pests.
  • Start winter pruning of apples and pears.
  • Keep overwintering brassicas covered with netting to prevent pigeon damage.
  • Stake tall brassicas against wind damage.
  • Sow green manures early in the month such as grazing rye.
  • Clean the greenhouse to maximise light levels and before the water is turned off in December.

Harvesting

  • Start to harvest winter cabbage, Brussels sprouts, leeks and kale. Wait until after frosts for parsnips as they will be sweeter.

Pruning

  • Begin winter pruning of apples, pears and vines.
  • Prune overgrown blackcurrant bushes- remove a third of the oldest stems to ground level.
  • Fruited canes of blackberries and hybrid berries such as tayberries and loganberries should be pruned to ground level.

Gardening for wildlife

  • Remove surplus dead leaves from ponds to prevent decomposition pollution.
  • Clean out bird boxes of old nesting material so they may be used as winter roosts.


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August jobs on your allotment

Maintaining soil structures and planning ahead

  • Green manures such as Mustard and Phacelia and Grazing Rye can be sown now.
  • Continue regular weeding to avoid build-up of work later.

Sowing and Growing

  • Sow oriental vegetables such as mizuna, pak choi and mustard greens for salad leaves- they bolt less at this time of year.
  • Sow parsley to last through till spring on a sunny windowsill.
  • Sow Swiss chard and perpetual spinach at the beginning of the month.
  • Make a last sowing of beetroot at the beginning of the month.
  • Sow fast-growing ‘catch crops’ for autumn use, such as radish, lettuce, rocket and turnips.
  • Plant out winter brassicas, broccoli, kale and cabbbages in soil which has been limed at least 6 weeks before, to reduce club root infestations.
  • Plant new strawberries now, either as detached runners or new plants.
  • In dry weather keep runner beans well-watered twice a week to aid setting.
  • To reduce risk of tomato blight, water directly onto the roots not the leaves.
  • Feed courgette plants weekly with a high potash liquid feed to continue fruiting.
  • Summer prune trained fruit trees such as fans, espaliers and cordons.
  • Prune plum and damson trees after fruiting. On grape vines shorten fruit bearing branches to two leaves beyond the fruit bunch.
  • Prune out fruited canes of summer raspberries.
  • Tie in new canes on raspberries and blackberries.
  • On grape vines shorten fruit bearing branches to two leaves beyond the fruit bunch.
  • Cut back chives if showing signs of rust and new shoots will quickly appear. Remove mint plants showing signs of rust. The disease will persist over winter and re-infect new plants next year.
  • Pick off and destroy rosemary leaf beetle which are active at this time of year.
  • In the greenhouse avoid splashing water onto leaves. Moisture triggers spore germination of fungal diseases.

Harvesting

  • Harvest sweet corn when a grain exudes milky juice when tested with a fingernail and the whiskers are brown.
  • Harvest onions and shallots when the stems are dry and papery.
  • Start harvesting runner beans, parsnips and cucumbers when ready.
  • Complete harvesting of second early potatoes and begin to harvest main crop potatoes as they begin to flower.
  • Harvest early ripening apples and pears.
  • Harvest carrots, but leave protective insect mesh on carrots until autumn.

Gardening for wildlife

  • Leave some flower seed heads on plants as source of food for wildlife.
  • Cut and shake ripe seed heads of annuals over suitable patches of bare soil for flowers next year.