Roehampton Garden Society

Tag Archives: Kale


by

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.


by

July jobs on your allotment

Maintaining soil structures and planning ahead

  • Hoe off weeds on bare soil, water well then cover with mulches to prevent moisture-loss. For instance, pile grass clippings onto layers of newspaper.
  • Do not leave soil bare for any length of time. Green manures, Crimson Clover, White clover, Phacelia, Summer Quick Fix can all be sown now.
  • Add material to compost heaps, mix greens (nitrogen rich) with browns (carbon rich) at 50/50 ratio. Water heaps if dry and turn to speed up decomposition.

Sowing and Growing

  • In early July continue to sow beetroot, chard, perennial spinach, kohl rabi and turnips for autumn harvesting.
  • Sow dwarf French beans.
  • Sow kale for early spring harvesting and rocket for autumn harvesting.
  • Sow basil under cover until the middle of the month.
  • Sow beetroots Choggia or Burpees Golden for autumn eating.
  • Plant specially prepared potato tubers for Christmas crop.
  • Finish planting out leeks.
  • Remove the main shoot on cordon tomatoes where they hit the greenhouse roof, or a leaf or two above the seventh flower truss and continue feeding once a week.
  • Water soft fruit and fruit trees during dry spells to encourage good fruit development.
  • Water courgettes consistently so they continue to flower and crop.
  • Mulch brassicas after rain with composted stable manure to lock in moisture and nutrients and lessen the effect of club root.
  • At end of month chop back perennial herbs such as chives, sorrel, marjoram to encourage fresher leaves within a few weeks. If left to flower they may lose flavour.
  • Pinch out climbing beans once they reach the top of supports.
  • Prune cherries and plums after fruiting. Remove weak, damaged and crossing branches.
  • Thin overcrowded apples, pears and plums to get larger and better quality fruit.

Harvesting

  • Pick black, red and white currants and summer-fruiting raspberries.
  • Courgettes, spinach, cucumbers, beetroot , French beans, salad crops and greenhouse tomatoes can be harvested.
  • Continue digging second early potatoes.
  • Once harvesting of summer fruited raspberries is finished, cut old fruited canes to ground level and tie in new, healthy canes to supports.
  • After harvesting, summer-prune red and white currants and gooseberries. Trim back all gooseberry side shoots to 3 or 4 buds from their point of growth and cut out shoots that cross into the middle of the bush.

Gardening for Wildlife

  • Thin out vigorous oxygenating plants in ponds, leaving them on the side to allow pondlife to crawl back into water. Keep around 30% of the surface free of weed.