If there are any abandoned or overgrown plots in your allotments, have a look around them to see what you find. Apart from the ubiquitous stingy nettles and blackberry you might find something more interesting. A quick scout around ours turned up some horseradish and sweet cicely, both of which are edible. It’s important to identify the plant correctly as some poisonous plants look very like edible varieties. There are a number of books to help with identification but I recently bought the very useful Food for Free by Richard Mabey. As well as helping to identify the plants, it also gives a bit of history and, in some cases, help on how to prepare them.
It makes sense to ensure that the plot really is abandoned so that you don’t get accused of invading someone else’s patch.
Written by stephen007 on May 19th, 2006 with no comments.
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The only thing that we’ve managed to harvest from our allotment is radishes.
All first time allomenteers grow radishes. Why? Because they grow quickly, require little attention and look quite cool.
Quite cool that is until you try and eat them. It’s then you realise (as I did) that you don’t like radishes, cannot give radishes away and know of no recipes that use radishes as an ingredient other than as a garnish.
I went to the BBC website and tired to find a radish recipe. (see results here) All I got was a number of salads that have radish in them.
So why does radish exist? Answers on a postcard.
(nice picture of an american radish…)
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originally posted on http://www.unitedbyyucca.com by exmonkey
Written by exmonkey on May 18th, 2006 with 1 comment.
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I have to admit, I haven’t seen a single red ant since I was 13 years old - that is, since I got the allotment.
I thought they’d died out, but they haven’t - they are alive and thriving in South East London.
Their activities seem to be centred around my broad bean plants at present. They are making sure that the tips of the plants are covered in aphid (i think the plural of aphid is aphid…).
I have been reliably informed that instant coffee will deter the ants from returning to the plants. It would certainly stop me from coming back - I’ll post any results after the weekend.
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originally posted on http://www.unitedbyyucca.com by exmonkey
Written by exmonkey on May 17th, 2006 with 2 comments.
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Well, thanks to some extreme digging from Stephen and some early morning allotment visits by me, we now have the main crop potatoes in the ground.
It has taken longer than anticipated to clear the section of the plot we ear-marked for spuds due to the huge amount of ‘horse tail‘.
Before Christmas, some old geezer came up to me and started giving me unasked for advice. One of the things he said (and he said a lot) was - “Do you know what horse tail looks like?”
I should have taken this as a warning that he knew something about our plot that I didn’t. He pulled out a small shrivelled root and said, “This is horse tail - but don’t worry about it. It doesn’t take any of the soil nutrients.” So I didn’t worry.
At that time I foolishly thought that horsetail (or mares tail as it is also called) would be a bit like some kind of grass or something. There wasn’t anything to see in December anyway.
How wrong I was. I have since discovered that horsetail is a prehistoric plant that can grow from the tiniest section of root and is almost impossible to erradicate (especially if you don’t want to use chemicals). The roots, which are now like spaghetti (and the soil is like a thin smearing of bolognese sauce) go down 2 metres and cannot be fully removed.
So we have spent an extra 2 weeks painstakingly removing a huge mess of deep rooted weeds from a relatively small section of plot - plus watching horse tail coming up all over the rest of the plot.
I have it on (relatively) good authority, that if you continually cut the tops off horse tail it will eventually die. After two years. Clearing the ground nicely for the bind weed.
Anyway…. Here’s a list of what’s growing so far:
Garlic, onions, challottes, broad beans, runner beans, sweetcorn, mixed leaf salad, early (new) potatoes, main crop potatoes, spinach, carrots, purple sprouting broccolii, tomatos (two varieties), basil, coriander, chillis, sweet peppers, thyme, parsley, courgettes, squash, radish and jerusalem artichoke. Oh yes, and horse tail.
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originally posted on http://www.unitedbyyucca.com by exmonkey
Written by exmonkey on May 16th, 2006 with no comments.
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Welcome to 5rods - a blog that will take contributions from allotmenteers young and old.
Written by exmonkey on May 15th, 2006 with no comments.
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