Out & About Autumn 2021

Out&About leisure

Broccoli is flourishing

Tomatoes are ripening

stop them. I often get asked about

around the edges. This assists drainage in downpours, reduces the risk of grass growing onto your plot from adjacent paths and makes it easier to keep path edges tidy. If you have tomatoes and such in a greenhouse, remove the old plants as soon as they have finished fruiting, clean out thoroughly and disinfect/fumigate ready for next season. The old plants can be composted – as can all vegetable remains – provided there is no disease apparent. If so the diseased plants, or prunings, should be burnt in a garden incinerator. All the local garden centres have the type of disinfectant or fumigators you need, together with a very large selection of organic pesticides and fertilizers. I tend to use Yew Tree Garden Centre at Ball Hill because I like their attention to detail when preparing new plants for sale and the advice they are always prepared to share if asked a question. This season hasn’t turned out too bad, although both I and

parsnips and how difficult they are to grow. I must say it is something I seldom have a problem with – famous last words! Form a drill (channel) around 2cm deep, put the seed in quite thickly, cover over and lightly go up the row with the end of the hoe or rake and firm the soil down. Parsnips take up to six weeks to germinate, so they are much slower than most other vegetable seed - for that reason I try and get them in as early as possible. However, it’s all down to ground temperature, so if the days/ nights are cold don’t plant them as they will likely rot. The target is mid/late March, but they will still give you good parsnips if planted in April. When they are around 5cm high, thin out and clear weeds. This is important - they need to be around 7cm apart. As you thin them out, firm the remaining plants into the ground by applying pressure either side by hand.

Runner beans

a number of other allotment holders at One Tree Park have experienced problems with growing carrots - no idea why, but that’s gardening! Another problem encountered this year is wood pigeons eating runner beans plants. Last year I planted some beans straight into the ground which the pigeons decimated, but they didn’t touch the plants from the

greenhouse. This year, within five days of planting out of the greenhouse they attacked both the runner bean and French climbing bean plants, so it looks as if, in the future, runner bean and dwarf bean plants will need some sort of netting. In the end I cut some strips of net 40cm high and put them round the bottom of the sticks as the pigeons were walking onto the beans - it did

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O&A AUTUMN 2021