Reasons for growing different types of veg are discussed in this week’s Jamie’s Little Allotment column…
Lockdown really didn’t bring any joy or much happiness to many. Staying at home, not mixing with friends, and of course the awful coronavirus which affected so many people in so many different ways.
Unlike the large majority, I had one particular thing happen in lockdown, which still brings me so much joy and happiness now the segregation of lockdown is a distant memory.
I’m talking about my allotment of course. While I was at home not working like the billions of others all around the world I decided to build my allotment and greenhouse, and I really haven’t looked back since.
But why do people have allotments?
Well for me there’s several reasons but the main ones are, that my little allotment is my place to go and relax, unwind, and let my head just drift away from the real world, just for a while. Another main reason is to obviously grow food, and I’m guessing this is also the main reason for having an allotment for the masses as well.
But what food should you grow?
It stands to reason that you should grow what you love to eat, but that’s not always the case, lots of people grow because it looks nice, or “I didn’t know what to put there”.
I try to look at it in three different sections. I will grow particular vegetables if I like to eat them, I can’t buy them or they are too expensive to buy.
Obviously, there are crossovers in those three categories but I usually stick with them and it generally works.
If you have lots of land and lots of time, it’s fine. You can grow everything, but if you’re tight on space, I think it’s silly growing lots of, let’s say potatoes, when you could be growing something like garlic.
Potatoes are relatively inexpensive and take up so much space, garlic is quite expensive and takes up a small amount of space.
Hopefully, you can understand what I’m trying to get across to you.
I compared potatoes and garlic for a reason, and that reason is that it’s an exciting time for me in the allotment because I’ve just harvested my garlic crop for this year.
As I’ve just said to buy an organic bulb of garlic is quite expensive. I’ve seen it at £2.00 per bulb, and if you use as many as I do that can get quite costly, so I grow lots.
It’s reasonably easy to grow and you get a good return on your outlay,
We plant garlic late autumn, early winter, but I’ll tell you about that more next year when it’s planting time - we can concentrate on the harvest at this time
There’s a saying you might want to try and remember if you want to grow garlic: “Plant garlic on the shortest day and harvest garlic on the longest day”.
It’s just a guide obviously but a few weeks in and around these days will be absolutely fine.
Back to my garlic harvest. The way to tell if it’s ready to harvest is that the leaves will yellow and start to die back, but this year I couldn’t use this method to determine if they were ready to harvest because my garlic crop had rust.
Rust is an airborne, parasitic fungi that makes your plants look, well – rusty. The raised, orangey spots cover the foliage quickly when conditions are ideal and in a severe case, the leaves yellow, shrivel and die. With the foliage unable to convert energy in its usual efficient style, bulbs are small but still edible.
I was absolutely distraught when I saw I had rust starting to form on the leaves.
Because the leaves were starting to go brown I didn’t know when they were ready to harvest, so for the last several weeks I’ve been pulling a single rust-affected bulb and checking to see if the cloves were ok underneath, and every time there were perfect so I left them a bit longer before I checked again.
I got to the point where the leaves were so covered in rust, there was no possibility the bulbs were going to grow any more so I decided to harvest them.
Harvesting garlic is fairly easy, just put your small fork under the bulb and ease it up without bruising the bulb. Once out of the ground brush off the soil and leave them to dry for two to four weeks in a well-ventilated shed.
Because my garlic had rust this year it might not store as well so I will probably, crush and freeze some, and also pickle some, along with keeping some fresh, but in past years, after drying, I’ve platted them up and left them hanging in the shed, where I can cut off a new bulb whenever I like, and think to myself that’s another £2 saved.
Get in touch with your questions at jamieslittleallotment@gmail.com