My allotment

Well, after being on a waiting list for just under a year, I finally have a key to a local allotment site where I have taken on a half-plot

My half-plot, in colour!

It's got a bit of grass and things growing at the moment but I think it all the soil was turned over last year so it shouldn't be too much of a job to get it in some kind of growing order!

I have not seen any of the other allotment holders so I don't know what the neighbours are like. I'm sure I'll get plenty advice on how to progress as the days start getting warmer and growing season starts proper.

I can't wait to get started ...

This year's potatoes

The other day I got my seed potatoes from Coventry market. All in all, I got just over 3kg for £4. When I counted them up, there were 75 tubers - I think I may have gone a bit over the top, oh well!

They're now sitting under the window in the garage, waiting for the weather to warm up a tad to get them chitting.

This season's potatoes chitting in the garage

This year I've gone for a few different varieties:

• Red Duke of York - 1st early. 10 tubers, 0.4kg
• Pentland Javelin - 1st early. 15 tubers, 0.5kg
• Kestrel - 2nd early. 23 tubers, 0.8kg
• Pink Fir Apple - salad. 11 tubers, 0.5kg
• Charlotte - salad, 16 tubers, 1kg

I think most interesting of all are the Pink Fir Apple ones which are long and knobbly - needless to say, you don't peel these! Despite their strange appearance they are supposed to taste great. Can't wait to find out.

Pink Fir Apple potato tubers

4-Bed Rotation System

In anticipation of preparing my allotment I've been looking into how the 4-Bed rotation system works. The idea is to have four beds and rotate the veg grown in them every year. The aim is to avoid a build-up of pests and diseases specific to certain vegetables.
Now the key is in the word rotation, rather than just swapping vegetable beds around, as this video from Gardener's World explains.

In a nutshell the order of rotation is:

1. Potatoes. Plant in well dug soil with lots of manure.
2. Legumes (peas, beans, etc). These will deposit nitrogen into the soil by storing it in their roots so make sure you leave the roots there at the end of the season.
3. Brassicas (broccoli, calabrese, cabbage, cauliflower, etc). These love the nitrogen that's been left by the legumes.
4. Root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, etc). These don't need huge amounts nutrients. Any excess will just go into the foliage and not increase the size of the root.

Onions and other alliums like leeks and garlic can go in with the legumes as they like the same kinds of conditions.

Each season you move the vegetables round in order, with the potatoes following the root vegetables after the ground has had a good dig and more manure.

Well that's the theory and it makes sense on paper. I wonder how it'll work in practice!

Some more information on 4-bed rotation is here.

Picked my allotment!

After about a year on a waiting list, I finally got to pick my allotment today!

Not wanting to take on too much in one go, I've gone for a half-plot, affectionately called 40A!

Although it's only a half plot, it was bigger than the other halves I was shown and seemed bigger than half of the only full plot that was available. Mine is on the 'larger' side of the access drive whereas all the others were on the shorter side.

It seemed in quite good condition - no massive build up of grass or anything. I think the bloke said that the person that had the whole plot couldn't cope so handed half back, after getting it nearly ready for working.

I should get my forms and stuff by the back-end of next week.

Right - I'm off to buy some potatoes.

And onions.

And carrots.

And broccoli. You get the idea.

Green Tomato Chutney (at last)

I've been meaning to write this up for ages!

With my left over green tomatoes there is only one thing to do - Green Tomato Chutney of course! I looked about for recipes and it seems like everyone's got their own, so I borrowed bits from all over the place, but the main idea was taken from margeland.co.uk

I had to adjust the quantities to marry up with the amount of tomatoes I had. I also sterilised my old coffee jars in a Milton solution overnight (the same strength as used for babies bottles).

Now the main point of this Matt's Patch entry is really for my own benefit (to record the recipe) as I think the resulting chutney is a little too sweet - not much mind, just a tad. Sort of heading towards a sweet tomato/onion relish. Having said that it is very nice and is beautiful on some strong mature cheddar!

One thing that surprised me about Green Tomato Chutney, is that I thought it would be mainly, well, green tomatoes. However that's not the case - there are a lot of other ingredients.

Ingredients

Ingredients:

• 650g green tomatoes
• 330g cooking apples, peeled and diced
• 340g shallots, peeled
• 300g sultanas
• 300g demerara sugar
• 300ml malt vinegar
• 1 chilli
• 1 piece of ginger, about 1cm
• 1 tsp salt

The weights above are what I put in but as a rough guide I think they are about half the quantity of the tomatoes (600 vs 300).
Method:

1. Prepare the tomatoes. Wash them and cut them in half or smaller if they are quite big.
2. Cut the chilli in half and remove the seeds.
3. Peel the ginger and gently squash it a bit to allow it to release its flavour.
4. Place the tomatoes, shallots and apples in a food processor and chop them up, but not too much.
5. In a large, deep cooking pot place the chopped items along with the vinegar, sugar, raisins and salt. Mix well.
6. Add the chilli and ginger and stir again. Put the heat on and bring the chutney to the boil. Keep stirring to make sure the sugar dissolves and the bottom of the pot doesn't catch. (It was at this point I panicked that I'd overdone it with the vinegar but it all turned out ok in the end, though it does get in your nose while it's cooking!)

Just starting to cook


7. Once the mixture is at a good boiling stage turn the heat down to a simmer. Simmer the chutney for at least an hour, if not more. Also you will need to stir the chutney from time to time.

Coming along nicely


8. Once the chutney has attained a jam like consistency it is done. Take out the chilli and ginger and discard.
9. Carefully spoon the chutney into the sterilised jars. It is a good idea to make sure the jars are warmed too so as not to crack when the hot chutney goes in! You want to pack the chutney in so there are no air bubbles.
10. Create a seal over the surface of the chutney with a bit of folded clingfilm. Put the lids on tightly.
11. Leave the jars to cool thoroughly. It is this process that 'seals' the lids on tight! Once opened keep the chutney in the fridge.

Two jars of GTC!

Next time I make this I will reduce either the sultanas or the sugar, just to ease off on the sweetness.

News at last

Hello! I'm back! I can only apologise for the prolonged absence. So without further ado here's what's been happening on Matt's Patch in September and October.

After all the rain we've had in August the last two months have been gorgeously warm and dry. This has helped keep the raspberries coming. This is how many we picked yesterday (with still plenty on the canes as we head into the shorter days of November):

Raspberries still going

Along with the raspberries our tomatoes in the greenhouse kept cropping too. Now though they have slowed down so I decided to harvest them all. The plan is to make a green tomato chutney - I'll have to dig out a recipe somewhere (unless someone can recommend one).

Last of the tomatoes

Back in June we planted carrots in two buckets in a corner of the greenhouse. We just let them get on with it. The thinking was that as they got bigger, I'd thin them out as and when we needed little carrots for the children. However they never really seemed to take off. Maybe they were too densely planted. Anyway, on the weekend Megan and I picked what was left in the buckets. Their sizes varied quite considerably, and considering that they were a small variety we did get some decent sized ones. After a clean-up this is what we were left with:

Bright orange carrots

On to my planter. Although the last couple of months have been very mild, the lettuce that was in the planter just stopped growing. Likewise the peppers never did much. I think they definitely need to be in the greenhouse, or at the very least under some cover to get extra heat. This is the best one, from of six plants! (unfortunately the photo is out of focus but by the time I noticed the pepper had been used in a chili con carne!)

One red pepper

So, after collecting the veg that was still in the greenhouse, the time came to give it a good clean and get it ready for more planting.

So I'm going to have a little think now, about what can be planted - either in the planter or in pots in the greenhouse - which is unheated.
I'm also going to write up my experiences in the first year of Matt's Patch and what lessons have been learned.

A nice clean greenhouse

Spud Issues

It's not all plain sailing in Matt's Patch. The other week I was out inspecting things and had a look at the potatoes that were growing at the end of the garden. This is what I found - all the foliage was just about dead!

Dead foliage - is this blight?

I've no idea what had caused it so I did a bit of digging (no pun intended) on the internet after hearing horror stories about blight.

Still not a lot wiser I read one article about blight that said you should cut off all the vegetation and burn it if possible. Then not dig the potatoes for a couple of weeks so that the blight that falls on the earth dies before the potatoes come up. So as a precaution I cut it all down and got rid.

When we returned from our week camping in Cornwall, Megan and I went to dig up the spuds - if there were any! Actually we got quite a lot:

Desiree and King Edwards

Ideally they'd have been left to grow for longer so that the King Edwards got bigger but that was not an option in this case.

Upon closer inspection some of the individual potatoes had lesions on them. Not all of them, and not all over the ones that did have them.

What is this?

Some of the potatoes had scabs on them

I now think that this is scab, probably Common Scab but if anyone knows for sure then please let me know and what I could have done to prevent or treat it.

All in all, not too bad for my first experiment with growing potatoes!