I'm new to this allotment larky and have just cleared by first bed of potatos but I don't like seeing it empty! What can I plant this time of year?
My sowing list for July shows:
Onion Cipolla Rossa Savonese (Franchi) (for overwintering - sow by mid-August)
Broccoli Raab
Cabbage Wheelers Imperial
Cabbage Wintergreen
Choy Sum, purple Flowering
Gai Lan (Chinese Broccoli)
Kale, Red Russian
Komatsuna (Mustard Spinach)
Dwarf Bean
Pole Bean
Salsify
Spring Onion
Mizuna
Shungiku Greens
Swiss Chard (Leaf Beet)
Parsley
Beetroot
Chicory
Lettuce
Radiccio
Rocket, wild
You can sow carrots and beet until September!
It's time to transplant leeks and brassica now - plant them through plastic mulch to suppress the weeds whilst you carry on digging?
good luck ;D
I'm really puzzled by the suggestions that you can still be sowing or planting things!!....not so much because of the month we're in, I realise that theoretically we can but..... because of the weather!! ???....
having had non-stop excessively hot weather for what seems like weeks & weeks on end with no useful rain at all.....the ground in this area (Berkshire) is either like dust or concrete....impossible to plant things I'd have thought...
I can't cope with the heat at the best of times but this continued very hot weather is making it impossible for me to get to my allotment at all during the day and the few odd evening trips I've had, have been totally taken up with watering some of the 'crops' I've already got in which are struggling to survive!
oh please let it really rain this way
I would happily plant plantlets now hotpot, but I am not sowing seeds now until the temperatures drop and we have some rain. All of my recently emerged seedlings have now died after being sizzled and frazzled in the noon day sun. As you know, I sow practically year round so I don't mind taking a summer holiday from sowing for the next few weeks. ;D
Hi Hot potato - I'm glad it's not just me struggling to visit the plot in this weather. I went for the first time in a fortnight last night to just have a tidy up as we are going away for a week, and it was so dry. I managed to pull up a few of the big weeds and deadheaded the rest. We had a good downpour on Friday night but it hasn't touched the backed earth.
I've sown some lettuces in a tray to get going while we are away - there was no way they were going to survive on the plot!
If assuming we have a hot August what can I get going in modules at home ready to plant in the autumn?
Sprout, you say your "sowing list for July". Are you actually sowing anything at the mo' or was the list based on a traditional British summer and not the equatorial bake-fest we are experiencing? :)
Yep, I have carried on sowing in the bake-fest(http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e220/supersprout/smilies/f_laugh.gif) - but cheating, in modules!(http://i40.photobucket.com/albums/e220/supersprout/smilies/innocent.gif) My one disaster in modules has been salsify, which I'll sow again in the ground (direct) sometime this week. I soak my beens overnight and water their watering hole a bit, they go straight in to the soil. When planting out e.g. lettuce, beet, chicory, I water in the dibber holes and plant the modules VERY deep, then water again and mulch straight away (leaving a little hole in the mulch for the seedling to see the light). I want to keep up a succession even in this dry weather :-\
Just planted out cabbage/calabrese/brocc very deep again, put them under a mesh, mulched and put a fleece sun bonnet on the newly transplanted leeklets (whisked it off again for our 2mm of rain).
An old shower curtain is covering the bit of the bed the salsify are going in, to keep it moist - haven't decided how to keep the soil moist after sowing in the drill, will cross that bridge when I come to it! Might be the shower curtain again til they germinate ??? or a plank on a couple of bricks ??? ???