Know your onions

Onion 1: "Hello, I'm Hercules!"
Onion 2: "Hello, I'm Sturon!"
Onion 1: "Where's Centurion?"
Onion 2: "He didn't make it."

The postman delivered my 2nd seed order from E.W.King & Co. Ltd yesterday. The centrepiece of the bulging jiffy was a pair of 500g white onion set bags. One Sturon bag, one Hercules F1 bag. Last year we grew Sturons and they were magnificent - the envy of my allotment neighbours. Medium sized bulbs, excellent quality globe-shaped, clear white flesh, strong flavour and a low attrition rate is terms of both losses in the ground and post-lifting storage in the garage. After asking the advice of Barry The New Head Of Our Allotment Society and a couple of allotment-focused tweeters, I've gone with them again this year. This ticks the allotment rule box of "if it grows well on your plot one year, then it probably loves your soil type and you should grow it again".

But there is a second allotment rule box that must be ticked: "in your first few years you should experiment with different varieties to see which does best on your plot". After a careful selection policy of eeny-meany-minee-mo, I've gone with Hercules F1 over Centurion F1. The deciding factor was the internet blurb on the Dobies of Devon site that Hercules put down their roots fast - something that didn't happen with our red onions last year and that ultimately stunted the crop. Hercules apparently offer an earlier yield than Sturon and have a yellow and mild flesh.

E.W. King offer both varieties at a bargain £2.45 per 500g bag and the two bags together should give at least 25m worth of onion rows. We'll be looking to get all the sets in the ground this weekend, weather permitting.

Centurion will rotate in next year, replacing the weaker of this years performers.

Onion 1: "Did you hear that?! If we don't perform we're in for the chop!"
Onion 2: "The way I understand it, if we DO perform we'll still be in for the chop... and the slice!"

The rest of the jiffy bag featured:

Tomatoes = Ferline, Harbinger and Gardener's Delight (all of which should do well outside)

Leeks = Jolant and Blue Solaise (my Christmas present book The River Cottage 4 - Veg Patch reckons that growing leeks from seed is dead easy, so we're going to give it a go with these early and late varieties)

Sweetcorn = Early Extra Sweet F1 (last year these failed but that was due to them not going in early enough, so I've changed my mind since November and decided to try again)

Celeriac = Giant Prague (some books say these are difficult to grow, others say easy, so we'll roll the dice on these this Summer and see what happens)

Pepper = Hungarian Wax (I'm hoping this is a the Hot Wax variety - for growing indoors rather than on the plot)

Calendula = Orange King (aka Marigold - the classic companion flower and a deliberate attempt to increase the interest of my daughter in the plot)

All of these are of course on top of my order made at the end of last year, which means I have way too much seed.

Onion 1 & 2: "A lot of it will keep for next year too!"

Dig for victory

I took the day off work yesterday in order to dig over the allotment.

Last year we were given the allotment in April. It was covered in grass and the remnants of brambles. The topsoil was thick with couch grass, bramble roots and general rubbish. By the time we got ourselves in a position to dig the plot over the unseasonaly hot and sunny May had baked the ground rock hard, making the chore of digging back and spade-breaking work. Our 2010 crops were hampered by the late hand-over: less than two-thirds of the plot was usable and so much of the seed that was planted either failed due to the enforced short-season or glutted us with produce as successional-planting was impossible. We did have success with robust broad beans, French climbing Cobra beans and most notably an envious crop of flavourful, juicy and storage-hardy Sturon white onions. Failures included red onions that failed to properly root before the dry summer and sweetcorn that just went in the ground too late - I've since learnt that this is a notoriously difficult plant to grow and to give it the best chance of success it needs to be grown early so it has the whole of the Summer to develop and ripen.

The aim of taking a day's holiday was to dig over the outstanding 30% of 'virgin' undug plot, turn the earth of those beds that we did manage to create last year, construct a raised bed for strawberries, salad and young plants, weed and generally tidy things up.

Digging in February - when the ground is relatively frost-free and softened by ample rain - is considerably easier than digging in May. Even in gusting 25 mph winds - our site is open to the elements - the spade and fork work was far more bearable than when sweating under the late Spring and early Summer sunshine of last year. Soft earth equals rapid progress - the only challenges to completing the digging being a distinct lack of strength and stamina in our muscles and bramble roots up to six feet long and two inches in diameter! In the end - before tiring and dreaming of a hot bath - we managed to virgin dig a 5m x 4.5m area (that's a decent 22% of the total plot and well on the way to clearing that 30%), clear and edge the existing beds (bringing them out to the edge of the plot boundaries), create a 1.8m x 0.9m 10cm deep raised bed for the strawberries (8 plants put in), hand-weed the allium and daffodil beds, check the garlic and red onions (doing well especially the purple wight garlic) and plant a few early broad beans under cloches.

But the digging and progress on opening up the plot ready for planting the mountain of seeds and sets that I've (over) ordered from E.W.Kings is almost secondary to the shear pleasure of just being outside in the fresh air, working on a plot of your own land, which you hope and dream will bring tasty bounties to your dinner table later in the year. The rich promise of harvest rings out, even at this bleak and grey time of year, through the green sproutings of garlic and onion, the sound of birdsong, the dull thud of steel against earth and the rhythmic beatings and rustlings of assorted scarecrows, sheds and strcutures in the wind.


What a great way to spend a day off from work.