Gardening
Nell Williams

By now spring should have well and truly sprung. However as I write, at the beginning of March - publishing deadlines and all that - there is snow in my garden. But for April I am hopeful because April and May are busy months for gardeners. Time to sow most seeds, and pot on those started indoors in propagators.

Chitted potatoes can be planted out now, but if the weather turns fickle protecting emerging shoots with horticultural fleece is a good idea. These staples of the UK diet, originating in South America, like a rich soil full of organic matter. If you haven’t spent all winter carefully preparing your beds, plant the potatoes in a trench with some well-rotted manure or compost in the bottom, and they will be more than happy. Potatoes come in a huge array of types and colours, with different ones for baking, roasting, mashing, or boiling for salads. There are red, yellow, or purple skinned – and some with blue or pink flesh! Some are more resistant to pests and diseases than others, so if you are new to allotmenting, ask other plot holders for their recommendations, or try out a few different varieties each year to see what suits you best. Potatoes are classified by when they are ready to harvest – first earlies, second earlies, main crop and salad. The longer they are in the ground the greater the risk of blight, which is what caused the Irish potato famine, so planting early maturing varieties helps reduce this risk. If your plants do start to show signs of blight, remove and burn the foliage. The tubers should still be okay. This year I’m planting Rocket – which is supposed to be ready to eat within 10 weeks, Pink Fir Apple, Charlotte – both good for salads, and Kestrel – a second early. Last year I planted Desiree, Belle de Fontenay and Epicure all of which did well.

May is a good month to plant beans. Runner beans especially like water retentive soil, so also benefit from the addition of well-rotted manure or compost in the previous autumn. But digging a trench and putting wet shredded newspaper in the bottom will also work - a bit like papier-mache without the glue, and a great job for occupying small children. Both Runner and French beans can be sown direct into the soil or started off indoors in newspaper tubes or toilet rolls filled with compost, and transplanted out in June. The newspaper rots down in the soil and the roots are not disturbed during transplanting. I grow a number of different climbing French beans, some for eating fresh, others for drying. My favourite at the moment is Or Du Rhin, a flat yellow-podded bean that doesn’t go stringy – great if like me you don’t manage to pick them as regularly as you should.

I am also sowing lettuces, rocket, carrots and other salad vegetables on my allotment at the moment. The aim is to sow some every couple of weeks so that I can keep cropping them for a long time. In the beds that won’t be in use until later, sowings of green manures should help suppress weeds, add organic matter when dug back in, and some will even fix nitrogen too. Red Clover, Phacelia, Mustard and Italian Ryegrass can all be sown now, but remember to dig them back in before they flower or get too woody.

Improving soil by adding organic matter is important for every gardener, and therefore so is composting. This can be done on a small individual scale, or as I was to find out, a larger community scale. Devon has the highest number of community composting schemes within the UK, and I went to meet Moira Jamieson - one of the volunteer organisers of Chudleigh Rotters - a group which last year recycled 7 tonnes of garden waste into garden compost. The group was set up in 2000, and currently has about 50 members. Based on an allotment site on the outskirts of Chudleigh, the council provides the land rent-free. Initial funding came from Ugbrook Environmental, which built the track; the first bins and provided a shed. Other funding came from the Co-Op Group Community Dividend Award and paid for paths and paving a seating area. Because recycling waste is classified as a waste disposal service, community composting groups are subject to various regulations – one of which is that everyone using the facility must be a member – but this is free, and every new member gets an information pack on the benefits of composting.

Every Saturday morning members have the opportunity to drop off waste at the site, sorted into soft, green waste, and woody materials. Each member is required to spend just two Saturday mornings a year helping to make the heaps, and in return can purchase compost at the bargain price of 50p per 12.5-kilo sack, and mulch at 25p per 12.5 kilo sack. A shredder is provided periodically, free of charge by Teignbridge Council to turn woody prunings into mulch. The compostable material goes first into one large bin, and then is turned twice into smaller bins, before being sieved in a large rotary drum, and bagged for sale. Kitchen waste is not taken because of the potential problems with rats, but despite that, the heaps work well. When I visited, on a cold day at the beginning of March the top of a fairly recent heap was full of composting worms. Slow worms also live in the heaps, next to flowerbeds where children from Chudleigh Primary school are doing an experiment to see effects of using compost against no compost. The group has two coffee mornings a year where it sells plants, as well as sociable monthly workdays. It receives landfill tax credits for the waste recycled, and with this and the money generated from sales of compost the group is financially able to support itself. Chudleigh Rotters now hope to start a seed exchange and set up a Community orchard, so watch this space! If interested in community composting contact Devon Community Composting Network on 01647 432880.



More you can get on with this month

Prune back your hardy fuschias to keep them in shape and while at it use some of the clippings to propagate new plants. Forget the old rules that say you should wait until summer to take cuttings, you can take them now and most will root easily. Simply take strong new growth with some woody stem, strip all the leaves bar the two three or four and pop into a compost mixed with sand, horticultural grit or perlite. You can boost your chances of success by dipping the end into a hormone rooting powder but that’s a matter of personal choice. Leave for a few weeks – those that are going to root will have, discard those that haven’t. Pot on your new cuttings and water sparingly – in the space of two months they’ll be ready to give to friends or an excellent start for a new, natural hardy fuschia hedge just like the ones that Lee Bay, Ilfracombe is renowned for ! They flower in sheltered parts right through until December and are already covered in new spring leaves (mid March). And all from your spring pruning session ! Lavenders can also be successfully propagated at the time of year from your prunings – simply be sure to select strong stems which are just beginning to become woody. Recycling at its best !