How to grow beetroot

Beetroot are another easy vegetable to grow in your garden and can be planted (sowed) from now (early May).

They're really delicious and versatile and can be eaten raw in salads, cooked or even pickled if you enjoy doing this!

Beetroot are a great vegetable to plant with kids too, since the seeds are on the larger side and a bit easier to handle.

Here's how to do it ...

• Choose a site or raised bed with soil that has not had any manure added in the past several months - beets like soil that isn't too rich!
• Beets are part of the same family as chard so they can be grown together.

• The day before, put your seeds in a plastic sealable bag with moist paper towels over and underneath them and leave at room temperature - this helps the seeds to germinate before planting so you should have better success.

• Dig over the soil and break up any lumps and even out with a rake.  Add a small handful of general fertiliser (eg Growmore) each few feet squared.
• Mark your rows with string tied to plastic pegs - this makes it easier to see the beetroot seedlings when they come up and to weed around them.
• Plant seeds in rows 1" deep, with rows 12" apart and seeds about 2" from each other in the row.  If the weather is still a little chilly, you can cover with horticultural fleece but remove once it warms up or the seedlings become visible!

• The seeds will take about 2 weeks to come up.  The seeds are actually not single seeds but clusters of seeds so don't be surprised if a couple come up in the same spot!
• When the seedlings are about 1-2" high, thin (remove) the weaker looking ones (careful not to disturb the ones around the one you're keeping) so that you have one seedling every 4". 

• Companion plants:  sage, onion, kholrabi and lettuce

How to plant onions

Onions are a great crop to try  - they're easy to plant and taste so much better when you grow them yourself!

You can grow onions from seed but it's far easier and you will have more success by growing onion 'sets'.  These are basically little, immature onions that are planted singly and each will grow into a full-size onion.

These days there is a good selection of onion sets so go for a variety that best suits your purpose - this year I planted 'Santero', a white onion which stores well, and 'Red Baron', which also stores well, since I like to have onions last me throughout the winter months.

So, for onion crop success:

1. Choose the right place and time... a sunny spot that where you didn't grow the onion family last year and where it has not been manured in the past several months (this can cause onions to rot) is the first thing to consider.  Your onion bed can be just onions or combined with other crops from the onion (allium) family, including shallots, garlic and leeks. Their companion plant (if you are into such things) is mint, which deters onion fly!  The time to plant onions is from mid-March to mid-April depending on how far north you live.

2. Prep the bed ... once you have chosen which bed to use, dig it over with a garden fork, to 1.5 x the depth of the fork.  Remove any weeds or larger rocks.  If you have any compost (either homemade or bought) add around one bucketful for each meter square. Then add a small handful / 1 oz Growmore or similar fertiliser and dig in.  Rake over so that the bed is even.

3. Mark your rows ... if you like!  I am the type of person who likes the idea of nice, neat rows and I also like to have a guide of where I've planted (plus I have a touch of the obsessive!) so I mark out my rows with string tied to little black plastic stakes.  Rows should be 30 cm (12 in) apart and the sets themselves should be planted 12cm (5in) apart.

4. Plant the sets ...sets can be round or teardrop shaped but either way, plant with the pointy tip facing up.  Gently push your sets into the soil, leaving the tip just visible above the soil and firm gently around each one.

5.  Protect your onions ... birds can think that the paper-y top at the tip of the sets is a worm and so like to pull them up, which is super annoying so, to avoid this, I put 2 foot stakes around the edges of the bed and cover the whole lot with netting - nothing fancy - and secure around the edge with rocks or bricks.

It's easy to prep your parsnip bed and a great time to do it.  Parsnips, like their cousins the carrot, don't like terribly rich soil so don't add any manure or they will be stunted or 'forked'. They also need rock free soil as if they hit any rock while growing they will decide to head off in a bizarre direction and you won't get nice straight, large veg.  So ... 

• think about the bed you want to use (not freshly manured)
• give it a good dig over with a garden fork
• remove any rocks or stones
• leave the bed open for a couple of weeks - the birds will remove lots of pests for you and get a much needed meal too!
• once the soil is steadily around 50F or 10C, it's time to sow your seeds; put in as soon as this temperature is reached, parsnips need a long growing season
• remember to sow fresh parsnip seeds each year - they don't keep well
• sow seeds thinly around 1 inch deep in a row marked with a string
• be patient - they can take a couple of weeks to germinate!

Now's the perfect time to make sure you have a great fruit crop this season, starting with pruning your autumn raspberries, here's a few great, simple tips to get you started!

A different way to help the garden birds

On Friday I took receipt of an enormous pile of manure.  Well, not literally a pile, actually it came in white sealed bags and was neatly stacked up behind my shed by the nice chap who delivered it to me.  Also in the order was some mulch, which I thought would go some way to keeping my raspberries, blackcurrants, gooseberries and apple trees nice and snug while giving them a good feed at the same time.

So forty sixty litre bags and one aching back later I stood on my allotment in the -1c weather admiring my delivery and pondered how good it would feel to be back at home having a hot cup of tea.  I don't think there was another person on the entire allotment site that morning:  it was still, quiet and cold but incredibly peaceful, and, I started to think, a bit of a shame to leave so early on such a great day. And then my eyes set upon my unruly autumn raspberry patch and I thought, in the time-honoured tradition of the obsessive gardener, wouldn't it be great to weed and mulch that? It was all the excuse I needed.

Throughout this session, and for the last few, I have been visited by a male robin venturing closer each week. At first, he would just sing to me from a distance, but then he started coming closer and closer until, on Friday, he landed just a few inches from my hands.  What a striking little beauty and he was so close that I could see individual downy feathers on his chest as he breathed.  I stayed very, very still, and he jumped over to me on his tiny legs looking closely at the ground, coming up with a big, fat worm.  And then I realised that, on a cold day when the earth is frozen, he was using the opportunity of the disturbed soil to get himself a bit of a snack.  And he kept on, appearing every ten minutes or so, waiting patiently for me to stop my work before he would leap right in to continue his meal of worms and other goodies.  What a lovely, and different, way to help the garden birds in the cold weather.

Two hours later, the patch was weeded and covered by a thick layer of black mulch and my satisfaction was immense.  I can only imagine that the robin felt the same way.

extreme gardening

I just love gardening in the cold, dreary weather.  Trudging on to my allotment on a grey autumn morning, no one else in sight on site, gives me an intense feeling of satisfaction.  I am there, no matter the weather, often alone on site, in the quiet rain, fog, winds or cold, and I relish it. Because I am getting a start on the 2015 season, prepping the beds and doing all those jobs (and creating a few on the way) that I don't normally have time to do during the high season.  Just bliss.  So this week I am organising a manure delivery, digging trenches for kitchen waste to be added week by week over the winter to improve the soil, putting the beds to bed.  And I might just treat myself to removing the grass from the main path, neatly putting down breathable fabric and gently laying some woodchip on top, all the better to walk through the plot next year ... Update after the weekend.