Neville plants some Spinach to give the Wonderpost team some much needed Iron.
The Spinach is being helped on it’s way with lot’s of Wonderpost 100% Natural Soil Improver
Quite easy work
It’s Parsnip time at the Wonderpost allotment
Yes, it’s that time again, Neville, looking more and more like a bespectacled George Clooney every day, shows you why Wonderpost is the go-to soil improver for all your planting needs. Wonderpost is available in 50L bags or 1000L bulk bags with FREE delivery to most IP postcodes*. Click the link to buy – https://wonderpost.co.uk/wonderpost-farm-fresh-compost/
Neville gets in a pickle over some Wonderpost inspired Beetroot…
As a frequent salad eater, I sometimes feel the need to zest up my plate of lettuce with pickles, which is just as well really as I have an abundance of home-produced pickled products – try saying that with a mouth full of beetroot!
Pickling is a great way of preserving excess crops in the garden. Isn’t it just the way – you grow something and the crop produces more than you can possibly eat, so you end up giving half of it away, selling it at the roadside, trying out new and freakish recipes or of course pickling it in those jars you saved just for this purpose. I had just this experience with the beetroot we had grown on the Wonderpost allotment – when Rog and I harvested them last week there was more than our two families could possibly eat in a week so of course, out came the vinegar and jars. To pickle beetroot, I simply boil them for about twenty minutes, take off the skin and then dice into a jar. When cool I top up the jar with vinegar and add a few pickling spices and then store in a cool, dark cupboard where the jars get forgotten about!
I first grew a crop of beetroot at college in 1979 and thankfully my skills as a gardener must have developed as this recent crop on the Wonderpost allotment was fantastic – especially those beets harvested from the part of the allotment that had a liberal dose of our fantastic soil improver added to it – Wonderpost definitely increased the size of the beets as you can see from the photo. Of course, we could have grown even larger beets if I had remembered to thin out the seedlings when the seeds had just germinated as this would have enabled the beets to grow even larger. But never mind, as I have enough jars of the stuff to see me through the winter!
And don’t forget the inspirational Wonderpost Farm Fresh Compost available here in our summer sale
The BIG Onion Reveal Results
On a blisteringly hot Suffolk Sunday afternoon, Rog and I undertook the big onion reveal on the Wonderpost allotment. If you’ve been following our allotment posts you will recall that I planted a row of onion sets last autumn, half in the part of the allotment treated with Wonderpost soil improver, the other half planted in just the normal untreated soil. The variety I choose was called Troy and quite frankly it’s a very easy variety to grow. Apart from watering, weeding and applying the occasional dose of FastGrow chicken manure to the crop we haven’t really had to do much else to the plants… apart from of course harvest them!
Well, the harvest has just taken place (you will know when onions are ready to be harvested as the foliage will start to turn yellow) and thanks to Roger’s kids and one of their friends we dug up all the onions, washed the soil off them and then had the weigh in.
We were as clinical as possible as we made sure that there was the exact number of onions growing in each half of the allotment … after all we wanted to make sure our trial was as accurate as possible. With much excitement and bated breath we weighed the onions from each half of the allotment and (drum roll please) and we are delighted to report that the onions growing in Wonderpost weighed in heavier than those growing in the normal soil, coming in at 4.3Kg, whilst the Wonderpost onions weighed in at 5.22Kg.
There you have it folks … proof that Wonderpost soil improver increases yields.
I’m now of to make an onion tart ….
Strawberries are live on the allotment today
How to do Soil Improvement the correct way
It’s not often we re-publish other peoples blog posts, but when I was thinking of writing a post about ‘Soil Improvement’, an enormous subject at the best of times, I started to do some research and came across this wonderful article in Gardeners World. Simply titled ‘How to improve your soil‘ it was such an easy, informative read, I’ll just re-publish it, because I can’t do any better.
I’ll just give you the soil improvement preamble and then link to the article and the author:
Plants need good soil conditions if they are to give the best results. Improving the soil with plenty of organic matter in the form of compost helps drainage and aeration on heavy soils and conserves essential moisture on light ones.
Please click here to read the full article on the Gardeners World website
you can lead a horse to the allotment, but you can’t make it weed
Things are getting tough down at the Wonderpost allotment; not only is the Sun shining, but the horses are having to do a bit of weeding. This is all good because judging by the looks of those Onions and Garlic plants something is going well.
Perhaps this is just another example of teenage ingenuity? you know the old saying “you can lead a horse to the allotment, but you can’t make it weed”, it’s not true as you can see.
And don’t forget the Wonderpost allotment is 100% powered by Wonderpost Farm Fresh Compost – the 100% Natural Soil Improver now available in nice big bulk bags.
Neville feeds the Onion and Garlic with Fertiliser
Neville gets round to doing some weeding on the Wonderpost allotment
Planting Beetroot in The Wonderpost Allotment
We’re getting into superfoods!
Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the fact that beetroot is good for you. Historically the whole of the plant has been eaten and yes, you can eat the leaves – Tom Hunt, a chef, writer and broadcaster has a rather interesting recipe for Beetroot leaf borani, which I am going to try once our crop has grown. But of course it’s the root which is normally eaten. Beetroot is a good source of iron and naturally occurring folic acid as well as containing antioxidants. I’m told they slow the ageing process so I’m wondering if that means I can ditch the moisturiser!
As there is so much goodness packed into beetroot it would be crazy not to grow some on our Wonderpost allotment. So I delved into our store of organic seeds and set about sowing them. After preparing the soil by creating a fine tilth I then simply made a very small slit in the soil 2cm deep and sprinkled the seeds trying to space them out a bit. This is the difficult process because often seeds land up very close to each other which happened with me. Not to worry though, as I will probably thin the seedlings out so that the plants are about 15cm apart – this will enable the beets to enable grow to a fair size. After sowing the seed I then gently raked the soil over the slit and applied a dressing of chicken manure at a rate of 150 grams per square metre. I then left Roger to water the seeds!
I only sowed a row of seeds which I reckon will provide enough beetroots for Roger’s family and mine but if there is a glut I will probably pickle them for use later in the year.