Some time back, I asked you guys to ask me questions for my very first Q&A. I now have those questions and I’m answering them the best way I can. I’ve been very busy lately so I’ve only just got round to doing this!
This is all just for fun whilst there’s not much going on in the garden during the winter. Hopefully some of my answers can help you guys and provide you with some useful information.
Hello again everybody and welcome back to my channel I’m at home today as it is freezing cold and I’m not going to put myself at the alotment and end up with frozen hands and Frozen feet so I’m at home today and I’m doing my first ever
Q&A um a few weeks ago I asked you all to ask me any questions for my Q&A and I’ve got quite a few questions now um it has taken me quite a long time to get to this because I have been really busy I’ve not really had time but now I’ve
Got the questions and I’m going to try and answer them the best way I can I’m not an expert I’m just going to try and answer them um from the top of my head the best I can so just a little bit of fun while there’s not really much going
On at the lotman and it’s winter we have our first question here and it’s a question about my paths um how often and how deep do you top them up well I top them up every single year usually at the beginning or the end of the growing
Season in fact a few weeks ago I topped my wood chip paths up I’ll get a free delivery of wood chip or usually free anyway off a local tree surgeon um it drops off like 2 three tons every year and I’ll just apply a layer over the top
Of it 2 3 in and uh then I’ll repe reapply it a year later because my paths do get very soggy and very wet once that wood chip starts to break down I love using wood chip you know it looks good it’s really attractive you know that
Good natural look I really like it it’s clean on your feet and it’s a resource that’s readily available doesn’t really cost anything but the only downside to it is it needs reapplying every year and Topping up because you know at the end of this growing season before I topped it up it
Got really really soggy really really messy so yeah that’s how I do my wood chip paths and in fact next year I’m going to be scraping all the wood chip paths up because there’s quite a few layers on there now and I’m going to be
Using that in my nodig beds and using it as a mulch as well so that’s my plan with it then and then I’ll just reapply it fresh again so I think I’m going to do that every 3 or 4 years okay our next question which vegetables are you fully
Self-sufficient on I.E never needing to buy at any point anymore well that’s a really good question and that is the ultimate goal isn’t it self-sufficiency that’s what we want to do but it is very hard to be self-sufficient really hard work I’m I’m definitely more self-sufficient than I used to be before
I had the allotment but you know I’m not quite there at full sufficiency yet um I’m getting very close though with things like onions and potatoes um we harvested the onions in July and we’re still actually eating the onions now actually I had to freeze a lot of them
But there’s around 8 L of chopped onions in the freezer and there is a mushroom crate full of red onions still I found red onions store a lot more better than the white onions so onions I think we’re getting close to self-sufficiency there the potatoes um we were eating the
Larger potatoes until around October and they were harvested in July we were eating potatoes from May right the way through till October so a good part of the Year there where we didn’t have to buy potatoes and we had to buy potatoes the other week and trust me it
Was heartbreaking having to buy shop B potatoes because you know the quality is much different from homegrown cuz you know they’ve been stored already them potatoes which you’ve got in the supermarket are already like a year old for being in storage so yeah I’d say potatoes were sort of halfway there for
Self-sufficiency really and I want to start saving my own potato seeds possibly in the future as well and sort of expand the amount that we’re growing as well you know cuz we do eat a lot of potatoes but yeah so yeah onions potatoes we’re getting there I think uh
Apart from that there’s not really anything else and but I think over the years and as I’ve become more experienced and better at growing things I do want to add more things to the list of self-sufficiency like tomatoes and things like that and I want to start
Storing more things for the long term as well freezing canning pickling and things like that but it’s is it all it is very time consuming and it does take a lot of time and practice um to get it right so yeah I hope that answers your
Question um there are some things that I want garlic as well um you know I can be self-sufficient with garlic but this year we got a really bad crop of garlic but I think if we get a good crop next year then there’s no reason why we will
Never have to buy garlic again next question Jim we get fresh horse manure delivered to our allotments is it okay to lay it on top of the ground now and dig it in next spring well we also get lots and lots of horse manure delivered
To our site as well we’ve got piles and piles and piles of the stuff and what I do every single year is I like to spread the HSE manure in the Autumn or early winter so i’ I’ve done mine a few weeks ago and I’ll leave leave it on top of
The soil just to sit there and I like doing this because it suppresses the weeds during the winter in the UK we have quite mild Winters so weeds can still grow and still germinate especially if you have a really mild spell which is quite common for us so it
Acts as a weed suppressant and then in the spring I will then lightly dig it into the soil I think I’m going to be changing the way I do this though because I am trying to go no dig I am in that transition period you know slowly
Going more no dig so I think I’ll probably be composting the HSE manure and then spreading it on top the pre the next year and that way it’ll be no dig because the way I have been doing it laying it on the soil over winter and
Then digging it in in the spring it’s not really no dig is it so I may compost it in a big pile and then spread it on top The Following season so yes you can lay it on top of the ground now and dig it in in the spring that is what I’ve
Done for quite a few years now and it works great because it does break down you know all them worms and uh the bugs and the insects they do Break Down the Horse when you’re over the winter hey next question we have another one I started gardening as a child with my
Nana did you Garden as a child with someone you would love to spend time pottering around in your alment with now well that’s really lovely it’s good that you have some memories G as a child with a parent that’s really really nice and I did as well actually my dad I used to
Garden with him uh who sadly passed away 8 years ago he taught me quite a lot of things um that I know about gardening and he is the one that actually got me into gardening as a child so yes I spent a lot of time with him in the garden
Gardening with him I have a lot of really good memories with him in the garden and yes if he was alive now I probably would have him at the alotment and he would probably enjoy spending time with me at the alotment and it would be really good uh but
Unfortunately can’t do that because he’s not with us anymore with my mom I kind of got her into gardening and now she’s got the gardening bug and yeah I can spend some time at the alotment with my mom now so that’s really really good okay another question here what does a
Chef do to prepare preserve and enjoy the garden Harvest now I always plant loads and loads of stuff I get really carried away and start growing absolutely everything but then I forget that you have to do something with the Harvest that you get in the end you know you have to do
Something with it you can’t just bin it you have to wash it you know prepare it cook it eat it store it you know it’s very time consuming and sometimes I forget that I like to do as much as I can with it to be honest I have started
To do things like pickling and preserving things in jars I do like to freeze a lot of things like tomatoes for example onions beans I like to freeze a lot of fine beans and runner beans and stuff like that I blanched them before I freeze them when I’ve had corett I’ve
Frozen a lot of those as well sliced them up blanched them and freeze and Frozen them tomatoes are a good one for freezing because you can literally just scoop them out of the freezer and stick them in whatever you’re cooking and things like that there are many different ways that you can preserve
Your harvests pickled beetroot pickled onions you can pickle pretty much everything you know there’s things that you can store at room temperature like your squashes your pumpkins um onions and different things like that even Tomatoes actually to be honest tomatoes are best stored at room temperature if you’re not freezing them so there’s
There’s many different things which I like to do to help use the gluts and store them for future use now I’ve got a couple of questions here which are very closely related and um they’re all to do with slugs what is the best action in a fight against slugs two questions that
Are very similar here and I’m going to answer them both in one now there are many different ways of combating slugs and different approaches and many gardeners have different ways of doing it now I used to use SL pellets um quite a while ago I don’t really use them anymore I’ve not used
Them this year um because you know thinking about the birds and the wildlife and things like that so I like to take more of an organic approach nowadays even if it says on the slug pets that it’s organic I’ve noticed the the tub says that nowadays that they’re
Organic um that’s probably why they’re about6 per tub really really expensive um so yeah this year after taking a more organ organic approach and to be honest um the best way I would say the best methods of doing it um there’s copper tape which you can use you can apply a copper tape
Around the pot if you’re growing in containers or around the bed if you’re growing in a raised bed and this gives the slug or the snail a light electric chalk when it passes over the copper tape so it can’t actually pass over the copper tape and into your plant pot and
Eat your veggies so copper tape is a really good one which I’ve used quite a lot in the past especially when I’ve been container gardening in my small Back Garden so that is a really good one um another one is beer traps the slug is attracted to the Beer Falls in and
Drowns you could simply go in your garden and pick the Slugs out at night and relocate them somewhere else that’s quite time consuming and I couldn’t do that on my allotment because my allotment is just too big for that and I don’t have the time to be going
Around my allotment and picking slugs from absolutely everywhere obviously if I see a slug on my cabbage I will pick it off and throw it away obviously as you would now there are other things like crushed eggshells uh wool as well then it said that the the slug does not
Like crossing over the crust eggshells or the wool um as it does not like that because you know a slug likes a moist environment it doesn’t like crawling over something that’s going to be dry and that will dry out so I have experienced quite a few problems with
Slugs because of the wood chip paths that I have I think it creates an environment that slugs like so you know there are plenty of things which you can apply around the plant which the slug is not going to like crawling over you know eggshells dious Earth as well wool
Pellets even sand um slugs don’t like going over sand either so I would take the more organic approach and I’d say my favorite option although it probably is going to be very timec consuming if you have a massive area to protect is copper tape this has given really good results
For me in the past okay next question what are the pros and cons of a greenhouse versus a polyol now that’s a really good question there are many differences between a greenhouse and a polyol you grow veggies and fruits and things like that in both of them but
They are quite different um in many different ways now firstly the cost is going to be much different the a greenhouse whether it be glass or polycarbonate materials it’s going to be much more expensive to buy one of these than it is a polyan uh because they do
Last much longer and the materials are much more expensive you know aluminium and glass um is more costly so that’s the first difference there poly tunnel is much cheaper material um you know plastic cover usually now obviously there are budget options of Pol pools in fact there’s budget options for green
Houses but there are a lot of budget options for potins um like I’ve got a cheap budget panol um it cost me around £150 and it is a much cheaper material it’s probably going to blow away in the wind eventually and it’s not a big industrial you know expensive 1,000
Polyol by like what is it first polyenals which do really nice polyenals I’ve not c one of those but yeah so that’s the first difference cost now the second difference here between the two is that the poonal is going to be much more humid than a greenhouse holds much more
Humidity and I found evidence of that this year definitely for sure because I grew tomatoes in the greenhouse and then I grew tomatoes in the polyols and I had a massive problem with tomato blight in the polyols in both of them but whereas in the green houses the other two of
Them um didn’t really get any tomato blight which is really interesting because I did everything in the polyenals like I had the vents open I had the plants spaced a good distance apart from each other they weren’t too close you know I trimmed the bottom leaves of the plants off to allow for
Better airation um removing dead foliage and things like that um you know I did it absolutely everything I possibly could and I still had a massive problem with blight and I just think that was the humidity the greenhouse absolutely no blight at all interestingly so that’s the first difference
There now the another difference I’m just saying things off the top of my head um is it’s going to do a a greenhouse is going to do a better job at protecting your plants from frost early in the growing season it’s going to Main conin more heat it’s going to
Hold heat in better because glass is much better at holding heat in than plastic um I also found this last year I think or the year before where I was trying to protect my tomatoes from the frost in the poly tunel uh a frost I think Min
-1° even with the vent sh I lost the entire lot all the tomatoes got obliterated in April in the politan on and then I’ve tried protecting the tomatoes earli this year in the or last year I can’t remember but I had some tomato plants in April in the greenhouse
And they were protected from the frost it didn’t drop as low the temperature stayed much higher than the greenhouse did than the panol did so that’s another difference it’s going to a greenhouse is going to do a better job at lengthening your growing season than a polyol is now
They’re both going to prolong your growing season but the greenhouse um holds hea in much better than the polyol does so I mean polyenals and green houses are both great and they are really good at prolonging your growing season and allowing you to grow things that you usually wouldn’t grow in your
Climate like we we we live in the UK and there are many things which we couldn’t get away with growing outside very easily unless we have a really good summer and tomatoes are pretty much a must have in the greenhouse to be honest unless we have a good summer or we’re
Growing an outdoor variety so I would say if you’re looking for a budget option and you don’t want to spend too much money then polyols are the way to go even if you’re getting a really good polyol they’re going to be much cheaper than a really good greenhouse so yeah budget friendly poly
Tunnel still allow you to grow things that you otherwise wouldn’t have grown it allow you to expand the growing season but you are going to have to replace the cover after a certain number of years you have to um be prepared for that so you may be spending more money
In the long run there with the greenhouse um less budget friendly option initially um will hold in heat better but less humidity so you probably won’t have a problem with disease as much and also maintenance is probably going to be cheaper in the long run as
Well because glass is going to last much longer than a poonal cover so yeah I hope that helped you I know my answer was probably a little bit messy and a little bit all over the place but I tried to put it in the best way I could
And I hope that managed to help you okay next question hi James when you plant your Sprouts do you dig over the ground in winter when area is clear and let it settle then rake over ready for planting how do you prepare ground for Sprouts and cabbages well cabbages and other
Brasas can be very prone to a thing called Club root if the soil is too acidic so in the past any beds that I have for brasas I will apply some Garden lime the previous Autumn and then I’ll let that settle into the soil and I’ll
Give it a quick rake or a quick dig when I’m planting my brasas and that will change the acidity of the soil it will make it a little bit more neutral you can’t add too much though you do have to be careful when adding lime cuz you
Don’t want to make it too alkaline so that’s what I’ll do before planting brassas especially if the soil is on the acidic side and I’ve never had any problems with Club root it is a disease that stays in the soil and there are there are neighboring plots that have a
Big problem with Club Ro thankfully I’ve not had a problem with it probably because I’ve applied Garden lime previously or just because I’m lucky but yeah and I will dig in horse manure as well you know well rotted HSE manure I’ll apply at the Autumn before and let
It sit and I’ll dig it in um obviously with that HSE manure can be on the acidic side so I have counterbalance that with the lime as well and yeah I will just um give it a quick dig in in the spring I’ll make sure that the
Ground is uh not too loose because brassers do like a firm bed as well and that also will reduce the risk of Club root and I will when I plant my brasas I’ll just lightly pat down around the the base of the plant so that it is
Compacted a little bit just lightly and I’ve been using a lot of cabbage colors and things like that as well to reduce the risk of cabbage root fly attack as well so that’s what I like to do with that have to net my brasas over as well
Because we have pigeons on the allotment site which are really really bad during the growing season so I have to net all them over unfortunately because they really love um eating cabbages and things like that they just completely decimate the whole thing the whole lot just is gone overnight it’s really really crazy
So so yeah with my Sprouts this year I had to net them over obviously and I applied a good good bit of well rotted hem manure in there as well and the Sprouts are doing brilliantly at the moment should have some really nice Sprouts in time for Christmas so yeah
That’s what I do every year horse manure um I like to use quite a lot of it on my alotment with my brascas as well now on the video which I asked people to ask me questions for the Q&A someone brought up um a question about asking me to talk
About successional planting um for different times of the year I spinach lettuce Etc and they’re interested to know my favorite varieties to grow as well now I don’t want to go too much into detail on this Q&A video but I would just like to include that as well
Because they did ask that question there and um yeah successional sewing is something which I’m still trying to get to grips with myself actually it is quite hard and requires a lot of organization I think anyway um you know it can be quite difficult because there different factors at play as well like
The weather um pests and diseases and things like that and no matter how much you plan things can go wrong and things can take longer than you expected them to and if you’re successional sewing and planning to have things replaced them after you’ve harvested them you know
That can be a big problem with some things so yeah sometimes things go wrong for me I do like to have something ready to go in after I harvested it um to try and extend my harvests and extend the growing season it’s like like Lett uses
And spinaches for example you know um I may sew some more seeds every couple of weeks so I have a continuous supply of harvests um like I might sew one row of lettuce um at the beginning of March and then 3 or 4 weeks later I’ll sew another
Row lettuce so that once I’ve started picking the first lettuce and I’ve picked a few good few leaves off those I’ll have some more to pick a few weeks later as well that’s just one example another example would be spring onions sewing a few of them every few weeks um during the early
Part of the growing season and then things like beetroot as well beetroot is good good one for successional sewing as well even things that may go in after you’ve harvested a main crop for example like you may have harvested your sweet corn in August or you may have harvested your pole
Beans um or you may have harvested your potatoes and you may want to stick quickly stick some dwarf beans in there towards the end of the growing season to try and Achieve another crop um many there many different things which you can Su there are many different things
Which you can successionally sew and get away with more of a and more of a harvest and May try and do a video on that um but I am still letting myself as I said before so it’s very so it might be a very Eric so it might be a very
Experimental video but I will try and possibly do that and my favorite varieties to grow it’s hard to say exactly what varieties I grow because um I tend to do different varieties every single year but the things which I like to grow the most of is things like tomatoes onions potatoes
Um I love growing beans and I grow Scarlet Emperor running beans every single year because those are the varieties which my dad grew and when I was growing up those are the varieties which I grew with him and I have taken a lying for and I have taken a lying for French
Beans lately as well and I’m going to be growing some dwarf French beans next year some stringless varieties and climbing French B and and climbing French bean Blue Lake as well another stringless variety so there are many different things which I like to grow and in fact I like growing
Pretty much everything I think it’d be pretty pointless if I didn’t like growing it um but yeah they’re just my top things which I enjoy growing the most at the allotment and the things which I have most success with as well so that was my very first Q&A um let me
Know what you guys think and if you have any questions or any feedback let me know in the comments below I tried to answer them the best way I could I’m not an expert and I’m still learning like everybody else so I hope you like the video um remember to hit that like
Button if you did because the support really does mean a lot and if you’d like to see more videos like this allotment gardening related or just general gardening to be honest then remember to subscribe to the channel and press that Bell icon as well so you never miss
Whenever I upload new videos which is every single week usually I try I try and get videos done every week so I hope you all stay safe and stay warm during these cold winter months and I will see you in the next one stay safe happy
Gardening and I will see you in the next one
1 Comment
Lovely video Jim and great answers. Here’s hoping you have a very Merry Christmas with the family, Ali 🤶🎄🇨🇦