National Allotments Week
Top tips from Nick Hamilton of Barnsdale Gardens
‘National Allotments Week’ falls on the 7th to the 13th of August this year. We are already mid-way through this auspicious week, but planning is key when it comes to success when growing edibles and ornamentals in your gardening plot.
Top tips from Nick Hamilton of Barnsdale Gardens
Nick Hamilton, owner of Barnsdale Gardens, has a fountain of knowledge when it comes to every avenue of horticulture and has shared a fine array of top tips for allotment gardening below.
Plan, plan and plan again!
Before getting carried away ordering seed make sure you have a basic plan in place of what to sow, when and where.
Pesky flies!
If you have suffered from carrot fly cover all sowings of carrots and parsnips with insect netting from sowing for the life of the crop.
Keep on running!
Sow two or three extras of runner and French beans, three weeks later than your last sowing, so that you extend the season when everyone else’s beans are running out of steam.
Slowly slowly catchy veggies!
Use “catch crops” between slow growing plants, such as brassicas, to maximise the cropping space you have and therefore increase the amount of veg produced.
Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle
Make cabbage root fly pads out of 10cm squares of cardboard. It is recycled and the cardboard can be left in place, as it rots away into the ground.
The ‘Kitchen Garden’ at Barnsdale, as seen in the images above and below, offers an insight into how the practices in the tips above are put into practice. This small, decorative and highly productive garden is a fine example of sensible, sustainable gardening which offers a magnificent harvest time after time.
There’s plenty to see and do all year round at Barnsdale Gardens!
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