Here are a few snippets from Jim
Background
Jim is fairly new to his allotment and growing in general, with 2-3 years experience in the field. He’s found it easy enough to get going with lots of experienced growers around him and doesn’t take it too seriously if something fails. He’s happy to take experimental approaches and recognises the mental and physical benefits of his allotment time.
Produce
So far, Jim has grown strawberries, carrots, potatoes, asparagus, cauliflower, corn, tomatoes, cucumber, chillies, butternut squash and flowers. His most successful experiences to date have been with strawberries, cauliflower and potatoes. With potatoes, he has found that Maris Pipers, Charlotte and Désirée grow well. Like other growers, carrots have been his nemesis and he lost a year’s leeks to white rot. This year he has added cabbage to his plot and is experimenting with outdoor corn within a windbreak. Despite Jim’s limited experience, he has already grown corn successfully, which is known to be a challenge at this latitude.
Soil and allotment maintenance
Healthy soil to Jim has a good nutrient supply and is easy to dig with a free structure. As the plot is fairly new to Jim, he’s been testing the soil nutrients with a shop bought kit and pH probe but doesn’t have confidence in their accuracy. After finding his pH to be around 7.0-7.5, he used vinegar to increase the acidity in some parts of his plot. You can see from his soil test results that we plots we tested were quite different with the topsoil layer of the composted plot being around pH 6.4, and that of the non-composted plot being around pH 5.4.
Jim has already begun rotating his crops and is experimenting with garlic horse granules to treat the white rot fungus in the soil. His neighbours are interested in the results too. After loosing his corn to damp-related fungus last year, he will be more cautious about watering his nearby plants this year. He avoids chemical inputs and peat-based compost, favouring manure, fish blood and bones and home-made compost. All of Jim’s plot sections are dug, so here we tested the difference between a composted and non-composted plot where the soils looked quite different.
Tips for new growers in North East Scotland
Jim doesn’t feel qualified to give many recommendations when his more experienced neighbours are the ones producing show-quality vegetables. He does however favour an experimental approach and being part of the allotment community which has a wealth of knowledge to share. He gets a lot of information from the internet and applies a common-sense approach to the timing of sowing which he finds to be about a month later than the general UK advice. Like other growers in the region, he found that butternut wasn’t successful in the short growing season, but hasn’t given up on them yet.
Soil properties on Jim’s plot at Heathryfold
(Error bars show standard deviation from the mean)
of soil. (Error bars show standard deviation from the mean. Absence of error bars for “uncultivated”
due to single samples only.)
Note that soil properties may be highly variable within a short distance and figures given are not representative of the whole allotment site.
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