Growing peas.

BBC - Gardening - Gardening Guides - Techniques - Growing peas:
"About peas Peas come in two varieties: shelling and mangetout. Shelling peas mature at different times. Earlies take around 12 weeks, second earlies take 14 weeks and maincrops take 16 weeks. Shelling peas come in round and wrinkle-seeded varieties. Choose round seeds for hardiness and early sowings, and wrinkled for sweetness and summer sowings. Peas require a sunny, nutrient-rich, moisture-retentive site. Dig over the soil and add plenty of compost or well-rotted manure - this will help to improve the soil's moisture-retaining ability in hot, dry summers."

Herbs.

Тысячелистник агератум - Achillea ageratum, Mace.

Тысячелистник агератум - Achillea ageratum
- на кухне. Веточки т. обыкновенного используем при засолке и мариновании огурцов, грибов, кабачков.
Горьковатые и терпкие на вкус листья и цветки добавим как приправу к жирным блюдам (гусиному жаркому, свинине, колбасе), в салаты в качестве специи - они приятно пахнут, и способствуют перевариванию пищи, и даже, говорят, помогают бороться с ожирением.

Кто-то, как Пульхерия Ивановна из гоголевских «Старосветских помещиков», высушенные веточки добавит в водку, которая мало того что приятна на вкус, но «если у кого болят лопатки или поясница, то очень помогает».
Когда-то пивовары заменяли тысячелистником хмель. И пиво, сделанное таким образом, по мнению Линнея, пьется легче.
Чай из тысячелистника, как считалось, помогал от меланхолии и вылечивал простуды и лихорадки.

Для лекарственных целей используют в основном т. обыкновенный, который собирают в момент цветения, в солнечные дни, когда он обладает наибольшей целительной силой. Отметился тысячелистник и в магии, использовался для гаданий, ворожбы и даже для наведения порчи (потому еще и дьявольская трава, игрушка дьявола). Эфирные масла, которые придают тысячелистнику специфический аромат, входят в состав отдушек для травяных ванн. Тысячелистник - прекрасный медонос.
---------------------
Mace, English Achillea ageratum (decolorans)
English Mace forms clumps of narrow, aromatic leaves with white flowers in summer. A good culinary herb; use in soups, stews and potato salads, it is also great in chicken dishes and complements other herbs well. Height 5ins (14cm), 18ins (45cm) when flowering.

Achillea ageratum.
Also known as English mace, this aromatic perennial will grow almost anywhere, in any type of soil and looks statuesque in a large terracotta pot. Young tender leaves are best used in soups and for flavoring rice and pasta.
Height: 24–28 inches
Spread: 24–28 inches
Hardiness: Fully hardy plants
Soil Preference: Well-drained soil, moist soil
Sun or Shade: Full sun

The Kingston Lacy allotments.

National Trust’s Kingston Lacy estate in Dorset: "Between February 2009 and 2012 we created 1,200 new allotments and growing spaces on our land.
A set of 118 new allotments for the community are now open on the Kingston Lacy estate in Dorset."



1.


2.


3.


4.


5.


6.


7.


8.


9.


10.


11.


12.


13.


14.


15.


16.

That's how it should be.

For lazy gardener.

Ethelind Fearon's The Reluctant Gardener.
The Reluctant Gardener, the short and easy ways to good husbandry, you can play with vegetables to save yourself work and avoid growing more than you need.
Gardening, like entertaining and cooking should be done with whimsy and joy.
Use of mulches and irrigation channels to conserve water (and effort), home-made liquid manures and she comes close to no-dig gardening.
You would be surprised how much of the grim toil undergone by the allotment holder is unnecessary.
a. That half the things you sweat over are better bought than grown.
b. The ones that are better grown can be grown much more easily than you thought.
and c. Quite a lot of them will serve two purposes, thereby cutting out one operation, one ache, one moan.

1. Don't toss the compost out the kitchen door!
2. Better to grow Welsh onions which have authentic onion flavour but are no hassle as they will grow anywhere and right through winter. Self-generating, when the clump gets too big you can split them which is why they are known as 'everlasting' onions.
3.Growing potatoes- a shortcut method.
- Dig a little so the delicate roots of the potato can 'run about'.
Cut out a trench, keeping the soil on one side and place the your seed potatoes on the floor of it.
Fill the trench with compost, and when the potatoes grow through, earth them up with the soil you dug out from the trench.
By growing them in 'soft luscious compost' you will get nothing but 100% perfect potatoes, and none 'baffled and battered' as they try to push through inhospitable soil.
4. Calabrese and turnips produce roots in summer and 'greens' in winter (though not from the same plant). There are ornamental kales, good to eat but which can be used for flower borders or arranging as 'widely used by our most famous decorators.
5. French beans are a case in point as they can be eaten as green beans (haricots verts), as flageolets (when they are eaten like fresh peas) and as dried haricots for winter.
6. Not a chemical control, but my Father used to have a lot of trouble with carrot root fly until he started using old coffee grounds a couple of years ago. He collects the spent grounds from the coffee shop in his local Sainsburys when he's shopping - just leaves them a clean bucket when he goes in and collects it, full of grounds, on his way out. Then liberally spreads the grounds round the carrot plants, it seems to work very well - now that I've got myself an allotment I'll be trying it too.

My neighbour gets a paintbrush and splashes (sprints?)* paraffin along the rows when he thins them out.

From!

How to Grow Perennial Welsh Onions.

Wandering Between Two Worlds: How to Grow Perennial Welsh Onions: "How to Grow Perennial Welsh Onions"

'via Blog this'

Beans: How to grow

Beans: How to grow - Telegraph:

 "earliest sowing date outside for French beans is May 15. To speed things up, I put both runner and French beans on a damp kitchen towel in my warm kitchen and keep it moist. After a few days, the seeds swell before producing a tiny shoot. I then sow these in the ground (about two inches deep) or in polystyrene plant modules in a cold frame.
They sit outside my sunny, sheltered back door for about five days before they are finally planted out next to the canes.
 'Celebration', a rosy-pink flowered variety from Thompson & Morgan - are the most decorative varieties"
PS
We planted our beans outside straight into the ground today, we did the same last year and had no problems.
Я посеяла сегодня в землю на огороде.
'via Blog this'

Coriander.

Sow coriander every three to four weeks, in situ, for a continual supply. Sprinkle seedsover compost and cover with 1cm of compost before watering well. thin out seedlings to around 5cm between plants.
Coriander - Lazy Allotment:

'via Blog this'

Lettuce.

Lettuces to grow-
Cos Lettuce: Little Gem - 'Little Gem' will do well from an early sowing and certainly is always worth finding room for in the garden, 
Lobjoits Green- 'Lobjoits Green Cos' is a better cos, much bigger, rather slower to develop and with a shorter season, but probably the best lettuce that you can grow or eat,
Rouge d’Hiver- 'Rouge d'Hiver' is a cos that will grow in cooler conditions (although not really over winter).
Butterhead Lettuce: Tom Thumb, Merveille de Quatre Saisons.
Looseleaf: Salad Bowl, Red Oak Leaf.
Red Lettuce: Red Salad Bowl, Aruba.
Iceberg: Mini Green.
Winter Lettuce: Winter Density, All the Year Round -  'All the Year Round' is, as the name implies, hardy and adaptable enough to crop most of the year, and while not the best you can grow, it's a lot better than almost anything you can buy, especially in that spring gap when there is precious little else in the garden.
.


Mistakes:
Dont plant too many seeds all at the same time and far too close together. 


Lettuce pray.
Lettuce germinate at surprisingly low temperatures; many will fail to germinate once the soil temperature rises above 25C - which you often get from mid-June to August. This can lead to a dearth of lettuce in August, as mature plants suddenly go to seed and there is a lack of young plants to replace them, because germination has been poor in the previous month. There are ways around this. Sow in the afternoon so that the vital germination phase coincides with the cool of night. Sow in seed trays and put them in the shade, and cover with glass or newspaper to keep them cool until the seedlings appear. And if the seeds are showing no signs of life after a week, put them in the fridge for 24 hours. In fact, late August- and September-sown lettuce do very well because the nights are getting cooler.


If you are sowing directly into the soil (something I never do nowadays, as slugs attack the very young seedlings in my garden), water the drill before sowing to cool the soil down. And make sure you sow into a shaded part of the garden.

Your roots: How to get the most from your lettuce leaves

Lettuce needs cool temperatures to germinate, and may become dormant if the soil is above 20 C. They like a rich soil with good drainage.

Most lettuce is best sown in drills about in deep as thinly as possible. Water the drill before you sow the seed. Flick the soil back over the sown drill and mark it. Thin as soon as the seeds can be handled, leaving an initial inch between seeds, then use the young lettuce alternately until the final crop has 4in space between each plant. I now sow all my lettuce individually in soil blocks or plugs in a cold frame or a greenhouse and transplant when they are a few inches tall (they resist slug attacks).

The following have a good selection of seed: Simpson's Seeds (plus nine rare organic lettuce from France), 27 Meadowbrook, Old Oxted, Surrey RH8 9LT (tel/fax             01985 845 004      ); www.naturalhub.com/index.html- an excellent lettuce page; The Veg Finder (£5.99, The Henry Doubleday Association), 20 pages of lettuce; Ryton Organic Gardens, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry (            02476 303 517      ) has a huge range of salad crops growing under different organic conditions; Heritage Vegetables by Sue Stickland (£14.99, Gaia Books Ltd) is an excellent introduction to rarer and more interesting vegetables, including 20 lettuce.