ET

Saturday 12 May 2001

Don't be weather-beaten

Patience is the key to a good growing season, says Victor Osborne

AS the wettest winter for centuries has spilled over into a bleak spring, many gardeners must be surveying their vegetable plots with despair. The ground is waterlogged and cold and the air unseasonably chilly. When the sun does appear, it makes slow progress in warming both. Seeds sown into inhospitable soil have probably rotted or been swept away by rain, and fruit blossom has been shrivelled by frosts. Can anything be salvaged from such a dismal start to the growing season?

Yes. Just about everything. But patience is the key. There are ways of coping with nature in a curmudgeonly mood, from covering the soil to greater use of containers. The most important is to garden according to the weather and not the calendar.

Almost as important as patience is accepting the limitations imposed by the weather. Nothing can be done about waterlogged ground except waiting for it to drain, which it will do eventually. Walking on it to put in peas or beans to meet the sowing dates on the packets not only means that the seeds will die, but the ground will be compressed into a pan of hard earth which plants will find difficult or impossible to grow through.

Spring on my suburban allotment is running four to five weeks late, and it is warmer there in London's microclimate than in many parts of the country. Sensible plot-holders have delayed sowing by that amount of time or longer, testing to see if the ground is ready. To do this, brush away the top inch of soil in two places and press the palm of a hand on to the ground underneath. If it is cold, wait.

My soil is light and free-draining, so the main problem is getting it to warm up. Until it does, I am not planting any seeds directly into the ground, except potatoes, onion sets and the garlic which was sown last September.

Everything is being raised in seed trays and the seedlings transplanted into pots, where they can grow on until all danger of frost is over. This means the end of May, though frost - and even snow - have been recorded as late as June. Carrots and beetroot will not tolerate being moved, so I will wait until next month before sowing them in the ground. The crops will be smaller than April-sown ones but just as tasty.

Luckily, I finished building an 8ft x 6ft greenhouse a month ago which can protect the trays and pots. Gardeners without one, can buy a coldframe or improvise one from plastic. There is another advantage to container-growing. Allotments tend to have a many more pests than gardens because there are no fences or walls between them. Seedlings can be destroyed by snails, slugs and eelworm. Strongly growing, pot-raised plantlets are more able to shrug off pest damage.

My early potatoes, normally planted on St Patrick's Day, March 17, were not put in until the middle of April. The first leaves are showing and they need to be earthed up into ridges. I usually do no more than a token ridge for earlies as they do not stay in the ground long enough to grow larger than egg size, but this year they need high ridges to protect against late frosts, which will scorch the leaves and check growth. A high ridge also provides extra room for potatoes to grow in, while blocking light which would turn exposed tubers green and poisonous.

So far, the weather has been less damaging to fruit bushes, though a sharp frost now the fruitlets are forming could devastate the crop with no chance of a second flush of blossom to replace it, so protection should be readily available.

Nature has a way of compensating for its bad behaviour. Once summer does arrive, the vegetable plot will go into overdrive as plants make up for lost time, leaving gardeners rushing around to keep up with them.

Top tips for making the most of your vegetables Warm up the soil: Cloches, horticultural fleece, recycled windows and sheets of plastic all raise the temperature of the soil so that seeds and plantlets get off to a good start.

Tunnel cloches can be made by stretching plastic sheeting over hoops made from wire coat hangers or plastic plumbing pipe. Anchor the edges with stones. They can also be used to extend the growing season into the autumn.

Hotbeds: Make a wooden frame, 2ft to 3ft high, and fill it three-quarters full with fresh stable manure, which can be mixed with grass clippings and other organic material. Cover with several inches of soil.

Manure heats rapidly as it rots, keeping roots of plants so snug that it is possible to grow vegetables through the winter. Particularly good for growing melons and cucumbers.

Frost protection: Fruit trees and bushes should be covered at vulnerable times with fleece or sacking, which can be filled with straw if a harsh frost is expected.

Any kind of covering will give some protection, even sheets of newspaper or plastic supermarket bags. Bottle cloches for individual plants can be made by cutting off the bottom of plastic drink bottles.

Earth up potatoes, rhubarb and asparagus as new growth emerges. Onions, leeks and garlic will withstand hard frost but might go to seed early as a result.

Getting a head start: Sow beans and peas in a length of plastic guttering indoors and slide into a furrow outside when ready.

Potatoes can be covered by black plastic sheeting. Cut holes for the leaves to grow through. This will give the plants protection from frost, as well as suppress weeds.

It's a good idea to sow sweetcorn and sweet peas in the cardboard inner tube of rolls of paper and foil to avoid having to pot on and disturb the roots, which they hate.

-- Anonymous, May 13, 2001