A series of colds as well as the inclement weather have seen us huddled fireside these past few months with little inclination to venture onto our wintry and wind battered allotment. Instead, a spot of indoor gardening – poring over seed catalogues and planning the year’s growing selection.

Plus this week, sowing a batch of sweet peas in individual seed pots for germination under cover.

Sweet peas are my favourite of all the annual flowers and an abundant sowing means armfuls of heavenly scented blooms to adorn the house all summer.  They can be sown directly outside from April, but germinating them indoors gives you a head start when it comes to flowering.

Sweet Peas have long trailing roots and so need to be germinated in deep pots. You can buy special “root trainer” plastic pots for this purpose, but I find that the insides of toilet rolls work just as well.  Because they are biodegradable you not only avoid adding to the throw away plastic mountain but you can plant the cardboard roll straight into the ground, thus avoiding disturbance to the nascent root system.

One word of caution if you use this method, the roots really are very tenacious and will colonise the whole seed tray if you are not careful.  To avoid this, place each roll or group of rolls in a larger pot with a firm bottom to it two to three weeks after germination.

For vegetable seeds, we have a handful of favourite seed suppliers and seed varieties that we order year after year.  But then each growing season it’s fun to throw in a couple of newcomers.  Sometimes these are successful, like last year’s Thelma Sanders winter squash; now a firm fixture on on the allotment.   Just as often they are not (Sarah Raven’s beautifully packaged but disappointing purple peas to give one example) and you just have to put it down to experience.

With some vegetable seeds, there are a whole tranche of things that seem to grow reliably from any supplier. Things like perpetual spinach, turnips, radishes and broad beans to name a few.  But with other things we’ve found a considerable variation.  So with these varieties, we stick to a particular supplier for seeds that:

• provide high germination rates;
• grow reliably on our exposed and often dry allotment;
• result in superior tasting produce.

Franchi Seeds of Italy

Climbing French Bean Trionfo Violetto – Best of all the purple beans we have tried,  even in dry conditions.
Tromba of Albenga– Amusing trombone shaped courgette that can be eaten as a summer squash or hardened off and kept for up to three months in the winter.
Snow Pea Gigante Svizero – beautiful mauve flowers and tasty pods that stay sweet and crunchy throughout the whole growing season.

And the newcomer we are trying is Cima di Rapa which is a type of turnip grown specifically for its peppery green leaves.

Simpson’s Seeds

Salad Leaf Mixture Mesclun 2 and 3 – I’ve tried lots of varieties of cut and come again salad and this has proved the most successful with a long harvesting period and slow to go to seed in dry weather.  Mesclun 3 has an added sprinkling of oriental greens.
Crown Prince Winter Squash – Simpson’s is one of a handful of suppliers of the beautiful and ever reliable Crown Prince but to my mind they are the best.
Jacob’s Bright Lights Chard – This colourful chard variety looks pretty enough for the flower border and is good value, providing firm ribs which can be steamed and eaten with butter like asparagus as well as spinach like green leaves.

Plus we are trying for the first time Spring Onion North Holland Blood Red Redmate, a purple spring onion which can also be left in the ground and harvested as a full sized bulb.

The Real Seed Company

Thelma Sanders Sweet Potato Squash – one of the newcomers to our allotment last year and we would be placing an order for more…except that The Real Seed Company is fantastically generous with the number of seeds they provide in a packet – so we easily have enough for another year, maybe two.

The cool wet weather might have dampened some of the bank holiday jubilations, but my it’s good for the allotment!

After two years of dry, hot springs when all but the hardiest seedlings shrivelled in the parched soil, this year’s heavy rain is a welcome relief.

Spinach, chard, salad leaves and peas have all shot up. So too the broad beans which are awash with flowers with not a blackfly in sight. Majestic along the side border are the dozen or so artichokes, doubled in size since they were planted last year and already well into bud. So the prospect of an abundant harvest for both eating fresh and bottling.

Ah, the delights of the perennial vegetable! They re-sprout each year, with the minimum of effort. For an amateur allotmenteer (or anyone who has a life outside of the vegetable patch!) their great advantage cannot be understated.

The herb garden too is a resplendent mix of green and mauve, from the smoky grey of purple sage, to the golden green of marjoram, the whole bed, peppered with violet chive flowers and seeding parsley.

One downside of all this rain is the speed with which the weeds take hold! So a two pronged campaign of attack:

The first, made possible by the arrival in our life of the wonderful Ian and his seemingly inexhaustable supply of horse manure. Good for the organic grower at any time, but an essential part of the no dig, weed free policy. Basically you heap a load of manure over the vegetable beds every few weeks when the weeds start to take hold. The idea was passed on to me by one of my yoga students, Trish, who from her five allotments in Wells, grows an impressive selection of organic fruit and veg with which she supplies some of the top restaurants in the area.

Second part of the campaign, which involves even less effort, is to make friends with some of the weeds. I found this particularly successful in the flower garden last year. Having allowed some of the wild flowers and grasses to take hold, the effect of them interspersed with the cultivated varieties was incredibly pleasing. So this year on the allotment a similar tack in the perennial beds where I have allowed ground cover wild flowers to flourish alongside self sown companion plants like marigold and nasturtiums – both of which incidentally add a splash of colour to the summer salad bowl.

I have to confess that this cool wet weather has seen us huddled indoors rather than on the allotment so we are very behind this year with our planting programme. But the last few days have been a bit brighter -and so the allotment challenge begins!

Biggest hurdle is to clear the 7 foot wide beds that surround the entire allotment. These are intended to be perennial beds and were planted last year with cardoons, artichokes, sorrel, and some roses plus some wigwams of peas and beans. The idea being to limit the amount of toil required each year by designating a good portion of the growing area to plants that spring back up each year. It looked fantastic in full flower but we made the classic mistake of leaving it all over winter – the result: a wild flower meadow of thistles, nettles and grasses over three foot high. After a backbreaking few days we are resolved – NEVER AGAIN! Whatever the weather we will cover the dormant beds with black plastic or cardboard over the winter.

Less daunting are the dozen 6×6 foot beds which take up the remainder of the growing area. These are easy to maintain and with wide grass paths surrounding them, easy to access too. At the moment they are verdant with lettuce, fennel, radicchio and chard – plenty to provide a tasty salad bowl each day. Really fresh and a fraction of the cost of buying it in bags from Waitrose.

Then there is the asparagus. Here we have had to exercise much patience. Asparagus has to be left until the third year before picking. Our second year plants have thrown up impressive shoots over two feet high. Very tempting to pick just one or two but we have resisted. Even our new purple asparagus, planted in April are poking cheekily through and will need covering soon if they are to withstand those pesky pigeons.

Also doing well are the broad beans – two beds planted three weeks apart. One of the first lessons we learned as allotmenteers is that it is very easy to get into the famine/feast cycle. One minute you are gazing hungrily at emerging pea shoots, say, the next minute, they’re coming out of your ears. The trick is, successional sowing of smaller crops to extend the eating season. We love broad beans so will be sowing at least one more bed before May is out.

Took our first tentative steps onto the allotment this week and despite the chaos of winter, were excited to see signs of spring, with colourful shoots of rhubarb, chard and cardoons sprouting  amongst the weeds. Thus encouraged, we began the considerable task of preparing the ground for sowing. First to go in were the broad beans – all heavily netted to protect the tasty shoots from hungry rabbits and birds.  Next up will be a batch of purple asparagus which should arrive before the end of the month.

We are still novice allotmenteers having taken over our patch of previously neglected ground in a nearby field 18 months ago.  Before that we bought all our veg from shops and markets.  But oh my goodness it tastes so much better freshly plucked!  And all the better too for not being chemically cleansed and encased in plastic.  So despite the hard work it is definitely worth it!