These rhubarbs are grown from seed. I’ve got quite a few of them. The idea is to have a big rhubarb bed on the allotment and ensure everyone I know is growing rhubarb! It’s dear to buy in the shops but I think it’ll be well worth while having plenty about! We’ve got a communal strawberry patch so why not a rhubarb patch?


They were started in a seed tray in the greenhouse and then potted up into bigger pots. I’m not sure whether they’ll be big enough to put out from this site pot or whether they should be potted up again.

A rhubarb flower usually indicates the rhubarb isn’t happy about something. I think mine has a black currant bush too close to it so I will be moving that in the autumn.

The rhubarb flower is good at hiding – but it’s a thick stem that doesn’t develop a full leaf of its own. It make have small leaves coming off it. The plant puts a lot of energy into making seeds so it’s best to cut it out as soon as you see it.
It’s worth checking your rhubarb even if you don’t want any to pick every week or so just to make sure it’s not being naughty!

This is the flower in the kitchen. I took it in to undo the leaf around the flower so you could see it better. It’s probably quite pretty if you let it flower properly but I would be worried about how much energy it would take from the plant. I have thrown it on my compost heap.
I also picked enough rhubarb for a pudding after tea tonight!

Pinch them out or not?

There are lots of reasons not to let them grow –
they crowd the plant cutting air flow,
make it too heavy,
increase the watering demand on the plant,
make it harder to get other side shoots out
make it harder to keep an eye on the plant
makes it more likely the plant will get damaged under its own weight.

So pinch them out – or use a sharp knife if you don’t seem to be able to manage it. It’s easier when they’re very small to just remove them with a thumbnail but if you miss some they get bigger and it’s neater for the plant to get less damage if you use a sharp blade.

Don’t throw them away though! Stick them in a pot of compost, or bottle of water and see if they grow!

Free tomato plants!
Last year was the first year I tried this and I got some tomatoes off one of the side shoots I planted!
I will be doing this again – and giving them to friends so they can have a grow at growing tomatoes too!

Much too early for mine – I’ve only just planted my seeds! I feel like I’m starting a bit late but I reckon they’ll catch up soon enough!

They might just look like a sea of green but there are a lot of different weeds in this patch. There’s couch grass, other grasses, buttercup, thistle, dock and nettles.

Inset photos are dock, thistle and nettle.

How do you tackle a plot like this?

I’d start by strimming it all down as close to the ground as possible. You can then dig the ground over and remove the roots. Put all the cuttings and roots in a big pile, cover and leave to rot down.

You could try lazy bed gardening where you mark out a bed and then fold the outer thirds on top of the inner thirds. This creates a raised bed. In theory the weeds die as they’re no longer exposed to the sun. You can fill the middle with muck before you turn over the edges.
This sort of bed is easier than digging all the weeds out and can be mulched with grass clippings over the next few months to help ensure the weeds don’t come back.
Plant potatoes in it as they’re good for starting off with.

Another approach would be to weedkill the patch and then dig it over.
You could also weedkill the bed and then cover it with weed suppressant materials like newspaper and mulch over and plant through the layers.
Each gardener will have their own method of attack. Some will start quietly in a corner and keep going until they have turned it allover.
Some will frenetically bounce around the plot until it’s a maze of half dug patches.
As long as you keep attacking it you’ll win the battle, or at least appear to be.
An untended plot means weeds get chance to go to seed and spread.
This is bad for other allotments and needs to be dealt with.

At least you know if weeds are growing then the soil is reasonably ok. The lush growth on this plot tells me it’s pretty fertile. Also nettles are supposed to indicate fertile rich soil.

It’s always nice when you start to spot the plants coming up. Here’s a photo of a raised bed. It’s filled with soil from underneath some trees on the plot.
The bed has leek (white giant), celery, celeriac, spring onion, leek (jolant) and broad beans in.
I’ve never grown in raised beds before but thought I’d give it a whirl! Probably a good job as the ‘drought’ we’re experiencing has ‘droughted’ us another couple of inches of rain in the last week.

My spuds are coming up too! Earlies and maincrops!

We’ve got a communal strawberry bed that has plenty of flowers now!
We can’t be long off strawberry season!
The bed has just been weeded by someone – so it could well be a good time to put some straw mulch round them – it’ll help keep the weeds down in future too!

Just had a walk round the allotment site.
It’s a lot calmer now and it’s been sunny. My wheelbarrow had fallen over but that was it on my plot. The wind hasn’t done as much damage as the slugs.

There’s not a lot going on – but I did spot several ladybirds on my compost heap.

There’s plenty of places to hide on my allotment plot – I have one enormous heap of compost and a compost bin too.

Sadly it’s not a very exciting bit of video – just shows a magpie swooping about and then the wind blowing at tarps covering weeds and compost heaps.

My partner Nic told me it’s the most boring video he’s ever seen – so you have been warned!

The main damage has been someone’s shed roof felting has partially come off. Their plastic greenhouse has also broken itself. It survived the wind the other day after blowing over so they tied it to the shed, sadly this just meant it mangled itself about as the wind ripped round it.

A compost bin blew about and was put safely at the edge of the site so it didn’t damage anyone’s plot. Lots of weed cover fabric came undone too – it seems the wind was powerful enough to keep at it until it got under and once it gets under a bit it makes it easier to rip away.

On a TV gardening program recently they showed someone who had an allotment who only grew euphorbia on it.
To my mind this is wrong.
An allotment is for the growing of vegetables to feed your family. Yes, by all means have some flowers, they’re good companion plants in many cases and help encourage bees and other beneficial insects to your plot.
But dedicating a whole plot to a plant you can’t eat sounds wrong to me. It’s against the very spirit of allotmenting.

This led to a discussion with friends about how many plots people have. The majority of people have one plot, but on a nearby plot a family has two plots – the husband and wife have a plot each. This came about because of a lack of people on the waiting list – rather than leave plots to go to rack and ruin there are a couple of couples on a nearby plot who have a plot each.
Whilst it seems immoral when that sites waiting list is so huge, what’s the answer? Do you throw people off a plot that they have been growing on for years?
If they were growing lots of non-edibles, or growing things that they gave away then that would be wrong. It would be unfair for those people on the waiting list to not have a plot whilst someone had one that they used for ‘non-traditional allotmenting’.

I’ve been told about one man who has several plots and uses one for just growing pumpkins on. He gives them away. This strikes me as very strange! Why should he be allowed to have an extra plot that he doesn’t eat anything off?

The 1922 Allotment act definition of an allotment garden is “an area not exceeding 40 pole used wholly or mainly for the cultivation of vegetable or fruit crops for consumption by the occupier or his family”.

This is a fair definition for me. Why would you use an allotment as anything else? If you want to grow flowers then grow a few, but not a whole plot worth.

Some sites set percentages that may be used for non-vegetable growing – and this excludes any wild flower meadow that people might try to claim they grow.

There are some people who keep racing pigeons on their allotment – and that’s all they do. If you drive past allotments that look like shed-shanty towns then the chances are there’s some pigeons in there somewhere. I’ve read too about people having cooking facilities, running water and even beds in their allotment sheds. At what point do you draw the line?

If there were no waiting lists for allotments then the issue would be one of solely the land being used for growing something. When waiting lists are so high and full of people wanting to actually grow food then I think the plot-hoggers need sorting out.

How can action be taken without the clamp down being portrayed as mean in the press though? Perhaps there is a need for a campaign of ‘allotments are for growing food’ perhaps – to highlight the problems of waiting lists and those who do other things on their allotments.

I’ve got some comfrey roots in pots outside (Hopefully they won’t be blowing away in the gales). I’ll be planting them on my allotment in order to crop the leaves on a regular basis once they’re established.

This blog shows a comfrey bed! The photo is right at the end and it features watering kits for tomatoes – something of interest to anyone who grows in a greenhouse – drip feed set ups.

Once my comfrey bed looks this impressive I’ll post a photo!