Hobbit Allotment!

[horticultural_hobbit]

I'm feeling the skinflintness, I wince everytime I see a the price of something that I would like to play with on the lotment. I will definitely keep an eye out for the poundland fleece. I'm back to school this week, so I will have to sneak time to go play with the lotment. Went into poundland today, and first of the gardening stuff has come in. I might also try planting onions around the carrots. Just as a hypothesis test. If it works, it works, if not, more space cultivated.

[snohare]

My binoculars aren't that powerful!

I thought you might have powerful friends in the Google Earth mapping company, veggie...I know they've been up Millan View once already, must be about time for an update.

Youngling, I operate on the principle that working with other scents around to cover the smell of disturbed carrot vegetation (such as an open bag of moist manure nearby, or a trayful of compost bree) may - perhaps - work, but really the only thing you can do is try to make sure there are no carrot flies around. That may simply mean ensuring there are none of the wild pest reservoirs like cow parsley - my area of ground is pretty likely to be the only area around that has such things, most of the gardens nearby are very enclosed and prettified, no veggies or weeds to be seen, and there is virtually no "wild" ground, just mown grass - but alas, I don't know what all the species are that would harbour carrot fly. And besides, if I have to choose between having keystone habitat species like tansy that attract some of the few butterflies ever seen around nowadays, or a good carrot crop - well, damn the carrots, there are enough of them in the world ! Better to rely on fleece and netting.
My ancient piece of Wondermesh has small tears in it, which may well be why I had such problems this last season. I have a cunning plan (we'll see how it goes) which involves getting builder's metal bands - stiff but curvable flat strips of metal about a centimetre wide, with perforations for screws every few millimetres - and cutting netting to fit a framework of these bands (in lieu of alkathene piping, which is a pain to work with and tends to wobble about, causing dips in the netting). The netting would be screwed onto the banding with very small nuts and bolts, or perhaps I will use a double layer of banding, one underneath and one above the net, screwed together twice at each end (to avoid longitudinal flexing). But I have a limited supply of banding so I am loathe to use it, and actually, as Two Sheds may bear out, I have used cheapo fleece very successfully in the past !
I have never yet bought an expensive piece of fleece, it has all been Poundland stuff, yet when I used it well weighted down at the edges, just draped over the carrots, as long as I remembered to avoid chafing on sharp objects the only problem I had was remembering to unfurl it to allow more room for the growing foliage. There may be a lesson there...KISS...

[veggiechicken]

Have you been looking at my washing line ? !

My binoculars aren't that powerful!

[Two_Sheds]

if sowing thinly is a carrot fly preventer...

It isn't !

Seriously, the only thing that will keep them off is very fine mesh, and that needs to be tacked down all the way round, because Momma Fly will get through even little holes

(look in my photo album if you're curious about trying Resistafly or Flyaway seed)

[horticultural_hobbit]

Happy new year, Sno! Couldn't miss the new year. Had to face it head on. Who knows what is going to happen.

Have stashed the MPC. Some of it is spent. Some of it I found in eager anticipation. The leaf mold won't be ready for some time. And my compost bins need more to be thrown into them over the coming year.

Definitely want to grow carrots. Window shopping for fleece to cover them.

[snohare]

Yes, it certainly sounds like Snadger has the germination thing well sorted. He's well clued up - I would probably be doing the same thing if it wasn't that I simply don't have any MPC, and can't afford any. I may have in a year or two, when my compost heaps have rotted down - if only I had done my leaf mould the first year I was there ! - but for the moment all I can do is mix the local molehills, all very claggy clay sadly, with sand and a tiny bit of peat. (My father burns peat. Being his gopher, I sometimes actually have the now-incredibly rare job of lifting peats by hand from the bog.)
There was something I was reading about the other day, which was supposed to be able to deter carrotfly from attacking carrots, when planted in amongst the rows. Not alliums, they are debatable, a root crop - salsify ? Scorzonera ? Hamburg parsley ? Can't remember, but I think it was something I've grown, so I was thinking to do one to every five carrot plants. Worth reading up more, if I can keep paying for the leccy I will have to chase it up.
The other thing I decided to do recently is to earth up my carrots this year, with a wee ridge. Read about that recently via the Vine, seems likely to protect the seedlings and expose the fly to predators/dehydration/grief.
Happy New Year by the way, young Hobbitling ! Best of luck for 2012. (How sad am I, saw the New Year in purely by accident, didn't realise the time because I was trying to find out the global emissions of non-anthropogenic greenhouse gases ! Gave up eventually, gave the dog a biscuit, went to bed. I think that qualifies for an anorak. )

[horticultural_hobbit]

Using Snadgers logic then, if I had a narrow furrow where I wanted to sow carrots. This was then lined with a couple of inches of MPC. I think I like that option....and if sowing thinly is a carrot fly preventer...I can see that...pots were never crammed full of carrots. That makes sense

[snohare]

You need deeper drawers

Have you been looking at my washing line ? !

[snohare]

Am still deliberating about I sow them.

I wouldn't even think of pots, or even loo roll inners. What I was going to do - this week in fact - was test germination in an old packet of Amsterdam Forcing 3, by using clingfilm and damp tissue paper, a la parsnips. (If you search around, there were some long threads on this a year or two back which gave some very successful techniques for germinating parsnips.)
Doing this with parsnips - I don't know about carrots - you can put the germinated seeds in a fridge to halt development, and plant them out when the outside conditions are appropriate. Either way, I am hoping that I can check the viability of the old seed, maybe use the viable ones; I suppose I should be researching the germination temperature for carrots, rather than non-anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions !
Mark you, my experience which I think is mirrored by many, is that regardless of germination methods, it's the slugs that do for the young 'uns. (Carrots, not hobbits.)
Folk think the seed didn't germinate - nah, they came up overnight and were eaten ! That might be another reason to have dry sandy soil on the surface...

[horticultural_hobbit]

Sno, this is why you are useful, and good piece of kit to have around.

I'm not too convinced about insulating the Wendy house yet. There is nothing in yet, bar embryonic spring hero cabbages I planted early this month. I will worry about heat rentention when I start kicking seedlings off ma's window sill.

Didn't know that about Carrots. I could try say a meter squared and see where I go with that. But Loads i want to try

The carrot bed is 12 sq m without the leaf mould builders bag. Pops doesn't need an excuse to w*ckes, though he might think it odd that I want to go. Previously, my only experience of growing carrots was in using MPC and in pots. The results were all right, I was amazed. Was fluke that there was no carrot fly. Am still deliberating about I sow them. Direct as expected or toilet roll inners, with fleece over the top.

[veggiechicken]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater


Where's that Sno, he's probably knee deep in hogmany...

That's a lot better than being deep in humanure

[veggiechicken]

"Not sure about the salsify or scorzonera. "
You need deeper drawers - Long Johns perhaps?

[snohare]

he's probably knee deep in hogmany

Ha ! I say again - HA !

No, I had actually forgotten it was Hogmanay. Winter has left such marks in my mind in years gone by... well, I celebrate each night's survival by getting up each fresh new day. Nothing more is needed. Needless to say, I am considered a bit of a killjoy, locally.
But then my parents think a good Hogmanay is sitting watching Jimmy Shand and The White Heather Club on the telly... ( Please God, let it not have been perpetuated on YouTube.)

Just wondering it if is useful to insulate the wendy house

Well, the question you must ask yourself is what does the insulation do ? Answer: it retains heat, in order that plants may avoid damage from cold or soil may stay warmer despite overnight radiant emittance. (Radiant emittance is where energy/heat is lost to space at night-time. It happens more if there is no barrier to Infra Red wavelengths, eg clouds, GHG's or glass.)
If you have no plants in there to warm, and if there is no soil you need to raise the temperature of, then there is no point - unless perhaps you expect not to have the chance to do it later on in early springtime.
Up here I would not expect it to retain much extra heat anyway, but where you are I think you might perhaps find it gives enough extra oomph to speed up germinating winter lettuces, claytonia, and the like.
I would suggest - tentatively, don't take this as the voice of personal experience - that you might do better if you get a builder's bag full of sand, and dig that into the top few inches of your carrot bed. Failing that, at least a few bags of builder's sand from your local B&Q. Carrots really seem to love sandy soil.
At least, the damn things are growing away in my arid sand-filled root storage drawers, popping up greenery and putting out whiskery roots, whereas in my painstakingly destoned rich loam, they barely bothered to sprout a frond. Carrot fly is doubtless a part of that, but nonetheless...this next season I am going to have much better drained, very sandy soil for my carrots. Good drainage seems to be all important for carrots.
Not sure about the salsify or scorzonera.

[Two_Sheds]

...carrots as the soil is clay.

Carrots like sandy soil. Sowing into pots is a guessing game, because you need to transplant them before the tap root hits the pot.
Much easier would be to do what Snadger does: make a carrot-sized hole in your clay soil, fill it with MPC, and sow your carrot seed into that.

[horticultural_hobbit]

insulate or not to insulate?

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater


Where's that Sno, he's probably knee deep in hogmany...

Just wondering it if is useful to insulate the wendy house, as the new starts.

And the other thing, that I wanted to consider, was...

See that bed where the builders bag is. That is my root bed. What I am hypothesising, is sowing carrots there, under fleece. I did something similar this year. Put some carrots and beetroot in pots, and covered with a warming jacket that that I pegged in place across the top. I did have to wait a while though, before anything germinate. The other idea, that I had, was starting off things in toilet roll inners and paper pots; particularly carrots as the soil is clay. That is just more speculation. All advice is welcome.