Choosing the right fertiliser

Fertilisers provide plant nutrients. But what nutrients do your plants need and how do you know what to use?

I should mention right up front that this article has been a long time in the making. There has been much debate at Quest for Veg HQ about what to include and how to make it easy to understand. We have tried to produce a simple, readable guide to a complicated and sciency area. If you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know.

Setting up our tunnel cloche

It had no instructions, some of the parts were missing and the box had been partially eaten by snails.

But we weren’t going to let those sorts of details put us off trying to erect the tunnel cloche we inherited from the previous plot holder.

And besides, the greenhouse was overflowing with plants and the risk of frost diminishing daily. It was time to think about moving our plants to the plot. We would need a structure to give them a little bit of protection while they were hardening off.

The box had been partially eaten by snails

Recipe: roast radishes

Andrew and I have gone from not liking radishes to loving them. Just as well since this is our first and only crop so far, and we’re harvesting them in abundance!

But apart from raw, is there any other way to eat them? Of course there is!

Preventing damping off disease

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It looks like we’ve been visited by damping off disease. We found this little zinnia seedling flopped over, and going brown from the base of the stem upwards.

It looks as though we have been lucky in that we only seem to have lost three zinnia seedlings to date. It can wipe out a patch of seedlings in a tray or spread to the whole tray or beyond.

What causes damping off?

Damping off is caused by several types of organism, particularly certain types of fungi and bacteria. They live in the soil and are usually carried by water.

Our first harvest

Quite unexpectedly, Andrew spotted a radish that looked ready to eat. 

He carefully extracted it from the soil and here it is: the first vegetable to be sown and harvested on the Quest for Veg plot.

Radish Scarlet Globe

We carefully carried this little jewel home to wash it and try it.

I should say at this point that neither Andrew nor I like radishes. I have wondered why we are growing so many. So we were a little bit apprehensive as we sliced into this tiny prize.

End of April tour of the plot

On the face of it, the allotment looks pretty similar to how it looked at the end of March. This is partly because much of the obvious activity has happened in the greenhouse, and partly because the things that we’ve planted – mainly potatoes – have yet to show much growth.

But we have come a long way. It’s good to look back to remind ourselves of the progress we’re making.

April started with the exciting news that our blog was featured in Grow Your Own magazine.