“Beginning of the growing”

Welcome to my new website, and if you wish to follow my advice have the coming weeks, months and year.
I hope to see you keep on coming back to see the changes, we will make.
I will start giving information now for the first two weeks of November and advice on growing in your allotment or vegetable patch, so as you can follow the seasons.
I will also ask some of the allotmentees!, who have been on my allotments to explain how they started.
What they have done since beginning there plantings on the long row.
It is now the time of year, when the weather is fine, to clean all those dead leaves, around your plot.
Also you can put some old mushroom peat from Guernsey Mushrooms Ltd. They charge £30 for a very large lorry load and it may be best to go in with two others.
This will enrich your veg patch and help it to be more open for the worms to burrow drainage holes for the rain to penetrate.
It is also time, if you want to grow early potatoes, to look around the garden shops in the next few weeks and perhaps place an order.
If you know a potatoe grower, he may have seed that you can purchase.
If so just put it in a crate, ready for chitting (taking off the surplus shoots before placing upright in a tray) in December.  It is well to remember to stand the potatoes in large, medium and small. This so when you plant, you do it in the different grades, so as the large will harvest first, followed by medium and small.
You can take well rooted strawberry runners from plants before cleaning dead leaves off.  Also if anything is not nailed down, make sure it is as the wind is getting stronger.
There is also seed for sale at Stan Brouard Ltd Lande du Marche and Graeme Dorey at Kings Mills.
In the next month the planting depending on the weather, of Jersey Royals will begin in Jersey.
Also time to get the onions inside if you have not already.
If you look at the growing guide there is a map of an allotment, which l will suggest what to put in the different areas. So keep looking, so we can work together to grow for Guernsey and more sustainability.

Dec 1st
It is certainly not the weather to do anything on your veg patch, the snow is covering all the vegetables, but not to worry to much, as a cover of snow is better than frost or freezing temperatures without cover. The snow does protect and even keeps warm! your the crops, but you will have some burn on your surface ones like cabbage.
I would suggest you stay at home and look though the seed books in the warm and plan your year ahead. Of course your can when the weather improves plant some rhubarb and fruit trees.
Always remember that fruit trees and canes should be planted  Nov. to Feb as they need to establish their root system before it gets warmer.
Since Guernsey is 90 miles further south than England, the seeds sowing dates can be up to 3 weeks early and  also 3 weeks later and also with the change of climate even more so.
So if you  have a greenhouse you can sow lettuce, cabbage , cauliflower, onions, early leeks and maybe other things as well. You will have to use some form of heating or use the white fleece covering,  from local garden centres.
The large commercial growers would have started sowing in the middle of October.
One good tip is after you have sown your seed, is  to stack your seed trays and cover with polythene. That keeps them warmer, but just keep checking that the early germinating ones are laid out first.
I am now chitting off my early potatoes.
For those people who do not know about chitting it is taking off most of the shoots and leaving just about three or four of them.
in Jersey this would start in October from seed that was put seed trays in a straight from the fields in August.
After taking the shoots off apart from three or four and putting them in three grades, of which are wares, small wares and mids. You stand them up in trays in the different grades ready for planting.
The three different sizes would be planted.
Dave Gorvel