Liz’s allotment life: Growing for self sufficiency

Welcome to the first instalment of Liz’s Allotment Life, a weekly diary from RHS edible crops specialist Liz Mooney. Each week, Liz shares what she’s sowing, growing, harvesting and eating as she works towards homegrown self-sufficiency.

Whether you’re nurturing your own plot or just starting out on the grow‑your‑own journey, join Liz as she charts the real, seasonal rhythm of growing food: the wins, the wobbles and the occasional surprises.

This week on the plot

This weekend was a little quieter than planned, mainly due to a temporary lack of water on the allotment site. It should be resolved soon, so I’ve simply delayed a few sowings by a week – at this stage in the season, that shouldn’t cause any real setbacks.

There were still plenty of jobs to get on with.

Planting potatoes
Early April is a good time to get potatoes in the ground, and I’ve gone for a mix of first and second earlies, including ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Rocket’. These earlier cultivars should crop before the main blight period later in summer‚ which helps reduce the risk of losing the harvest.

I plant them by digging a hole and dropping them in, aiming for a depth of around 10–15cm. On lighter soils, planting slightly deeper can help with moisture retention as the season warms up. Potatoes are a low-maintenance crop, but a real staple for me from June onwards, and the flavour is far superior to shop-bought.

Weeding
Not too much to tackle yet, but I like to stay on top of it by regularly

Hoes are multi-purpose tools for weeding (especially between rows of veg), loosening the soil surface, making seed drills, earthing up plants, and more. There are various types with different shaped blades. Hoeing to remove weeds is best done on a warm, dry day, so you slice easily through weed stems just below the surface.

A seedling is a young plant grown from seed.

seedlings

Germination is the process by which a seed develops into a new plant. It starts with the seed coat absorbing water, expanding and splitting, which allows oxygen and water into the seed so its food reserves can be broken down and used by the embryo for growth. The first root (called the radicle) pushes into the soil to anchor the new plant in place and start absorbing water and nutrients. The first shoot (called the plumule) then grows upwards, out of the soil, towards the light.

germinating

Can refer to either home-made garden compost or seed/potting compost: • Garden compost is a soil improver made from decomposed plant waste, usually in a compost bin or heap. It is added to soil to improve its fertility, structure and water-holding capacity. Seed or potting composts are used for growing seedlings or plants in containers - a wide range of commercially produced peat-free composts are available, made from a mix of various ingredients, such as loam, composted bark, coir and sand, although you can mix your own.

compost

I did have to remove a few volunteer potatoes that had sprouted from missed tubers, which disturbed things slightly, and a local mole has been causing a bit of disruption – but there’s still plenty coming through.

Harvests and homegrown eating

We’re now well into the hungry gap, and I’ve reached the point where stored potatoes and parsnips have run out. For most of the year, these form the bulk of my carbohydrate crops, so April and May are a bit of an adjustment – I tend to switch to pasta and rice for a while.

That said, there’s still plenty coming from the plot, particularly from

Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs.

At the moment, I’m enjoying:

• salad burnet
• garlic chives
• chives
• the first asparagus
• lovage

Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs.

Perennials

​Crop of the week: Salad burnet

Salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor) isn’t as widely grown as it deserves to be, but it’s a really useful addition to the plot.

It produces fresh, cucumber-flavoured leaves that are perfect for salads at this time of year, and as a perennial it comes back year after year with very little input.

It’s also tolerant of poorer soils and drier conditions, which makes it particularly useful. Later in the season, it will also produce flowers that help support pollinators and beneficial insects, making it a good all-round plant for both productivity and biodiversity.

Coming up on the plot

Next weekend I’m planning a big push on seed sowing as soil conditions continue to improve.

I’ll share what’s going in – and how it’s all progressing.