Click on the album below to see the full September 1945 Allotment and Garden Guide pamphlet, published by the Ministry of Agriculture.
Posts Tagged ‘Allotments’
Click on the album below to see the full June 1945 Allotment and Garden Guide pamphlet, published by the Ministry of Agriculture.
This month we’re going to continue with our tomatoes. Hopefully, you followed the instructions in the May guide and are now well on your way; if not, you need to ketchup.
Sorry.
Anyway, you may have discovered by now that tomatoes are high maintenance. They need a bit of TLC if they are to produce that glossy, juicy crop you’ve been dreaming of, and luckily the June 1945 Allotment and Garden Guide carried how-to instructions on keeping your tomatoes happy.
First of all, it is important to keep your plants well watered. A half-hearted sprinkle from the can will merely encourage surface rooting (this is bad), so you want to aim for about 2 litres, or half gallon in old money, per plant. It is important to prevent the plants from becoming dry, as a heavy watering after a dry spell will lead to the fruits splitting. This occurs when the skin becomes hard and inelastic and cannot expand when the fruit swells again after a soaking.
You must also remember to ‘pinch out’ your plants, as shown in the illustration below. This practice of removing the side-shoots that come in the corners formed by the leaf stalks and the main stem ensures that the plant is kept to the main stem, giving you a better crop.
And finally, for best results, use a good fertiliser. The 1945 Guides are a bit hit-and-miss when it comes to giving fertiliser advice to the 21st-century gardener as they tend to recommend some unpleasant stuff that we wouldn’t dream of using nowadays, so I refer you to your friendly local garden centre for guidance. If virtual gardening is more your thing, you could have a look at some of the many websites dedicated to organic gardening for eco-friendly tomato feed ideas. Try the Soil Association or Garden Organic for starters.
‘Plant in haste, repent at leisure’ seems to be the main message of the May missive from the Ministry of Agriculture. Indeed, it compares the ‘fickle and fitful’ month to a newlywed maid, married in haste but that doesn’t seem appropriate for these PC times!
You can view the full Allotment and Garden Guide for May 1945 here.
Despite its unpredictability, May is a busy month in the garden with important jobs to be done, including thinning seedlings, sowing winter greens, and planting Brussels sprouts and tomatoes. In the poetic words of the Ministry of Agriculture, lettuce, spinach and onion seedlings should be thinned when the weather is cool ‘with a promise of warm showers to come’. Brussels should be planted 2 ½ feet apart in May to June, which is irrelevant as I can’t get anyone in my family to eat them.
Tomatoes, on the other hand, are the perennially popular garden crop - they were ‘No 1 with war-time gardeners and allotment holders’, and their colourful fruit is still frequently found in allotments, gardens, balconies and window boxes. The Ministry of Agriculture was particularly concerned by what appears to be a black market trade in dodgy tomato plants: ‘some amateurs have been taken in every year by unscrupulous people who sell them tomato plants far too early for planting outside’. This may seem small-fry compared with the threat of enemy invasion, but planting your tomatoes before the end of May is one of the biggest mistakes a gardening novice can make, as plants left out in the cold will turn a ‘dark, unhealthy colour’. However, if you plant at the right time and follow these detailed instructions, you should have a juicy crop to see you through the summer!
Click on the album below to see the full May 1945 Allotment and Garden Guide pamphlet, published by the Ministry of Agriculture.
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