Summer 2024Gardening tips for Summer

PIER is a community allotment and gardens located on Belfield Road (next to the Croft Shifa Medical Centre) in Rochdale, which belongs to homelessness charity Petrus. It is a beautiful, relaxing and therapeutic oasis that grows fruit and vegetables and is a member of the wider Incredible Edibles network representing Rochdale. It is open to the public and people are welcome to visit and take a look around this award-winning garden.

Petrus’ vision is to create kind, confident and connected communities through the power of growing food. Here are some tips for this growing season. Happy gardening!

Summer is a great time on the Petrus allotment: the cold and frosty mornings seem so far away now. It’s always good to see our summer volunteers returning and new ones joining us. Despite all the wet months during spring, we know how quickly the summer dries out our vegetable and fruit beds, so we are adding more ways of collecting rainwater around the allotment.

During the winter, we added more planters, which means we can grow an ever-wider range of crops and engaging with more volunteers this year.

We are trying some new crops, as J. Parkers have donated lots of seeds for us to try. We cannot wait for all the different types of peppers to start growing!

Watering and weeding may sound mundane, but on a large (or small) allotment, it is essential to keep your crops healthy and flourishing.

We also are on the lookout for pests, such as aphids and we react to this ASAP. Thankfully, we seem to have lots of ladybirds on our site; they certainly help keep the pests under control.

In June we like to plant nasturtiums, always a favourite of ours, they spread really well and make ideal companion plants for our vegetable plots. It’s also a great time to plant spring onions and one of our new crops, pak choi. We are going to give broccoli another try this year, having had mixed results in the past. One thing we did get right was curly kale, with bumper crops for months.

July is a great time to plant out courgettes and sweetcorn. We have been growing these in our polytunnel and they will be ready to plant out in July. Cabbages can be planted out ready for a good winter harvest. Use any dry spells to keep hoeing out the weeds, rather than when the soil is wet, as this can allow the weeds to root again.

We always give our herbs a trim during August, which encourages new growth before autumn and the onset of early frosts. Petrus seems to be the ideal place for strawberries to thrive – we have lots! – and we plant out all the rooted runners in August.

Watering and feeding sweetcorn regularly will help produce a great crop. Try using a bit of tomato feed. Main crop potatoes will be ready for harvesting, just wait until the leaves have started to wilt and turn yellow. Garlic, shallots and onions – allotment favourites with our volunteers – can be lifted and dried out.

We hope you all have a great summer, either in the garden or the allotment. And if you do get chance to visit the Tatton Show this year, please come and say hello.

Good luck to all our fellow ‘In Bloomers’ who are taking part in the RHS It’s Your Neighbourhood competition this summer.