I mowed both the front and the back lawn today.  They are both really ropy lawns after the very hot weather we have had for the last few years.  However, its all in the detail with lawns.  If you carefully go around the edges making sure that nothing is growing onto paths, you can make even the poorest lawns look spectacular.  Not that mine look spectacular but they look better than they have for a few years.  I put this down to lots of rain in May and fertiliser put on at the end of April. 

Planted some more Meteor peas in modular trays.  I have got seven trays of this variety on the go now.  This will be more than enough for two rows.  I am hoping the winter onions come out before the peas are too big for the trays.  I will just about fit two rows of peas in this piece of the allotment.  I will have to buy some more chicken wire for these peas if the other peas have not gone over.  

Went over to Dad’s to do his garden.  He wanted me to dig over a patch so that he could plant the seedlings I had given him.  I must have got quite fit digging my new allotment because it only took me about 20 minutes to do the whole patch.   Dad hoed the onions, parsnips and potatoes that I had put in before. 

Dad then asked me to plant some Brussel sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli, leeks and red onions.  When I finished this I decided to hoe up his potatoes a little more.  To make this a little easier, I forked along each of the rows.  Finally we put in the tomatoes, courgettes and the lettuce.  So, he now has enough to keep him going for a while. 

Finally went up the allotment with the lawn cuttings and put them on the comfrey bed.  I will need to hoe the comfrey tomorrow.  There was nothing really to do so I wondered around the other allotments talking to people.  I found one allotment with better sweet peas than mine!!  They were obviously autumn sown whereas mine were sown in January  or February - I’m not sure.  I will have to look back at the blogs.  Shows you how useful a blog like this is Tone.  Regardless, these sweet peas were quite large and mine are only about 20cm tall.  They will catch up and overtake these ones though because they have mychorrhizal fungi and I am feeding them on comfrey. 

I am not a competitive man except for sweet peas.  I never show them but I do like to grow them to show standard.  I like to get 5 flowers per stem, if not more and anything less gets taken off and put on the compost heap.  They are set out in varieties and I have left the name tag on each one so that I know what they are.  The number of years I have been growing them and I still forget the names of some of the varieties.  One of these blogs gives the list of the ones I am growing this year and there are several that I have never grown before. 

I will go down to the allotment after Tai Chi tomorrow and do some more side shooting and tying up.Â

Thank heavens I have filled the allotment with plants now - except for the patch I am keeping for the leeks. 

I went down the allotment early again today.  Got there about 8 o’clock in the morning and set about finishing off  side shooting, tendril removing and tying up the sweet peas.  Went round and watered the sweet peas and the runner beans with comfrey liquid.  The slabs that Eric did not want were piled on the allotment and would be in the way if I did not do something with them so I decided to lay them finishing off the lower path to the edge of Mr Singh’s allotment then up the side.  I didn’t finish the path mainly because at that time I thought that they were going to remove all the top soil from the allotment and I would have to move all the slabs off so they could do it.

I finished off weeding this bed.  I have  a row of beetroot and a couple of rows of annual flowers in this part of the allotment.  The beetroot it seems is being eated by slugs and snails.  I am not sure whether this is true or not because I have never seen a slug on the beetroot.  The beetroot is growing very fast at the  moment so I am hoping that it will outgrow the  damage that the slugs are doing.  I hoed and raked the worst of this area and put the weeds into a deep hole that I dug.  There is water on this allotment because when I dug the hole water filled the bottom of it.  Looks like I will be raising this allotment too.   I put in some of the leeks that were left in the seed tray after planting out some in pots.  I will leave the rest of the area for the leeks in the greenhouse. 

I planted four rows of red onion, two rows of sets (these are ones that Dad gave me so I wanted to put them in somewhere), another row of peas, and some tagetes in the top third of the new allotment.  However half way during the afternoon the environmental health officer and the allotment officer for the council came down for the meeting about the contaminant, benzo (a) pyrene, on the allotments.  So I had to stop everything to talk to them. 

It seems to have affected Tony’s, the new bloke’s, Mr Singh’s and my  allotment.  We all had a chat and it turns out that they do not want to leave it and they really gently insisted that the soil should be removed and clean topsoil replace it. 

It is not desperate that they change the soil straight away so we asked them to leave it until the crops have been harvested and suggested that they start in November.  They were fine about this but they wanted to leave redoing the carpark and the trackways until the big JCBs and lorries had taken off the contaminated soil.  Well I have worked on my allotment for 25 years with no car park and trackways that you could not really get a car down so I can put up with a few months more. 

Went back to my planting after they left and finally filled the top third of the allotment with plants.  When I had finished this, I went up to the greenhouse which is now empty of all the rubbish I had collected over the years and decided to plant some aubergines and tomatoes.  I doubt very much if the aubergines are going to do anything remarkable because they didn’t last year.  The tomatoes may be a good idea though.  I also wanted to plant the cucumbers in the greenhouse too.  I found a couple of slugs and snails  while planting out so I am hoping that the young plants will survive.  I have this veg  in the greenhouse at home so it will not be a tragedy if the slugs do eat them but I would rather they didn’t. 

The sweet peas look as if they are going to be good this year.  I am looking forward to when they flower.

I went to the allotment especially early today to try to get everything done.  Needless to say I did not get half the things done that I wanted to.  First I finished off the brassica patch.  I finished off weeding the lettuce and then planted some Galleon autumn cauliflowers.  I only put about six in. 

I decided to weed under the brassica netting with the onion hoe.  I took the netting off first.  The onion hoe is useful because not only does it help to weed but I also draw up some soil around the plants.  I doubt if it helps with cabbage root fly but it does help to make the plants more stable. 

I decided then to go and plant the pumpkins in the bottom third of the new allotment.  I am trying to get the horse radish out of this area and although I have forked it over several times it is still coming up.  I have planted ten plants.  I doubt if I would ever use that many pumpkins, if they  start to fruit, but they are ace at ground cover.   I will just let them cover this area.  I doubt that it will shade out the horse radish though. 

I wound up the runner beans because the cold winds had unwound them and several were on the ground.  Most of them are about 2′6″ or more now. I went around the sweet peas and took off the side shoots and tendrils.  The best thing to tie them up with is garden wire.  I hand weeded as I went.  This takes much more time than you think.  I watered all the plants that I had done with comfrey liquid but I still have one more row to do.  I will do those plants tomorrow. 

I still have loads of Gardener’s Delight tomatoes so I decided to put them up some old concrete reinforcing wire.  I doubt if they will do any good but I had some room next to the sweet peas.  I watered these with comfrey liquid too.  I buried a dustbin about 4 inches into the ground here as well to stop it from blowing away.  I am going to keep my sweet pea tools in it so I can get them easily. 

The middle third of the allotment had got a little untidy.  Lots of chickweed and groundsel had started to grow.  I am going to plant leeks here so I have not done much to it at the moment.  I had to do something today though or the chick weed would have gone to seed.  I gave it a good hoeing over and just as I did the sun came out.  I thought rather than rake up the chickweed I would let it dry out in the sun.  So I left that and had a look at the carrots.  I had sown them under some enviromesh and they were becoming swamped with weeds.  I took one side of the enviromesh off and weeded along each row.  Not hard work but very time consuming.  When I had finished, I gave them a watering of comfrey liquid and covered them up again.  I didn’t thin them out because they are still a little small and I like to eat the thinnings for salad.

I hand weeded the beetroot but they were fairly clean of weeds so there was little effort there.  However, something is nipping off the ends of the leaves.  I have no idea what.  I don’t think that it is slugs or snails.  If you have any ideas, could you let me know.  The beetroot plants are still very small and last year recovered when they had managed to grow larger. 

My back was aching after all this bending down so I took myself home for dinner.  I made a lovely salad using the rocket, lettuce, spinach, radish, and lambs lettuce. 

Tommorow I will be planting the peas, red onions, onion sets that Dad gave me, the rest of the tagetes and some of the leeks.  I will rake over the middle third of the new allotment to take off the chickweed and prepare the ground a little better for the leeks.  After that I think that I have finished for a while and will do Dad’s garden. 

I will be meeting with the council representatives tomorrow at 3pm to disguss whether the soil on the new allotment will have to be replaced because of this pollutant.  Tony says that he does not really want them to replace his soil because he has been working it for over 18 years.  I would think the same if they wanted to replace the soil on the old allotment.  25 years of work have made that soil very good.  They would also have to replace about 4′ of soil because that is how deep my topsoil goes down.  I will keep an open mind until I hear what they have to say.�

After spending two days away relaxing, I thought that I would be able to come back and the weather would be kind so that I could get some serious gardening done.  I should be so lucky.  It has been pouring down all day.  Never mind. 

First thing I planted some peas in the modular trays with some mychorrhizal fungi.  Then I sorted out the seed bag to make sure that I had planted everything I was supposed to.  I had so the bag is sorted out now.  All that is in there are the green manure taire  seeds.  There are no problems in the garden greenhouse.  There are even flowers on the gardener’s delight tomatoes.  I am keeping the windows closed at the moment because of the cold wet weather. 

It did stop raining for a short time so I decided to go up to the allotment.  It was very wet when I got there.  The wind had taken the netting off the brassicas so I had to put that back on.  I really should have hoed before I put the netting back but I had done it before I thought. 

I hand weeded the onion bed and took out the eelworm infested garlic. They have formed some little bulbs about small tulip size which quite surprised me.  I took these home and left them to dry out in the greenhouse.  I decided to plant the camomile where the garlic is so that when the garlic comes out there will not be a gap in the bed.   I pinched out the growing tips of the camomile so that it will start to bush up.  In a little while I will be drinking camomile flower tea. 

I watered the onions with comfrey liquid. 

I then went onto thinning out the parsnips.  I hate taking out perfectly good parsnips but to get really good long ones this is the best thing to do.   This first thinning spaces the parsnips to about 6″ apart.  It was good to do it today because the rain has watered them in again.  Usually I water them so that they are not too disturbed when I thin out. 

After this I started to earth up the potatoes again. The blackbirds keep scratching away at the mounds to get at the worms so I have to do this regularly.  I have earthed up the Kestral but I still need to do the Sante and the Sapo ones. 

This is when it started to pour down.  I had a go at doing some more hand weeding in the salad area.  I cleared this area of weeds and then decided to check the radish to see if there were any worth taking back.  There were.  I am going to plant another row or two of these radish because they are a lovely one.  I took out the rest of the radish row, weeded the area and put in 6 autumn cauliflowers. 

By this time I was thoroughly wet through and decided to go home for a shower and a warm up.�

The wind was particularly strong yesterday and it was blowing about the newly planted lettuce.  Lots of them had lost some of their leaves.  The wind has died down a little now so I am hoping the lettuce is coping a little better.Yesterday I pricked out 100 leeks into 3″pots and watered them in.  I have left them in the greenhouse to grow on a little more.  I will be planting these out in June for Christmas and January, February time.  The May sown lettuce is coming along and will need planting out fairly soon.  I put two cucumbers and 8 aubergines  in large pots to grow on in the greenhouse.  The others I will take down and either put into the allotment greenhouse or outside. I decided to take the pumpkins down to the allotment with some outdoor cucumbers and the left over aubergines.  I mixed up some more aspirin with hot water and put it straight into the sprayer.  I have one of these large 1 gallon sprayers which is now primarily used to spray aspirin and folia feeds. When I got to the allotment I sprayed the onions again then did other plants around the allotment.  I am trying to keep the American mildew off my gooseberries and it seems to be working.  There was a little but not so much as I usually get at this time of the year.  I also sprayed the plum which was showing signs of suffering from an aphid attack.  I might just cut out the branches that are affected - they are only the very small ones. 

Originally aspirin was extracted from the bark of the willow tree.  It must have been doing something there so they investigated it and found that it was a messenger chemical for the plants immune system.  It seems to trigger off the defence mechanism that plants have against insects.
This is the first year that I have tried it.  I needed something that would combat onion eelworm on the allotment.  Eelworm has built up because I didn’t realise what it was and its affect on plants.  There are several different remedies that I am trying this year and assessing how well they work.
  I just bought some ordinary aspirin not really understanding that it is not very soluble in water.  I very rarely take any medicine and would rather eat herbs as a remedy.  I crush two of these tablets up and put them in hot water to try and dissolve them and then make it up to two gallons in a watering can.  After that I put the resulting solution into a sprayer.  I would say that there has been a noticeable change in the onions.  The first being that I can grow them without them keeling over and rotting off.   They are also much bigger than I can usually grow them.  These are early days but I am optimistic. Finally I planted out the sweet corn and the courgettes.  This is later than last year but I don’t think the plants suffered.   They were not root bound in the pots so they would have been alright for another couple of weeks. The soil felt really warm when I was doing this but this may just have been the contrast between the soil and that clold north easterly wind.   I decided to plant a row of nigellia alongside them as a complanion plant. I am not sure whether they are good companion plants or not but they will attract things like bees and hoverflies that will benefit plants on the allotment. 

It is raining today so I will not be going down to the allotment today. The forecast is for this weather to continue tomorrow so I doubt if I will do anything tomorrow either.  I still need to plant out the red onions, tomatoes, tagetes, pumpkins, cucumbers and the aubergines.  I also need to weed the whole allotment, tie up the sweet peas and hoe up the potatoes a little more.  (The blackbirds keep scraping away the ridges looking for worms.)

If you have read my previous blogs then you will know that I hate fires.  I went down to the allotment after work for a relax and to try and plant out some more seedlings.  Some irritating nerd lit a fire and the smoke and smell found its way to my allotment.  To add insult to injury he decides to leave the bonfire smouldering away and billowing smoke and went home! 

Well thank you very much for spoiling my evening.  Previously the perfume of lilac and hawthorn was almost overwhelming.   

I think that gardens should have something for all the senses.  Colour, sent, sound, taste, texture - but not necessarily heat or pressure.  :-)).

I took the Onward peas up to the allotment but I knew that I would not have enough time to plant them.  I put them into the greenhouse to keep them away from the pigeons.  The red iceberg lettuces were getting far too big for the tray so I had to plant them out.  They were planted with mychorrhizal fungi when I planted them in the tray so I didn’t put any in the planting holes.  I just watered them in with comfrey.  I only got a row and a half out of the box but I will plant some annual flower seeds to fill up the row.  I cut the first of the iceberg lettuce today but we did not have it for dinner.  We did have the rocket, spinach and the radish though. Lettuce will be used tomorrow. 

Picked some more rhubarb.  This is growing quite large now.  It is noticeable that where I put nematode worms on the rhubarb there are no slugs or snails but the rhubarb on the new allotment is covered in them.  I keep taking them off and putting them on the carpark hoping that the birds will eat them.  I think that they just find their way back to the rhubarb. 

Something had pulled out some of my onion seedlings.  I don’t know what; but I have my suspicions.  It could be birds however the badger is back and digging holes so I will have to net this area.  I replanted the onions and took a good look at the garlic while I was planting.  The eelworm has devastated them.  I must have bought a variety that is very susceptible to eelworm damage. 

I started digging out comfrey and horse radish from the old comfrey bed.  I think that I will never get rid of these.    I want to plant my pumpkins here and  I don’t really want to be digging out comfrey and horse radish when the pumpkins have covered the area.  The runner beans and the French climbing beans were not caught by the frost and neither were the tomatoes.   I think I was lucky however you never get any early stuff if you worry about the frost. 

I sprayed the roses with aspirin at the weekend because there was greenfly on them.  I looked at them today and they still have greenfly.  I am not sure when the aspirin kicks in and affects the plants.  It is not straight away by the looks of things.�

The May sowing of lettuce was getting far too big for its pot so I decided to prick them out into a tray.  I have been using a peat less compost, which obviously has been made from composted bark.  I don’t mind using this.  I know that it is not as good as peat based compost but it does me and it is considerably cheaper.  If you have the right growing conditions then bark based composts can be quite good. I am planting all my seedlings with mychorrhizal  fungi.  I am wondering whether this has an effect.  Maybe the fungi likes living in this barky compost because it is adapted to form symbiotic relationships mainly with woody plants in woodland.  I don’t know if this is true so don’t quote me on this.  Woodland soils must have large amounts of leaves and woody material so the fungi might be adapted to get nutrients from this medium.  Just a theory based on anecdotal evidence but worth considering by anybody selling bark based composts. 

The new sowing of lettuce will be of iceberg on June 1st.  I find that a sowing every month is as much as I need for succession. 

After planting out all the lettuce, I decided to start on the leeks.  They have grown very well but need to be pricked out.  I am planting the seedlings in individual 3″ pots.  I don’t know whether this is the best way to do leeks but I like to give them some room in the pots so that I do not have to plant them out too soon.  I need their space to plant other things like peas.  They can grow on merrily for some time in these pots.  I will plant them out when they start to fill the pots with roots.Â

It seems that the new allotment is contaminated with benzo[a]pyrene and it looks like its a carcinogen.  Most of the information that I can find on this suggests that it comes from burning organic matter.  Humans are a major source of this chemical in the environment but it can also come from volcanoes and forest fires.

As we don’t get many volcanoes and forest fires in Wolverhampton, I suspect that this came from human fires.  People have been burning stuff on these allotments for years and this is one of the chemicals that has built up.  The council has been good enough to suggest that they replace the top soil on three of the allotments.  To be completely safe I think that this is a good decision - except that I have just planted my comfrey bed and now I will have to dig it all up again.  Never mind.  It never rains but it pours.

I will warn you now.  Don’t light fires on your allotment.   Lots of nutrients go up in smoke when you do burn things.  Then they come back down again as acid rain.  I cannot find one good thing to say about fires on allotments.  If you have diseased material take it home and put it in your big green bin.  Alternatively, take it to the nearest tip and put it in there. 

I brought home the cauliflower stems today and put them in the green bin to be recycled.  They did not have any clubroot or white fly on them  however they are best put in the recycle bin. 

Taking off quite a bit of salad stuff at the moment.  Rocket, spinach and radish particularly and they are smashing.  I am going to put in some more seed at the weekend. 

The aspirin seems to have perked up all the plants that I put it on.  Its going to warm up towards the end of the week and I will have lots of plants to put in.  It is also going to rain a bit so hopefully this will not stop me from doing things.�

I mixed up some aspirin in warm water and put it in the sprayer to take to the allotment. I put a load of plants for Dad in the car with the sprayer. The April sown lettuce is now big enough to put out on the allotment so I put that and the red onions in as well.

When I got to the allotment I sprayed virtually everything. I didn’t do the potatoes or the brassicas but everything else got a dose. There is a little bit of American mildew on the gooseberries so I may have to spray them with Bourdeux mixture. We will see what the aspirin does first. The anti slug and snail nematodes seem to have died out now because I found three large snails merrily eating my lettuce. I will go over everything next weekend and make sure I take off as many slugs and snails as I can. The nematodes have definitely reduced the population of snails and slugs but I never thought they would be a panacea.

I have finally planted all the onion seedlings - nearly because I still have some red onions to go in but they will go on the new allotment. I am still interplanting with tagetes so the onion bed should look beautiful in the summer. They have already started flowering. I might take these flowers off to encourage them to get a little bigger.

Finished liming the top third of the new allotment. I raked it in and levelled it a little. I will put the red onions in here. I am hoping to fit in two more rows of peas and the April lettuce into this area. The sweet corn and tomatoes are getting very big now and should be planted out. I reckon I can stretch it out until next weekend but after that they will have to be planted. I just didn’t have time today.

I watered the rest of the sweet peas and the beans with the comfrey sludge at the bottom of the butt but now I have succeeded in blocking up my tap. Eventually I will be able to clear it but it means I will have to take the top off to get at the liquid. The runners have a little slug and snail damage but not as much as I thought there would be. They are climbing up the canes very quickly and some are about 2′ tall. I am going to leave side shooting the sweet peas until next week. They have grown a little but that north wind slowed them down last week.

Went up to the allotment straight after work again.  I decided just to do some watering because the cold northeasterly wind was still blowing.  I watered the onions, lettuce, rocket, spinach, fennel, lambs lettuce, peas and sweet peas.  I also watered everything in the allotment greenhouse.  Things in there are beginning to get quite big.  They really need to be planted out.  But not in this cold wind.

I have finally run out of comfrey liquid unless there is any left in the other butt.  I decided to cut all of the comfrey on the new allotment and put it in the butt with the tap.  I will put some more water in the butt and this will help with the rotting down.   I need to water the sweet peas with it and put it in the planting holes of the seedlings I want to plant at the weekend.  It will not have done anything by then but the water will  dissolve out the old comfrey sludge.  The comfrey leaves are fairly small but that is probably good because they rot down the quickest.  Ken Thompson in his book:”An Ear to the Ground” says that you should only use Russian comfrey Symphytum x uplandicum because it is remarkably rich in the three main plant nutrients, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.  However, it is not unique in this and nettle, chickweed, sweet cicerly, fat hen, goose grass and hedge garlic are just as good.  I am trying some nettles this year but I did not cut any today because I had filled the butt.  Also they are not very big yet. 

My comfrey is not Russian but the wild one.  It does seed if I allow it to but usually I have cut it before it flowers.  I find that it is just as good. 

These are some of the winter cauliflowers that I took off at the weekend.  One or two have gone over but they are still good for a stew.