Comfrey does not spread by stolons like couch grass or nettles. It has tap roots that delve deep in the soil and bring nutrients back to the surface and into the leaves.  It does, however spread by seeds which are quite efficient at getting  everywhere.  There is a type of comfrey which you can get from various different internet places that is called Bocking 14.  This is a variety of the Russian comfrey Symphytum x uplandicum.  It has very large leaves and does not seed as readily as the British version.   

I do not bother with such niceties.  I grow the thug of a plant the wild comfrey plant Symphytum officinale.  It grows wild on our allotment site.  If you continue to cut it hard back – you can cut off all the leaves and it will come again, then it is relatively easy to keep under control.  It is not what I would call rampant but it does grow big particularly on good soil.  It will easily grow up to 5 – 6 feet tall if you leave it to flower.  It is a great ground cover plant and casts a lot of shade.  Few weeds will grow under it if you have it in a block of plants.   The bottom of my allotment used to be part of a makeshift car park that we made from stones taken off our allotments.  We also broke up concrete slabs and rubble to make a hard standing.   Over the years a small layer of soil covered the hard core and this is what I have planted my comfrey into.  It is thriving.  I would suggest that comfrey would grow absolutely anywhere so don’t worry about the ground. 

The comfrey will only be able to take out of the soil what has been put in.  It has very deep roots that can go foraging but even so you will have to provide it with some kind of feed.  I am putting grass lawn mowings on it at the moment.    I am not sure where the allotment site is getting their lawn mowing from and they might be full of unwanted chemicals.  The comfrey will get all the nutrients from the grass cuttings and then I can use the comfrey.  It is a way of using material that might be contaminated with unwanted chemicals and does not involve putting it onto the main allotment area.   

 I would not plant comfrey in shade because to get the biggest leaves and the most nutrients then full sunlight is necessary.  Having said this, it will grow anywhere.   

I make comfrey liquid fertiliser by filling a butt full of leaves and stems, topping up with water and then leaving it for a couple of weeks.  There is a tap at the bottom of the butt which allows me to drain off the liquid.  What goes in the butt stays in the butt and comes out through the tap at the bottom.  Some people have said that the comfrey blocks up the tap but I have not found this.   

The percentage nutrient value of comfrey seems to be nitrogen 0.0140; potash 0.0340; phosphorus 0.0059 which compares very well with commercial tomato fertilisers.   

What do I use it on?  Everything…

Whatever it grows good tomatoes. 

I think that there is a lot of mystique about the making of jam that is uncalled for.  The black currents that I bought home yesterday are now boiling away in the big pan. I like to use a very big wooden spoon - mainly to impress everybody.  I do not add any water at all.  Then I add the same weight of sugar as fruit - more or less.  Next, I bring this to the boil and wait until enough water has evaporated from the fruit to make it set.   You can tell when it is ready by dribbling some off the wooden spoon.  If it starts to set on the spoon then it is ready to put into the jars.  I think that mine is nearly ready now.  It has taken less than an hour to do it. 

I am going to mow the lawns now.

Oh dear I have broken the lawn mower.  I think that the motor has burnt out.  I will get some petrol for the motor mower tomorrow. 

Got down the allotment at about 1 o’clock and there was a heavy shower of rain.  I just wanted to pick some raspberries and strawberries so I carried on regardless.  After a while it stopped raining and the sun was very warm.  I picked the first of the sweet peas to take home.  They are smelling beautiful. 

I think that all gardens should have something to look at - colour; something to smell - scents; something to hear - chimes; something to taste - raspberries and something to touch - the soil. 

I spent some time washing the black fly off the runner beans.  I just used the sprayer and water.  I expect I will have to do it again next week.  I got them fairly clean though.  I watered peas, beans and sweetcorn with comfrey. 

Started at the bottom of the allotment and hoed the whole allotment.  The rain has started all the weed seeds germinating again. 

Finally, I took another cutting of the comfrey to put into the butts.  I have now filled two butts and have cut almost all the comfrey. 

Ate a dinner that included a salad of lettuce, peas, carrots, rocket and radish of my own.  My tomatoes have not started cropping yet so I had to use bought tomatoes.  Then I had strawberries and ice cream.  Lovely jubbly…

I have had a bit of a head cold this week probably because of the weather.  I still do things but with much less vigour. 

I have been down the allotment several times this week mainly to harvest and pick.  The strawberries are doing very well this year.  I must get some new ones for next year though.  I have taken home one of the winter onions. 

The strawberries are ripening well but I tend to eat these before I can pick any for the house.  I also picked about 5lb of blackcurrents.  I am amazed at this because I cut them back hard during the autumn and I thought that I would not get any.  Lettuce, rocket, carrots, radish and some peas were all harvested for salads.  I had some this evening and they were lovely. 

The allotment is full at the moment and I do not have any room to put anything else in.  I am going to put some peas where the autumn onions are at the moment.  I only harvested, weeded and watered but this still takes a lot of time.  I sprayed the runner beans with water to wash off the blackfly.  They are starting to get on my nerves now.  I will keep washing them off until they get the message.  It looks like it is a bad year for blackfly this year. 

I have bought some new canes for the sweet peas.  The winds this year have made growing them up strings a little difficult.  So I have been undoing ties and putting sweet peas onto the canes. 

I cut some more comfrey for the butt.  It is amazing how much of the comfrey I have used this year.  I water the peas, beans, sweetcorn and onions with it at the moment.  They all seem to like it.   There is still a lot of comfrey to be cut because it it producing a lot of leaf this time of year.  The rows I did not cut last time are still flowering.  They are covered in bumble bees. 

I did not cut any of the nettles today but I might tomorrow.�

I decided to take the leeks down to the allotment to harden off.  I know that they have only been out of the greenhouse for a day but I could not help myself planting them directly into the allotment.  Now, this is one of those times when you can’t do this until you do that.  I was worried that I would not have room to put all the leeks in so I needed to move the slabs that Eric had left on the allotment.  When he had had this allotment he grew tomatoes here on the slabs.  I have moved most of the concrete slabs to the side of the allotment giving me a very useable path.  I completed it today.  Now this patch is almost a rectangle.  The soil under the slabs was not very good so I decided to double dig it.  More turfs have been left by the lower gate car park so I got some of these to put at the bottom of the trenches.  It helps to raise the soil on the allotment and help with the poor drainage.  I have double dug most of this allotment now. 

I put in about 98 leeks adding some mychorrhizal fungi to each of the holes.  I like to knock them out of their pots and then plant them as I would any other seedling.  The others that I planted earlier were done in the traditional way by making a dibber hole and just sticking a bare rooted leek in it.  Both sets of leeks were watered in with comfrey liquid. 

I did not fill the whole of this area with leeks so I put two lines of carrots in.  I doubt if they will do very well but they are Flyaway so they might produce something. 

I weeded and hoed all of the rest of the allotment - or the areas that needed it.  I also put in a new row of radish and lambs lettuce where the February lettuce came out.  The March lettuce is hearting up very well and I will be cropping this at the end of the week. 

After finishing off here I went down to take off side shoots and tendrils off the sweet peas. They are not doing as well as I wanted.  I think that they are best sown in the autumn rather than very early in the spring.  Tied them all up carefully.  I am not sure whether growing them up strings is the best way of doing cordon sweet peas.  It has been particularly windy this year and they are being blown about whereas the ones on the canes are growing much better.   Remember that for next year Tone. 

I kept on putting the side shoots and tendrils in the tools tub.  Swapped the tubs round to stop myself and blow me if I don’t carry on doing it stretching over the right tub.  I struggle on like this all down the row and then I asked myself why I needed the tools tub in the first place…  I didn’t so I put it away and then found that I put all the side shoots in the right tub. 

I think that I have tired myself out again with all that double digging so sorry folks no reports will get done this evening.  I am going to go to bed early.�

I have taken the leeks out of the greenhouse to harden them off.  I will give them a spray of aspirin before I take them down to the allotment.  They should do all right when I plant them in the allotment - until the autumn and then I will have to protect them with envirofleece.

I have been given two cherry tomatoes and two plumb tomatoes.  I have planted the cherries in pots on the patio and the two plumb tomatoes I will take to the allotment and plant in the greenhouse.  I still have some room in there.  I have cut back the grapes quite severely and I am not going to let them run rampant like I usually do.  Maybe I will get some grapes this year.

I ordered ten hessian sacs on Tuesday.  They came today.  That’s not bad is it? I am going to store the potatoes in them this year.  I will have to live trap the mice before I do it though or they will gnaw through the hessian to get to the potatoes. 

The mice have played havoc with the peas again so I decided to take what remained of the seedlings down to the allotment.  I left them in the greenhouse and I hope that they will be alright there.  There are too many cats on the allotment for mice to be a problem. 

There may well be nothing to the aspirin thing but there are definitely no greenfly on the roses now and the climbers that had mildew are now clear of it.  Similarly with the fruit trees, they started with mildew on them but there is nothing on them now.  I don’t know about you but I find that mildly impressive.  This is only anecdotal and I do not have controls to compare but I still find it hard not to be surprised by its effect. 

The only thing that I think it did not help with, and the reason why I started using it, was  the onion eelworm.  Never mind.  I think that the eelworm is a long term battle - which I will win eventually.

Not content to stay on the broad beans of other allotment holders the black fly have found their way onto my runner beans.  While they do not seem to cause too much damage to the plant, they do produce a lot of honey dew and mess; dirtying the beans when they appear.  My remedy, which I have found quite effective, is to take off the leaves they are on  and put them on the compost heap. 

This time of the year it is mostly watering and weeding.  I have to water with a watering can because we do not allow hoses except to fill butts.  I watered all the onions, the peas and the beans.   Not a lot of weed on the allotment so I did no weeding particularly. 

Took a couple of handfuls of strawberries off  the plants and washed them under the tap.  I did not have them today because I was out at a farewell dinner.  It was at the Thai Edge in Birmingham.  Quite a good vegetarian meal.  But the veg was not as good as mine.  �

I would say I have lost about 50% of the onions now.  They have contorted foliage and then they start to go brown.  Some are rotting and some just go crisp.  It is really hard to keep them going.  I gave the ones that are left a good watering with comfrey liquid which always seems to perk them up a bit. 

Several people on the allotment site have given up and taken all their onions out.   I don’t really want to do that though. 

I will see if I can keep them going until July and then they will fall over by themselves and start to ripen. 

Spraying them with aspirin did seem to help but not as much as I wanted it to.  The onion sets that I planted really late in May are growing well at the moment but I expect them to go down with this soon.

Everything else is growing well and a week away at a residential course with my school children did not mean that anything drastic happened.  It was not really very weedy either but I will go through the whole allotment with the hoe today. 

The strawberries are coming now - it must be Wimbledon time again.  The slugs, woodlice and birds have had their share as well but still enough for me.  I am still eating the February sown lettuce.  I really should cut down on the number I plant.  All the other lettuce is hearting up and needs to be eaten.  The spinach and the rocket have gone to seed so I am going to sow them again more or less in the same area but swap them around.  The lamb’s lettuce is not going to seed so I will use that until the new lot comes. 

The sweet peas are coming on well.  They are about 60cm now.  They are producing three flowers on each stem at the moment so I am taking these off to encourage them to produce four flowers on each stem.  I watered these and the runner beans with comfrey liquid.  The cut comfrey in the butt has rotted down very quickly, as it does in summer, so I am going to put some more in today.  I sometimes take out the unrotted stems of the comfrey but most of it rots down to a black liquid and comes out of the tap with a strong coffee colour. 

Very little American mildew on the gooseberries now so I think I will have a fairly clean crop this year.  I will let them grow a little bigger and havest them in July.  I use them in pies and jam.  However, they make a good pudding just on their own.  The desert ones I tend to eat down the allotment. 

I cut the blackcurrents hard back last year so I did not think that I would get very many this year.  I was wrong there are quite a few on the bushes and they are starting to ripen now.  I will leave them until the end of the month and then start to pick them.

I decided to hoe under the brassica netting but it was too difficult so I took the lot off.  As I was going along the lines I was hoeing up the plants.  Not a lot of people do this but I think that, if it does not also discourage cabbage root fly, it helps to support the plant when it gets bigger and is likely to fall over.  I leave the netting on even though the brassica plants are quite big because it prevents the cabbage white butterflies reaching the plants and laying eggs. 

When I finished putting the nets back on the brassica plants, I looked over at the carrots.  There was not much weed in the enviromesh but I thought that I would have a go at them regardless.  I bury the edges of the enviromesh in the soil so it is a bit of a job taking it out and then putting it back again.  I am growing Flyaway carrots and these are suposed to be carrot fly resistant.  However, I like to protect them with the enviromesh as well.  I took up the enviromesh along one side of the rows and tried to hoe.  This was not successful so I hand weeded.  I obviously had missed quite a few weeds in the rows because they were tucked between the carrot plants.   I weeded more carefully and put the enviromesh back neatly planted in the ground along its edge. 

I watered the peas, sweet corn, onions, lettuce, pumpkins, runner beans and the sweet peas with weak comfrey liquid.

This time of year there seems to be only weeding and watering to do.  I will have to prick out the June planted lettuce into pots.  Nevertheless there is not much else to do particularly.  After the hectic spring, summer is more mellow - until the harvest…

Before going to Tai Chi I put in some more Meteor peas.  The mouse had eated nearly all of the previous lot.  It was climbing up the laurel and in through a gap in the top of the glass.  I could not believe it when I saw it.  I caught it in one of these live traps.  I was going to release it in a nearby hedgerow but it escaped, climbed up the cucumber support and out of the glass gap.  Needless to say, I cut down the laurel.  It needed to be cut away from the greenhouse anyway because it was shading plants at the back of the greenhouse. After Tai Chi (We are doing the broad sword now) I went straight down to the allotment. 

I when straight up to the old allotment because I wanted to finish off weeding the onion bed.  A lot of the onions have died but I will endeavour to persevere.  One of the winter onions was accidently pulled out when I was trying to take off a dead leaf.  Ominous browny streaks covered the bulb.  I think that this is leek fly Napomyza gymnostoma.   There were the little grubs under the skin of the onion.  So never rains but it pours. www.expressandstar.com/2007/10/23/growers-battle-veg-muncher.    So now I will start spraying with derris. 

Used the onion hoe extensively through the onion bed.  This is the first time I have had one and it is a useful tool.  Watered all the onions and the strawberries.  I have had the first red strawberries of the year today. Infact I had 5 but the birds had had one.  Its a bit sad that I am away next week just when the strawberries are coming - still the birds will have them. 

Decided to water the sweet corn, courgettes, peas, onion sets and red onions and gave them all four gallons each.  I went down and did the same to the runner beans and the sweet peas.  The sweet peas are growing at a rate and I hope they don’t fall over next week when I cannot tie them up.  Carrying water around is very tiring so I was not inclined to do anything else. 

However, I looked at the comfrey plants and they seemed to be getting quite big.  Several of them were flowering so I took an executive decision  to cut another load of comfrey for the butt.  The previous cut of comfrey has not rotted down completely yet, so I could not put it all in the green butt.  The rest of the it had to go into the blue butt.  I didn’t cut it all because the temperature was getting very hot (25 or 26 degrees  Celsius in the shade)  and I was tired to start with.  It might not be hot for you but for us northen latitude natives, believe me its hot. 

So I picked another lettuce for my tea and went home.  Checked the greenhouse - had the mouse found the new peas??? No they were all alright.  Had a nice cup of tea.

I  sprayed the roses and the apple tree with aspirin a couple of weeks ago.  There are no pests or diseases on either of them. However one of the climbing roses has aphids and another has mildew because I did not spray them.  So maybe it does work but not on gooseberry mildew. 

I suppose I should acknowledge the fact that 20,000 people have looked at the site.  Probably a cursory glance but nevertheless welcome.  I hope that it is helping someone to do an allotment.Â

The problem with a lot of gardening is that it can be repetitious and a little tedious.  I had decided to weed the whole of the allotment again today.  I started as you might expect by side shooting and tying up the sweet peas.  I planted the May sown lettuce in a small space next to the sweet peas.  They had a pinch of mychorrhizal fungi in each of the holes and a watering in with comfrey liquid.  I then went on to the second section.  Hoed where the big leeks are going to go and then handweeded along each of the rows.  Finally, I used the hoe between the rows. 

I didn’t weed between the carrots because I would have had to take off the envirofleece and I didn’t think that I would have enough time to put it back on. 

The top third of the new allotment was quite clean but as my granddad always said hoe where there are no weeds and you will get no weeds.  So I hoed between the sweet corn and the courgettes.  I decided to water the peas with comfrey liquid and then hoed between them and the April sown lettuce.  This lettuce is coming quite well considering it nearly got blown out of the ground just after I had planted them - that cold north wind. 

The onion sets that I put in here are coming along well.  The two other rows of peas are not growing as fast as I would like.  I think it is because we have not had rain for a few days now and they were getting a little dry.  I watered these and the red onions with weak comfrey liquid.  I hoed between them and used the onion hoe where they were a little close together.  I went along the bottom of the old allotment weeding where the new line of raspberries are.  They will not produce anything until next year, if then. 

I was given two cuttings of a white grape and just stuck them in the ground thinking that nothing would come of them.  I did nothing special with them and now one of them is producing shoots.  I am dead chuffed.  Later in the year I will transplant it into the greenhouse.  Went round to the February sown lettuce and hoed using the onion hoe.  Took out a lot of dead leaves and found three snails. 

Both the spinach and the rocket are going to seed now.  I have had a few feeds off them so I might take them out and resow them more or less in the same area.  I doubt if I will be able to eat all the lettuce before it goes to seed.  Took two big lettuces out at about 5 o’clock and started to eat them for tea at about 6 o’clock.  Perfect. 

I didn’t really want to start hoeing up the potatoes so I left them.  They have formed a good canopy now and very few weeds germinate when they have done this.  So, I went onto the top section of the old allotment.  The onions have fallen down again.  I weeded all around them and took off all the brown and dead leaves.  It made them look a lot better.  Next, I gave them a really good watering with comfrey.  They did perk up a little bit after this. 

I will finish off this bed tomorrow.   I need to weed all around the seedling onions.  Lots of them have got the contorted foliage characteristic of eelworm damage.  Some of them have died completely.  Bit of a shame but it is telling me that what I am doing to try to eliminate the eelworm is being effective - but not that effective.  There are some of the onions that have no eelworm damage at all.   There is a potato coming up in the middle of the onions.  I will get it out tomorrow. 

With the eelworm in mind, yesterday I ordered some Caliente Mustard from Tozer Seeds Ltd.  They were delivered here at 12 o’clock today.  I could not believe it.  Very impressive.  There is a leaflet that came with it and it says that Caliente Mustard green manure suppresses weeds, suppresses a range of soil borne diseases such as Verticillium wilt, Pythium (I don’t know what this is) Rhizoctonia, Sclerotina, Fusarium (I don’t know what these are either and most importantly suppresses a range of soil pests including wireworm and nematodes. 

I will sow it where the potatoes are now and if there is any left over I will put some where the onions are now.  I am going to mix the seed with some tares seed that I have already. 

You have to chop the mustard up for it to have any effect and they also suggest that covering with black plastic might help the process.

Have a look at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/02/060201232838.htm

So was today tedious and repetitious?  Probably, but I had so many things to think about I did not really notice.  The difference between a novice and me is that I know what the outcome is going to be so I will put in the effort to keep the allotment clean of weeds, whereas novices do not realise that keeping weeds down will help them in the long run.�

Spent this evening side shooting the sweet peas and tying them up.  They are about twice the size they are in the photograph.  It is amazing how fast they grow.  I had to take one out today because it had the yellow  disease.  I find that this spreads if you do not take out the pea.  There were two like this in the Kelvedon Wonder peas as well.  They got taken out as well.  Watered the sweet peas and the runner beans with comfrey liquid.  The climbing french beans are eventually starting to send out runners.  I will need to weed the whole allotment again at the weekend.  I am going on a residential visit next week so I will not be able to do anything  on the allotment.  I may go up and water things tomorrow and start the weeding process. I am going to order some hessian sacs and the mustard green manure tonight.�