According to the counter about 36,500 people have visited my blog.  Why anyone would want to read about my antics baffles me.  It may not be a lot of people in the scheme of things but for someone that is not a professional web person, writer or journalist, I think that it is quite phenomenal. 

Now my colleagues at work know of my blogsite and joke that the only reason I have so many people reading  it is because of my tonythehoe blog user name.   For anyone reading this blog for the first time, hoe as in garden implement used to remove unwanted plants from a growing area.  However, I continue to think that it is due to my pearls of wisdom and undoubted expertise in gardening.   :-)).  Notice I did not use the phrase: “garden tool”  because that could be misconstrued as well.

Initially I was considering changing the name but I am getting fed up of  the uneducated and illiterate  appropriating words that have a perfectly honourable meaning.  So, I will gaily carry on using words expecting people to understand their dictionary meaning rather than assuming their slang meaning.   If people are visiting my blog site in the hope of finding something untoward, they will  be disappointed, however they may find that they become facinated by the opportunities allotment gardening offers and relent their wayward activities for a much healthier occupation. 

I have no conscience about retaining my blog name since I am fed up of alighting on web sites, after searching for what I thought was a perfectly innocent word, that cannot be described as salubrious.    

Innuendo and word play is the basis of British humour so I do not expect much support in my campaign against the misappropriation of word meanings. However little oak saplings   from mighty acorns grow.�

I got down to the allotment on Sunday afternoon.  I took down the lawn cuttings and put them in the double digging trench.  Nearly the whole allotment site has taken down their runner beans now so I decided to do the same.  The tops went into the trench as well.  All the canes and the supports went into the greenhouse.  There were no more flowers on them and all that were left were the old beany beans that I had missed on previous picking.   The pumpkins were making a nuisance  of themselves because they had grown through the beans.  They are not very large ones, most being about the size of  a football, but there are one or two that have grown beach ball size.  Now all we have to do is eat them.  I might make pumpkin pie or soup with them and then freeze it.  It is always a good standby for the winter.

I cleared the area where the radish, rocket and spinach had gone to seed.  Put them all in the trench.  The Florence fennel went to seed too so I put that in as well.  Double dug another trench and was just about to start filling this one with lawn cuttings and manure left near the bottom gate when it started raining.

This time of year the allotment can be a little disheartening because the ravages of the summer are clearly evident.  Lots of the brassicas have been well and truly eaten.  The gooseberries have lost all their leaves.  Lots of the annual companion plants have gone over and need to be taken out.  So the poor old allotment really needs a good old tidy up.  I just wish that I had the energy and the time.

The nights are drawing in now and by the time I have organised myself to get up the allotment after work it is beginning to get very dark.  I doubt that I will be able to do anything substantial except at the weekends.

I have really cleared the bottom third of the lower allotment except for a few more comfrey plants.  I also need to take off about seven slabs which I had carefully levelled to put my shed on.  Never mind.  I have just stacked the other slabs on the path to keep them out of the way of the JCB digger.  I don’t know when they are coming to take the soil off the allotment but they did say that it would be the end of October because we would have harvested all our crops.

The leeks need another spraying with derris to keep off the leek fly , Napomyza gymnostoma. The leeks have got some rust on them but they are still growing very well.  If the fly stays off them they will be really big around Christmas.  I am loath to take the companion plants out around them because they seem to be protecting the leeks.  Maybe it is just my wishful thinking.  I also hope that the wet year has deterred the fly as well.

I am going to take out the old Granny Smith apple.  I don’t really want to but it is not producing many apples and the ones I do get are mangy and moth eaten.  The Victoria plum is also going over and needs to come out.  I might give them to the November the 5th people to put on their bonfire.  I am not too happy about burning things off the allotment but they came pleading for wood for the bonfire and this was all I had to offer them.  I will not be there so I don’t mind.

I have some black grapes.  If they fatten up any more and ripen I might get some raisin sized grapes before the end of October.  It has not been a good year for grapes.  The new strawberries seem to be doing very well.  I will move the cambridge strawberries because they will be smothered by the potatoes next year when I put them in that bed.  Also I want that room to put several piles of horse manure.  I am not too sure where to put the strawberries but they cannot stay were they are now.

The autumn raspberries are coming with great profusion now.  As is my want, I am eating them straight from the canes.  I don’t know if you agree but I do not find them as sweet as the summer ones but beggars can’t be choosers.  I still ate them for my mid afternoon break.

Eventually it became too miserable in the rain and I decided to call it a day and come home.  I dug up five or six pounds of carrots, washed them carefully and put them in the car for people at work.  I told them that they were organic and that they would be a little moth eaten.  The consensus seemed to be that they did not mind so they have  got some to chew the bones out of.

Today I am having tomatoes, cucumber, marrow, beetroot, carrots, red onion, potatoes, sweet corn and white onion for my evening meal.  I am making a vegetable curry with a salad on the side.  What could be better than that?  Maybe if I had brought home a few of those autumn raspberries?

Guess what.  I have been babbling on writing this blog, thinking that I am really the only one interested in what I do down the allotment and someone has asked me to write an article on organic growing.   

Now nowadays there is little choice about whether you are organic or not because most of the chemicals that we used in the past have been removed from the garden centre shelves so really you are forced into the organic fold. 

However, what do you reckon I should put into the article? 

• I was thinking about the use of comfrey - that is an old chestnut. But what about promoting the use of sweet cicely, nettles and chickweed as good for producing a liquid manure?
• The use of manure although the aminopyuralid scare seems to have put a question mark against farmyard manure.    Also there is a vegan argument that animal manure should not be used.
• The use of natural remedies such as nematode worms, Bacillius thuringiensis, ladybirds, and such like.
• Possible use of aspirin. But is this organic?
• Use of companion planting which I think was quite sucessful this year particularly the tagetes. 
• Use of mychorrhizal fungi.
• The use of rhubarb leaves as a pesticide.  I wonder what the toxicologists would say about that.   However I put rhubarb leaves on the compost or dig them into the soil and there has never been an adverse reaction from plants or animals that I could see. 

This is quite a list and maybe worth putting together to make an article.  Maybe it would make another good post to put here.

Now that my daughter has returned from Hong Kong, I seem to have less and less time to go to the allotment.  She has just passed her driving test and, although I would rather she did not drive and add even more  CO₂  to the atmosphere, it does relieve me of taxi duty - or so I thought.  Now she wants me to accompany her when she goes on the Motorway.  So it looks like next Saturday cannot be spent down the allotment. 

I am not worried because lots of the allotment have been cropped and they are laying fallow.  The area where the potatoes were is now covered with mustard and I have cleared off the onions, pea plants, sweet corn and courgettes. 

I dug a trench two spits deep.  (A spit is the length of the side of the spade blade).  All the weeds and the plants that had gone over went into the trench.  This included the sweet pea plants.  I double dug putting the soil from the new trench on top of the previous one.  Now I have another big trench to fill.  I will clear off all the tagetes from the onion bed and the old rocket that has gone to seed and put them into this trench with some lawn cuttings left by the gate of the allotments.   I will also weed between the leeks and take out the companion planting because all the annuals have gone over now.  (gone over - died or going in that direction) .

I am not sure whether I am going to plant Japanese onions this back end (back end - autumn or, if you are from the USA, fall).  I have this blooming (blooming - a word I use instead of swearing) onion fly,  Napomyza gymnostoma, and despite the cold wet summer I am not sure whether planting overwintering onions is the best strategy.  It gives the fly an opportunity to survive the winter as grubs deep in the leeks or onions. 

The second problem is that I would like to plant some garlic towards Christmas time and I would like to think that the fly would not attack it.  Some hope!

What I will do is plant some winter greens.  This will include some lambs lettuce, rocket and winter lettuce.  I will start them in the greenhouse because I am a little late for this.  It looks like it is going to be a really good end of September so I may be lucky. 

I think that I have had the last  of the beans.  I only picked about 2lb on Sunday.  However, the Aintree runner beans have done me proud.  It may have been the dampish weather throughout the summer but it does not seem to have done the beans any harm. 

The carrots and beetroot are also cropping very well.  These are the best carrots I have had for years.  I will plant these fly away varieties again.  They are just as sweet as ordinary carrots and I cannot tell any differences. 

The brassicas have been well and truly eaten by cabbage white butterflies,  Pieris brassicae, catterpillars.  It has been a good year for cabbage white butterflies but that means it has been a bad year for cabbages, brussel sprouts, cauliflowers and broccoli. 

Never mind.  I have been cropping the broccoli for about a month now so I cannot complain too much.  I am not going to pick them off and spraying would not be any good at the moment.  I am hoping the birds will take most of them.   The brassicas will recover eventually and I don’t expect a big reduction in yield. 

So,  I am trying to put the allotment to bed for the winter. I will clear off and dig as much as I can.  I will also try to plant as much green manure as I can too.  Some of the allotment will be covered in horse manure and other parts will be covered in spent compost, lawn cuttings and straw.  The bottom 1/3 of the allotment soil is being removed so I thought that I would dig in as much greeny stuff, manure and leaves as I could get my hands on before they bring the new soil.  They are taking off and replacing 60cm of soil over quite a big area. 

I still haven’t moved the comfrey and I will have to do that sometime next weekend.  It is still growing though and, due to the weather, it continues to produce a great deal of valuable leaf.  Nevertheless, it will have to come out or be carted away by the council lorries. 

By the end of the winter I should have new soil, the new carpark and a new shed. 

Soon I will be planting sweet peas.

Whether you believe that aspirin can affect plants there is a growing body of evidence that there is some relationship between plant immune systems and this chemical.

Have a look at this: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080918/ap_on_sc/sci_plants_aspirin

I am spraying my leeks with soluble aspirin to keep the leek fly away from them.   I doubt if it will totally protect the leeks but at least it might give them a bit of a head start.�

I have been thinking about the word organic and its meaning in gardening.  For the gardener it means concentrating on fertilisers and pesticides that come from plants and animals.

This is not a precise definition because many inorganic chemicals such as lime, gypsum, water and gravel are all acceptable to the organic gardener.   By the by it could be argued that lime was created by living things. 

Do vegans use lime I wonder?

Gardening organically also involves nurturing the soil so that it contains a wide diversity of organisms.  The organic gardener avoids using chemicals that have been synthesised industrially. 

The principal reason for organic gardening is probably connected with the concept of healthy food, produced without the spraying of dangerous synthetic chemicals.  The ethical argument which involves looking at the history of pesticides and herbicides and their development from military research is not necessarily a primary concern.

The organic gardener tries to walk a little lighter on the Earth and tries not to leave deep footprints for his children to deal with. 

Now that many of these previous questionable chemicals have been removed from garden centre shelves, there is little alternative than to garden in a more “natural” organic way. We are having to rediscover how our grand fathers managed to wrest good crops out of the soil without synthetic chemicals.   I am finding it a fascinating voyage.  Not only are we reviving old techniques, we are also developing new modern organic methods of growing for ourselves. 

The confusion around the word organic is probably due to the different perspectives people come to the word.  I think that gardeners use the word in a similar way to biologists.  For a biologist organic means relating to living things, as in organism.  A chemist, however, would use the word to mean the study of substances that contain carbon.     

For the general public it can mean untreated, pure or unprocessed.  The confusion, wrought by the word organic, might well be due to the different standpoint that it is viewed from. 

The feeling that it is a word that is used to trick people into buying things that are not necessarily “better” is rife, although it might be more a symptom of people’s lack of knowledge than a conspiracy.  The gullibility of people is related to their limited understanding.  That is why they think that tap water bought in a bottle is better than that that comes out of the tap.     I speak from a very Eurocentric view when I say this though. 

In order to preserve this thin layer of fertile soil that covers some of Earth we should take care not to put dangerous chemicals on it whether they be derived from synthetic organic sources (Chemistry meaning of the word) or organic sources (Biological meaning of the word) .  The soil has a fragile ecosystem and we should learn to look after it. 

Picked over 12lbs of beans off the runners.  I could not believe my eyes when I eventually got up the allotment.  The beans were doing very well even though there was running water flowing over their roots.  The sweet peas have well and truely gone over now and need to be taken out.  They will be dug in on the top half of the allotment. 

I have taken one of the small pumpkins off to eat.  We will probably use it in a stew or vegetable curry. 

Plenty of carrots although some were being eaten by slugs most were almost perfect.  Not as long as I would like but that does not really matter.  I bought home about 8lbs of carrots.  Beetroot doing well bought home about 10.  I didn’t weigh these.  The ground around the carrots and beetroot was sodden and waterlogged.  I could not walk on it without sinking.  I will have to spend quite a bit of time on this area if I want to crop it next year. 

Red onions are great.  Not very big but ideal for salads.  I am going to make a couple of salad sandwiches later and the onions will go in them. 

A very good crop of sweet corn.  After all the cold weather and rain, I thought that they would all rot off.  However, they have seemed to have thrived.  I bought back about 20 cobs some of which we have already eaten. 

The autumn raspberries have come in a rush and I picked quite a few.  I was given one a long time ago and I don’t know the name of it.  I have also been given some Autumn Bliss canes which have cropped this year. 

Cropping all these vegetables meant that I did not have any time to plant the strawberries or the mustard.  Maybe next week.

The weather has been a little damp and I have not been able to get down to the allotment for over a week. 

Last time I was down I sprayed the leeks with a mixture of aspirin and derris.   I don’t know if this is a good combination but I will inspect the allotment today to see if they are all right.   I really need to do them again today.  I will take the spray with me.  It needs a good washing out anyway.  The ground on this part of the allotment was saturated so I hope that the leeks are surviving.  I have not drained this part of the allotment and it does get saturated.  This will be a project for next year. 

Carrots are continuing to crop very well.  These are the best carrots I have had in many years.  The beetroot too is doing remarkably well. 

I will be planting Marshmello Strawberries in earnest today.  I have dug over the new bed and incorporated a lot of comfrey leaves.  The plants will also get some mychorrhizal fungi spores in the root holes.  Marshalls said that they were winners for the best exhibit with this Strawberry and it was recommended by people on the allotment so I have high hopes for next year. 

The Aintree runner beans are still cropping really well.  I will expect to have at least another 6-8lbs off them today. 

I have cabbage white butterfly catterpillars on the brassicas now.  I should go and pick them off but I cannot be bothered.  I hope that the birds will have most of them.  I could spray with nettle juice I suppose but I doubt if I will. 

I will be planting the mustard today on the old potato plot.  I took out the Sapo potatoes. and although it said it was blight resistant, there was still some blight on it.   

I will have a look at the summer onions and see if they need to come out and ripen off in the greenhouse.  They are not as big as I was hoping. I think that I will just use sets next year.  They are already advertising garlic so I might get some for next year and plant them now so that they get the benefit of all the cold weather. 

I still haven’t got the peas out and really need to do this now.  Overall, I think that it is tidy up time on the allotment.�

Now I may be a grumpy old man but I do find the need to light bonfires at the slightest excuse really irritating.  Gardens do not need fires.  They are the  antethesis of gardening.

The whole point of gardening is to get out into the fresh air, give yourself exercise and grow some good wholesome vegetables. Or that is what I thought but what do I know.  Autumn seems to be the season of fire lighting.  A season that culminates on the 5th of November where people vie to get the largest most dangerous pile of flammable material that they can and then proceed to burn it all.

Nobody can be sure but there is a posibility that the benzo(a)pyrene that is contaminating the bottom of my allotment has been caused by bonfires.

Not only that but insult is added to injury by firing off of fireworks.  As if we did not have enough pollution.  Why not add a little more heavy metal contaminated smoke to the atmosphere?

‘Oh’ I hear you say, ‘but arn’t they beautiful?’  No.  Flowers are beautiful.  Gardens are beautiful.  People are beautiful.

And what is this obsession with light bulbs?  Why put them all around your garden?  They don’t look beautiful they look like light bulbs.  I do not stare at the electric light in my room and say isn’t it beautiful.  It’s a light bulb get over it.

There are alternatives to having fires.  You could use your green bin if your local councit provides one, you could take it to the tip or you could bury it on the allotment.  Ah but… I hear you say - regardless of the ‘buts’ there are alternatives.

Garden fires produce carcinogens - cancer producing substances.  You loose the nutrients locked up inside the plants when they burn.  It adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere unnecessarily and it does dump pollution onto the surrounding allotments.  You do not get rid of stuff.  It is still there - just changed- and some of it gets onto other people’s allotments.

I have never met a problem that shredding, burying or composting did not solve.  Burning is not the answer.

Now it might be true what people say that burning is a good way of getting rid of diseased plants but I keep wondering anyway.  Is it?

Are these smoldering, smelly, smoke ridden piles of wet plant material the best way of disease prevention?

Maybe we should hone up on our composting skills.

Maybe?