Yesterday, I worked on the allotment with just a thick jumper and it was quite pleasant. My main task was to hoe the leeks and spray against Napomyza gymnostoma. I got all the weeding done using the dutch hoe and the three pronged cultivator.  I did not really need to hand week or use the onion hoe.  I sprayed with liquid derris only because I have lost my soluble aspirin tablets. 

I put all the weeds into the double digging trench that I have started.  This trench is full now so I would have dug another trench but the time seemed to filter away and it was dark before I realised the time.  Its all this putting the clocks back that threw me off I think. 

I was expecting the contractors to be taking the soil off the allotment when I got there but Phil the chair of the allotment society had put a letter in the greenhouse saying it would not happen till the end of the week. 

 I heeled in some more of the comfrey from this area on the top section and eventually found the rhubarb and moved that as well.   All the rest of the comfrey I took the leaves off and put them in the trench - overfilling it a bit but comfrey does rot down quickly.  I don’t mind if they take the rest of the comfrey and the horse radish away with the soil.   Horse radish is seriously invasive. 

I dug up some beetroot and carrots to eat with the pumpkin and then came home. 

Today it has been snowing so I have done nothing.  I cannot believe it is snowing in October.  The sweet pea seeds came today.

The varieties I have chosen this time are:

Ethel Grace;  Jilly;  Exclipse; White Supreme;  Nora Holman;  Anniversary;  Charlie’s Angel;  Restormel; Rosina and Gwendolline.  I might put them in tomorrow but that will mean I will have to wash some pots up carefully. 

We shall see.Â

Just browsing around the internet trying to find interesting websites that I can use to make my allotment more interesting and  I  found this website.

http://www.pfaf.org/leaflets/edible_uses.php.

If you click on this link at the moment you will get an error message.  I hope that they sort it out soon because it is really useful.

Their opening statement is that there are over 20,000 species (more varieties I would guess) of plants that can be eaten.  However, less than 20 species produce 90% of the worlds food.  This site suggests that we start to eat more of the less known edible plants from around the world, which: ‘are both delicious and nutritious.’

There are many edible ‘weeds’ that grow on our allotments that we take out and throw onto the compost heap.  Maybe with a little investigation we could use these too…

I have no clubroot on the allotment now but I continue to make sure by liming the area where the brassicas are going to go and rotating religiously.  I lime the soil primarily in the spring, March or April, before planting the brassicas.  They will not go on that area of the allotment again for at least 6 years.  (I have divided the allotment into 6 roughly equal plots) You have to be careful to rotate other brassicas like radish, rocket, turnip etc because they can be infected with club root as well.  You must not leave infected stumps in the soil overwinter.  This just adds to the problem.  As Percy Thrower used to say : An untidy garden invites pests and diseases.

One of the best things about sharing information on the internet is the speed at which you learn new things.  The advance of more natural ways of doing things is amazing especially for the allotment grower.  Thanks a lot Christine for the comments. 

If we can develop new varieties of vegetables that are resistant to diseases then this will help us to produce good vegetables without having to resort to synthetic chemicals.  I will not recommend anything that I have not tried myself, however there are some club root resistant varieties of brassica.  I am one of these gardeners that usually does things at the last minute.  I’ll nip down to the garden centre and get the same old varieties every time without looking for new things in the catalogues. 

I have grown Kestrel and Sante potatoes this year.   They are nematode worm resistant and have performed very well indeed.  If you need a resistant potato then this might be the way to go.  They are resistant to white cyst eelworm Globodera pallida and the golden cyst eelworm Globodera rostochiensis.  The new Sapo blight resistant potatoes did eventually succumb to  blight but the tubers have stored very well with none rotting.  I cannot say that about the Sante though.    I am replacing my ancient gooseberry bushes, whose variety I have no idea about, for gooseberry American mildew resistant varieties like Invicta. 

Almost 27 years ago someone on the allotment gave me some gooseberries and raspberries.  I have been growing these ever since.  They are only now beginning to crop poorly and making me consider getting new ones. 

I am going to continue buying pest and disease resistant varieties. 

I think that I had better look at the catalogues a little more carefully.�

I know that we should not rely too much on generic scientific research because each garden has a unique soil and microclimate.  However, to be able to promote companion planting as part of a wider organic more natural way of gardening, we do need some base to work from.  I would like to say that this method could be used in all growing situations but this is difficult to do without some prestigious research.

I think that every gardener that uses companion planting must have seen some effect and anecdotal evidence is as valid as any other.  Yet, I would conjecture that it may not work in all cases and this would make some people suggest that it does not work in any. 

My worry was that everyone was just copying tables throughout the internet without really trying things out.  They all seemed to be so similar.  If someone has just made them up as they went along then we are basing our gardening on very weak foundations. 

I am also looking into the research on using mychorrhizal fungi and there does seem to be more research in this area.  Its potential to reduce the amount of fertilizer use is immense. 

God does work in mysterious ways I think…�

I have found my wellies.  They were in the greenhouse all the time.

I am going to make pumpkin soup.

There are several ways of clearing new overgrown allotments but the most effective and quickest involve quite a bit of hard work. 

Most people go for the spray till you drop option or cover with black plastic.  Apart from covering the ground with an obnoxious chemical with the spray method both involve waiting possibly for some time for the ground to clear. 

My method, which I was using today, is to dig a big hole.  Now some would say that this is the double digging method, which I have talked about before but the dig a hole method is slightly different. 

Today, I cleared a 5 ft strip across the allotment.  This involved taking out brambles, dock, dandilion, buttercup and nettles and putting them to one side.  I then dug a trench across the allotment two spits deep.  (A spit is the lenght of the blade of a spade.) I forked over the bottom of the trench to about another spit deep.  After this I put all the weeds woody or not at the bottom of the trench.  I cut them up a bit with the spade so that they would fit into the trench.

The trench was still quite empty so I continued clearing the weeds off the allotment just by forking them out and putting them into the trench.  Eventually I got about 10-12 ft of the allotment clear with the weeds put into the trench.  I then stood in the trench and pulled all the soil back into the trench covering the weeds with at least 18 inches of soil. 

Now I know that everyone will say that the weeds will grow back again.  In my experience and I know that that only involves gardening for 45 years but the weeds have never grown back.  The next objection would be that the weeds will take nitrogen out of the soil while they are decomposing.  Yes they will and I want that to happen.  Better this than the nitrogen compounds being leached away during the winter.  Then when they are finally decomposed next spring they will be releasing the nitrogen compounds back into the soil. 

Thats why I bury branches and even logs.  They eventually rot down and add a really good friable compost to the soil.  I will bury any organic matter so that it will decompose and add nutrients to the soil. 

If you consider fabric as just plant and animal fibers then you can see why I am keen to bury them as well.  An awful lot of nitrogen compounds in these fibres and we throw them away without a by your leave.  Shoes, handbags, belts and gloves made from leather are also good sources of nitrogen compounds. 

I went to CAT in  Wales and told the gardener there what I did on the allotment and he said that they put old saddles on their compost heaps but, at that time, none has actually rotted down.   You dig a big enough hole and you can bury anything.   I have buried several 14ft square rolled up carpets.  They are made from animal fibres and add nitrogen compounds to the soil.  They do last a year or two but I challenge you to find them in the allotment soil now. 

I doubt if anyone is stupid enough to do this too but it is a source of nitrogen compounds that could be used to increase the fertility of the soil.  In the olden days in the UK farmers used to use rags as a fertiliser.  They only wanted the dirty ones from the very poor though.  Washed ones were no good…

I don’t know if I agree with all that Dr David Bellamy says, however I must admit he impressed me this afternoon.  He was at a local allotment site and we had taken a class of children down to meet him.  He was really good with all the children and shook each of them by the hand.  For those that do not know, Bellamy was a TV presenter for wildlife programmes on UK television.  He is fairly well retired now and does not do very much television but I think he is still involved with various environmental organisations. 

The trouble with celebrities like this is the media scrum that surrounds them.  I can’t be doing with it.  So after the photographs were taken we took the children down to do some pond dipping - much more interesting. 

Bellamy was opening a sensory garden that the allotmenteers had made.  Great sentiment with lots of raised beds and pergolas.  I just wonder how sensory it was and who would use it.  I am much more interested in introducing children to growing and getting their hands into the soil than pussy footing around in a sensory garden.  There were lots of herbs - cliche or what? and touchy feely things.  Well I may be cinical but when we are changing our environment at a quite frightening rate I really wonder what we are doing playing about at sensory gardens.  This was what I was doing in the 1980s when I was a lot more naive  and enthusiastic. 

I met a lot of interesting people in the allotmenteering world while I was there and there were others that I would have liked to have chatted to , but I was actually told to be quiet by some woman because Bellamy was talking about planting a cherry tree of all things.  I was talking to Dr Ian Truman about a flora of the West Midlands that he was writing and the interesting wild flowers that he had found on this allotment site.  Much more interesting than the media scrum. 

Bellamy is much more self effacing than a lot of other people who think they are important but the sycophantic responses from people who think that I should bow down in the presence of celebrity just irritate me.  I was much more interested in what Dr. Ian Truman had to say than Bellamy.  Ian was one of the influential academics that encouraged schools to develop environmental areas in their grounds.   Bellamy did go on about the importance of allotments in maintaining populations of useful small creatures.  I hesitate to call them minibeasts because I seem to get a lot of flak from people, who should know better, about using this word.  It is really easy to explain moluscs and arthropods in simple terms with the word minibeasts.  If we can use the term microorganism or microbe why not minibeast?

As I was walking up and down, I checked out all the allotments to see if any of them were better than mine.  As you do.  They have got some wopping leeks over there.  I doubt if mine will grow that big.  Just so long as I get some leeks, I will be happy.  Well I am usually underwelmed by things and allotments like this but I had an enjoyable afternoon out, met a celebrity and did some serious pond dipping.  Quite a sucessful afternoon don’t you know.

Much more information than you could possibly want to know on

http://www.wolverhampton.gov.uk/government_democracy/council/documents/news/press_releases/2008/october/091008a.htm

I finally got down to the allotment on Sunday afternoon.  It was a beautiful day.  The sun was shining and the air was warm.  I was all ready for a good 4 or 5 hour stint.  I looked in the back of my car to find that I did not have any wellies. 

I was not pleased.  I had taken out all the gardening things and put them into the shed so that I could collect Frances’ boy friend who had just arrived from Hong Kong, large cases and all.  So where had I put them?  I put the fork, spade, sprayer, tub and lawn mowings into the car but no wellies.  (Wellies -short for wellington boot.  A rubbery boot used when gardening.)

I decided to continue regardless of my bootless condition.  I was wearing stout shoes, however I had forgotten the perilous nature of a semi waterlogged soil.  I kept to the paths after several incidents of sinking pecariously up to my ankles in the quagmire that I call my allotment. 

Fortunately I have a very long armed sprayer so I endeavoured to spray all the leeks with liquid derris while still remaining on the path.  A task that I achieved with remarkable ease considering the handicap I put myself under. 

This was my main task for the afternoon.  The weather was very pleasant so, when the allotment chairman came over to chat, unusually I did not mind at all.  It seems that the council are going to bring in large trucks and diggers to remove the soil from the allotments.  They are going to try to take out all the soil and replace it in three days.  My experience of  local councils leads me to believe they will not do this in three months, however I am very open to being surprised. 

Two of the allotmenteers that are also affected were moving their sheds and other equipment off their allotments so I and several others gave them a hand.  We have moved two sheds without dismatling now. 

If anyone wants expert shed movers, we have a cracking team at Mount Road Allotments …

I played about trying to dig out comfrey and heeling it in further up the allotment, but with little success.  I could not find the rhubarb under the comfrey and pumpkin.  I don’t think it has died back that much yet.  My main rhubarb patch is still in leaf.   Everything is disappearing at the moment. 

Well, having arrived home, I looked for my wellies in the shed.  They were not there. I cannot for the life of me remember where I put them.  However, as my friend Liz says, if you stop looking for things they turn up when you are least expecting them.  I am still waiting…

The interesting thing about trying to garden with a little more intelligence than it previously required means that you find out fairly obvious things that really you should have thought about before.  Companion planting, it is suggested, helps other plants to grow with a little more vigour.  How this occurs is not always spelt out and probably has not been fully investigated.  We just have not really needed to know because we could slap on several nasty chemicals so that the plants could survive without the help of other plants.  Now that we cannot get lots of these chemicals we have to look at other methods of controlling pests and diseases in crop plants.  Companion planting must be a method of gardening that is ripe for serious research but in lieu of this there must be enough anecdotal evidence to convince people, that would like to garden with the help of nature, that there may be something here.  It costs nothing to a good grower except a few packets of seeds. 

If we accept that this could be a good way of growing, then it might bring with it other benefits.  We avoid the monoculture of growing the same plants close together.  Anyone in the
UK will tell you that their brassicas have been devastated this year with cabbage white butterfly caterpillars.  Maybe if I had put some companion plants between them, there would not have been such a problem.  What we are looking at is a more cottage garden type of planting system that allows flowers and vegetables to be interplanted. 

From my experience with tagetes this year I would suggest that there is a benefit to growing onions interspersed with it.  Grow the small French marigolds rather than the big African ones because some of the onions got a little shaded out this year.  So is this due to exudates from the roots of plants?  Is it due to their pungent smell?  Is there some other effect that might be coming into play?  I don’t know. 

If we are actively trying to improve the fauna and flora of the soil, a companion planting system may attract a more diverse range of organisms, which would encourage a more natural food chain.  If we add to this mychorrhizal fungi and allow an even more intimate soil community to develop then we may well achieve a more fertile response from the soil.  Using this fungus with green manures may also help to lock nutrients into the soil. 

The fragility of the mychorrhizal fungi is evident by their scarcity in our soils.  I sometimes see them around weed plants like dandelions but rarely anywhere else.  I am going to use dandelions as a companion plant next year. 

The comfrey plants on the allotment are going to be replanted during the winter and they will get a good dose of these fungi together with the moved rhubarb. 

A further advantage of using companion plants is that they attract insects that may predate garden pests.

To continue…

There are many sites that are really good at suggesting a variety of different plants for companion planting.  I have no idea if they work or not but I am going to check them out.  These plants are also good for introducing mychorrihizal fungi into the soil.  So if they are grown from seed in the greenhouse then pricked out with fungi, they can be planted in the garden next to vegetables or flowers. 

Possible advantages of companion planting.

• Plants that produce pest controlling chemicals either from their leaves or roots.  These could include tagetes and the herb plants.
• Plants that form a particularly good association with mychorrhizal fungi and will enable the fungi to form an association with crop plant roots. 
• Plants which have flowers that attract insect preditors such as hoverflies and lacewings. 
• Plants that could also act as annual or perenial green manures such as comfrey, nettle and sweet cicely and also do some of the above. 
• Plants that just make the allotment more attractive.   

I am going to list them here mainly as an aid memoir.

• Yarrow
• Monkshood (Aconitum)
• Bugle (Ajuga reptans)
• Borage - possibly with strawberries and pumpkins.
• Dill (Anethum gravellens) particularly with cabbage, lettuce and carrots.
• Chamomile (Anthemis) I grew this this year and will grow it again.  In some books it describes chamomile as the “doctor plant.”   Did well with my onions.  Also with cabbages.
• Chives around the base of fruit trees.
• Flax with carrots and potatoes.
• Hyssop with potatoes and grapes.
• Marogolds (Tagetes) It is really the main pest deterrent.  It suposedly keeps the soil free of nematodes, discourages many soil insects and looks quite good too. 
• Nasturtium with radish, cabbage, cucumber, fruit trees, and all the curbits.
• Petunia is good with beans.
• Rosemary is good with carrots, beans and cabbage.
• Columbine (Aquilegia)
• Pot Marigold (Calendula officinalis) Grew this this year and need to make sure that I give room to it.  It can shade out low growing vegetables.   
• Crocus.  I have just planted some in the allotment - without realising their potential.  They have been planted with mychorrhizal fungi.  I also planted grape hyasinth and snowdrops (Galanthus.)
• Californian Poppy (Eschscholzia californica)  This was planted and seemed to have an effect.  It is not a really long lasting plant and goes over very quickly. 
• Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare).  I don’t have any fennel at the moment but I might plant some next year. 
•  Hardy Geranium and Crainesbill.  I think I get these as weeds on the allotment. 
• Candytuft (Iberis) 
• Dead nettle (Lamium) with potatoes
• Lavender.   I grow this at home so it will not be a great problem to put them onto the allotment. 
• Poached-egg plant (Limnanthes douglasii) Now of all the companion planting this year, I think that this was the least sucessful.  It was planted under the apple tree but even so it could have made a better effort.  The upsetting and irritating thing is that it flowered for years alongside my allotment as an escape from one of the gardens.  Not on my allotment though. 
• Lobellia
• Honeysuckle
• Poppy (Papaver)
• Phacelia tanacetifolia
• Primulas
• Lungwort(Pulmonaria) This is growing alongside my allotment on the trackway. 
• Sedum
• Golden rod (Solidago)
• Periwinkle (Vinca) I have both the varigated and the wild one in my garden. 
• Dandilion is not usually included in the lists I have seen but I have dug up long taproots this year covered in mychorrhizal fungi.  
• Grass ?  I have just been weeding and a lot of the grass has mychorrhizal fungi growing on their roots. 

More information but without research evidence Tone:

http://juliesedwick.com/CPG1.aspx

 I don’t really mind if these plants do not have any affect on the vegetables in the allotment.  If I do interplant next year, they will brighten up the allotment a little.   

I got down on Saturday for the first time in about three weeks.  It is a good job because it is pouring down today (Sunday). 

I have finally removed all the concrete paving slabs from the bottom 1/3 of the allotment.  I have just piled them up in a corner.  They will go back on as soon as they have replaced the soil.  I then dug up the Jerusalem artichokes and heeled the tubers in on the top allotment.  I doubt that we will eat them but they will be useful as a standby.  I am going to use them to shield the shed from nutters that want to break into it.  I am also going to use nettles Urtica dioica around the shed for the same reason. 

Jerusalem artichokes grow about 7-8feet tall and if you have a good number of them they will shield anything.  The nettles will be used for both liquid fertiliser and a pesticide.  The stinging hairs on nettles contain a histamine and  this is what causes the rash.  I don’t know if this is what makes it a good pesticide or not.  I am not going to keep the nettle bed.  All the nettles came from weed seedlings throughout the allotment so I will collect up all the young plants that germinate next year and plant them around the shed.  I have a lovely bed at the moment, all growing about the same size since I cropped it last time.  

I took off about 10 pumpkins and brought them home.  The shed is full of potatoes, onions, marrows and pumpkins.  I don’t know how I am going to get the mower out. 

After completing these tasks, I started to put more gone over plants into the double digging trench on top of the old bean and sweet pea plants.  The leeks are very weedy now so I decided to use the hoe, three pronged cultivator and the rake to remove them quickly.  The weed was put into the trench with the companion plants which were well and truly finished. 

This is a time consuming task and I wanted to stop at about 5 o’clock so I have not finished it yet.  I must remember to take the large sprayer with me next time.  I will spray against Napomyza gymnostoma because it lays eggs around this October and it devastates the leeks. 

I still want to take some more comfrey plants out and heel them in where I am digging now.  It has stopped raining so I might get down there this afternoon.

Before going home I picked 5 large beetroot for pickling.