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.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 5th, 2008 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Napomyza gymnostoma (leek miner fly), leeks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.