I have not been visiting the allotment except to get vegetables over the past month.  I am still cropping brussel sprouts, broccoli, parsnips, carrots and leeks.  This time of year the only way to keep warm is by digging.  I’ve got a lot of water on the new allotment so I wanted to double dig to improve the drainage.  The council have replaced the soil on the bottom third digging right down into the clay subsoil.  They were very surprised to find that the hole they dug filled with water.  They thought that I had cracked a water pipe in the area.  I have to keep repeating that these are natural springs.  There are no water pipes that I have found on the allotments.  There are no drainage pipes either - except the ones that I have put in.  As they had taken about a third of the allotment soil off, it made an impressive lake.  Now the reason why this area of the allotment was not waterlogged was because Eric and I had raised its level by about 18 inches. 

However, the new soil they replaced it with is level with the path.  Consequently, I am left with a quagmire.  Now one thing I could do is complain to the council and see if they are likely to put more soil on the allotment.  I am not sure that I want any more of their soil.  Compared with the very dark brown to black allotment soil around it, this soil is decidedly a bright yellow.  The council say this is the best of the best soil they could get.  This just means that it is the most expensive they could  get.  Apparently it comes from an organic farm. 

No, I will  not complain.  The soil is there and they have said that they will give me a load of muck as well.  This will raise the soil to some degree.  I will drain it as best I can this year and then continue to raise it using leaves, muck and lawn mowings left by the gate.  I doubt if my fellow allotmenteers will be too pleased because when I am in allotment raising mood I can remove large amounts of material and put it under my allotment. 

And this is infact what I am doing. 

 I am raising the top third of the allotment by burying the grass mowings that nobody seemed to want left by the main gate.  It was a large pile - but not so large now.  Then, yesterday the bloke that owns the shire horses on Penn Common brought down some horse muck.  That brings allotmenteers down like flies.  Needless to say there is none left now and quite a bit of it is under my allotment. 

I tend to dig muck and other organic material into the allotment straight away rather than leaving it in a pile on the allotment to rot down.  There are a few reasons why I do this. 

• this area of the allotment will not be used until May time and that means that the muck has at least 5 months to rot down. 
• althought the carbon:nitrogen ratio is quite large and nitrogen is probably going to be taken out of the soil to maintain microbial growth, it will be returned as the microbes die due to shortage of decomposable organic matter when they have done their job. 
• introducing a good dose of organic matter to the soil helps to drain it.  This happens in several ways.  Firstly you have to dig it in and this helps to break up the soil.  I am double digging so this means that the soil is broken up two spits deep. 
• organic matter like this does not necessarily all break down into plant nutrients.  There are soil processes that allow organic molecules to form complexes with soil particles.  These complexes can exist for a very long time - hundreds of years! They alter the water holding properties of the soil.  They retain water when there is water stress and they allow water to pass through the soil and drain away in wetter periods.
• it gives me a good dose of exercise because I like digging.  Now after a little excess over the Christmas holidays I have put on a little weight and this is a great way of working it off. 

Yesterday I was working in temperatures that did not go above 2 degrees.  When I left the allotment to go home it was -2.  This means that I had to burn off food just to keep myself warm.  I must admit I was not too keen on the temperature when I arrived at the allotment particularly as one of the committee members came over to talk to me about the new allotment soil.  However, after half an hour of double digging, I was really warm.  I still had to wear my gardening gloves because the handles of the wheel barrow are very cold. 

I have just had some thick soup made from leeks, onions, carrots and peas all from the allotment…  Beautiful.�