Decidedly warmer today, although it did get very cold towards twilight.  I got down to the allotment about 9:30 and there were quite a few people working on their plots already.  I chatted to Tony and he said that I had missed the annual general meeting of the allotment society.  Well it seems that there is going to be no change and the allotments are going to be run by the same person.  It is a shame that the committee does not have a look in.   I wanted to complain about the bonfire being lit on the car park.  but that is for another time.

I moved all the slabs on the top bed squaring it off quite well.  I went on to moving the path slabs and that took a little more time.  I am taking out the top soil under the path and putting it on the beans and sweet pea bed.  I am replacing it with a mixture of stones and subsoil.  I am digging a big hole to get the subsoil out and then filling it up to the top of the subsoil part with laylandii shreddings.  I got to the raspberries and took two of them out.  I put them back in immediately down with the other raspberries giving them a dose of mychorrhizal fungi.  I  will  not give any of the others mychorrhiza because they may be infected through these ones .  I hope that I will be able to move them all this March.  The holes under the path were filled with the old greenhouse foundations.  Remember that they are there Tone because I don’t want to be digging that lot up again.  I took the old angle iron that used to be the children’s swing down to the gate for the rag and bone man to pick up next time he passes.  When I picked one of the slabs up, it was covered in about 15 little black keel slugs.  I took them off  and put them in the wild area on the allotment.  There were a few hiding in the raspberries too.  These all went too.  I think that if I get rid of these pests as soon as I see them, it will make gardening this year a little easier.

While I can understand the agonizing that many of us undergo when attempting to produce food that is grown with as few human made chemicals as possible, we must be reasonable. Ferric phosphate FePO4 is indeed an inorganic chemical. All this means in chemical terms is that it does not contain carbon. The confusion comes when we apply the term organic to biological systems. Organic in biology means related to life or organisms. If we replace the metal iron with the metal calcium in this compound then we get a major component of bones – calcium phosphate which although making bones is an inorganic chemical. Does this mean that the strict advocate of organic gardening should not use blood fish and bone as a fertilizer? Now I would rather not use ferric phosphate as a slug and snail killer because I would rather remove as many as I can by hand – gloved if possible. There is little evidence about the effect that ferric phosphate has on other soil organisms and is probably best avoided if you are trying to be organic – as in the biological meaning of the word. Beer contains organic chemicals. You could use this as a trap because slugs and snails seem to be attracted to it. Beer is a man made chemical mix though.

It started to rain  and the slabs got a little sticky.  They are blooming heavy and I didn’t want one to land on my foot.  Still it is a good job nearly done.  Now I say that when you begin to feel uncomfortable gardening because of the rain or the cold or both, then it is time to jack it in and go home.  I hate it when the water from my water proof jacket drips onto my trousers.  I am having to wear jeans too because my garden cord trousers have given up the ghost and been put on the compost to rot down.  Jeans are very hard wearing trousers, however they were never designed for a cold wet climate.  Every time they get wet, the wind whistles through them as if I had nothing on.

I picked some of the brussels and parsnips.  I was going to take some leeks but I don’t think that they are worth the trouble.  I didn’t get the  calabrese out and I should have done.  never mind.  I think either the fox or the badger is back.  They have made some big holes looking for worms in the strawberry bed.  I tidied this up.

I just had picked the vegetables when the light went.  I think that it started to rain a little harder when I got home.  I did not use any of the vegetables - had a cheese and onion pie.  I will do the vegetables tomorrow morning. Ok, I am going to celebrate because this is my 160 post on this blog and 112111 people  have viewed it.

I don’t know why I have been putting off getting the seeds this year.  It just does not seem to be the weather for thinking about seeds.    Still I have got to do it and now seems to be a good time because it is nearly March and seed sowing time in the greenhouse.

Potatoes will be Kestrel

Brassicas

Calabrese  Zen Calabrese - Green spring

Cabbage

Cauliflower - Winter aalsmeer

Broccoli - Redhead

Brussel sprouts - Revenge/Trafalgar

Runner bean - Aintree/Red Rum

Broad bean - Bunyards Exhibition

French bean - Tendergreen

French climbing bean - Cobra

Pea Early - Onward and Hurst Green Shaft.

Beetroot - Boltardy.

Carrot - Flyaway

Courgette - Defender/Soleil

Summer Onions - Sturton sets

Shallots

Leeks - Autumn Giant Goliath

Lettuce - Chartwell/Iceberg

Cucumber - Burpless Tasty Green/County Fair (organic)

Pumpkin - Big Max.

Parsnip - Gladiator

Rhubarb

Scorzonera

Spinach - Medania

Sweet Corn - Two Sweeter/Northern Extra Sweet.

Swede - Marian

Rocket

American land cress

Chard.

Not sure of the varieties I am going to get for some of these vegetables.  I am going to go for ones that are more pest resistant, however I do have my favourites. I have probably forgotten something but I don’t know what…

It would seem that if you add crushed charcoal to soil with other organic material such as manure, blood fish and bone,  compost or comfrey there is a quicker breakdown of this added organic matter and it is rapidly incorporated into soil in a stable organo-mineral particle.  From what I have read, a great deal more of the added organic matter is stabilised in this way than in charcoal free soil where the added organic material would either be mineralised to carbon dioxide or leached from the soil.

It seems that once stabilisation has been achieved there is a very slow breakdown of the organic material, which will give fertility to the soil for many years.

There also seems to be a much greater population of microbes in charcoal enhanced soils probably because the charcoal gives the micro-organisms a habitat - somewhere to live - without being eaten by something else.   The strange thing is that, although there are more microbes living in charcoal enhanced soil, there seems to be less carbon dioxide produced due to respiration.  In other words much more carbon can be sequestered (kept) in the soil with the aid of added charcoal than without.

I would suggest that a greater population of micro organisms in the soil would indicate a more healthy soil.  One which is in better balance and can sustain fertility over a number of years.  The fertility of my allotment has been maintained at the cost of adding a great deal of organic material.  How long this stays in the soil is debatable because I do  not manure every bed each year.  Over time and different cropping regimes there is an obvious need in some years to add significant amounts of organic matter.  Having a method of increasing the fertility while reducing the cost of adding significant amounts of organic matter would certainly make the cultivation of allotments much more economic.

If organic matter is added to ordinary soil without the charcoal then its conversion to carbon dioxide is relatively quick and enhanced.

Not only does charcoal seem to enable added organic matter to be stabilised in the soil, it is a form of carbon itself and would increase the amount of carbon in the soil.  In addition this form of carbon seems to be very long lasting.  From archeological sites and  investigation of Amazonian black earths this is measured in hundreds if not thousands of years.

Charcoal  significantly increases the fertility of the soil, it seems to  enhance the soils microbe population and possibly health and finally it also augments the ability of the soil to store carbon.

Having said all of this, I would not add neat charcoal.  I am going to add a crushed charcoal powder blood, fish and bone mix.  I am going to do this in a 1:1 ratio to begin with.  I am also going to soak crushed charcoal powder in comfrey liquid and then let it dry to a powder again before putting on the ground.

There is some evidence that neat charcoal will reduce the fertility of the soil by enabling organic material to be mineralised - changed to carbon dioxide or by absorbing or adsorbing nutrient molecules so they are unavailable to plant roots.   If the charcoal is first mixed with fertilisers like comfrey and blood fish and bone or even mixed with ordinary compost, then the charcoal will become saturated and not take nutrients from the soil.  Or that’s my theory anyway.

Now I asked a few days ago if  terra preta was just a characteristic of Amazonian soils depending on a tropical climate.  However there is evidence that there is low decomposition rates of charcoal in virtually all circumstances regardless of climate. “Our data from a wide range of climatic conditions and soils further suggests that such biochar [charcoal] applications may be effective in increasing soil organic carbon in many different geographic regions.”

And so to wormeries.  I think you should add worms to your soil rather than to a bin of compost.  However, I do add tiger worms both Eisenia veneta and Eisenia fetida to my compost bins.  They are breeding very well in my darlek bin at home.

Do I think that wormeries are worthwhile?  Bit time wasting really.  I like the idea of compost juice being used rather than it just leaching into the soil around the compost bin but to work hard at collecting it seems not to be worth while when you are working full time and cannot spend the time at the allotment doing this kind of luxury activity.

I have a large number of Lumbricus terrestris and Aporrectodea longa on the allotment and they do a lot of good work.  Deeper down I have Octolasion cyaneum.  They all look after themselves and according to Darwin will turn over the soil very effectively while producing good humus.  Now to link this in with Terra Preta and the use of charcoal, the research says that the charcoal particles should be quite small so that they can be processed by worms.  The fact that they are passing through the body of the worm and interacting with worm faeces seems to enhance the effect of charcoal on the soil.  I can give you research references for all of this if you want them.

As you can see, I have dug down three spits so that I can fill the trench with brush and shredded material.  You can see the green manure in the background and some of the shallots and winter onions.  As I dug out each spit I mixed the soil using soil cone heaps.  This was the area where the apple tree was and I have not dug down this far for over 15 years.  However, I must have dug down here in the past because I found two of my old sandles at the bottom of the trench.  There was also some unrotted sawdust horse manure and leaves that I must have burried a long time ago.  This shows that carbon can be sequested in the soil for a long time.  Behind the spade and fork you can see the brushwood from the silver birch trees I buried here.  And if you are wondering where the apple tree is, that’s under there too.  I dug down another spit with the fork but I didn’t take this soil out of the trench.  I was able to put four barrowloads of shreddings into  the trench.

    

  As you can see it is mostly laylandii.  Most people would avoid using this on their allotment because it has such a bad reputation for making the soil acid and incapable of growing anything.  This far down though, I don’t think that it will have any effect on the top soil.  It will help me to keep the soil drained though.

    

After filling the trench I put back the third spit soil mixing it thoroughly with itself.  Next, I put two or three barrowloads of leaves in the trench.

The second spit soil goes in next and finally the top soil.  You can see the soil heap cone that I have used to mix the soil with itself.  I level out the soil afterwards.  And that is all there is to it.

 Not more on terra preta Tone!!!!

I was thinking, if the terra preta is reliant on Amazonian or rain forest species of fungi and earth worm, would we be able to replicate this kind of soil in our temperate climate?

Will we just be a poor copy of the soil in the rain forests or is there a possibility that this soil is replicable. We would have to substitute fungi and earthworm for those that can survive the temperate climate.

If we can then this is a remarkable resource that can be carried around the world. If not then whoever is attempting to make terra preta – and the Germans seem to be ahead of the pack in this department – is doomed to failure.

I think that increasing fertility of soil with the use of charcoal may be as far as we can go…

Here is a good reminisce. My allotment on 2nd February 1982 just after I had taken it over. I had cleared and dug almost half of the allotment.  You can see I am skim digging.  The weeds that I have skimmed off were buried in the trench.  I took out a spit deep of subsoil, left it on the trackway and put in the weeds.  I took out a spit deep of subsoil further on in the trench and covered the weeds leaving a hole which was filled with weeds.  This is carried on until the end of the trench when I fetched the subsoil on the trackway and covered the weeds at the end of the trench.

  

February 1982                                                                                                                                                 From a similar viewpoint February 2010

The view from the other end.

   

 

And the soil in February 1982.  This is a typical stagnogley soil with clay enriched subsoil.  This type of soil has reduced Iron II compounds because waterlogged soils do not let air flow through them very well.  Iron II (Fe²⁺) compounds are grey or bluey grey in colour.  As this was a less permeable heavy clay and waterlogged soil,  it is grey although there is some oxidation where air has managed to get into the soil and this is where it has a mottled reddish brown colour.  This soil profile is called a Bg horizon.

Needless to say that it is not like this now.  As you can see, the bluey grey Iron II soil has been replaced by a more homogenous brown colour soil and there is obvious signs of organic matter even at the third spit - 90cm level.  With oxygen from the air the iron compounds give the soil a brown colour.  So soils that are free draining, open and porous tend to be redish brown. I think that I have won the water logging battle in this area of the allotment.

 There is  a difference between humus and dead organic matter in the soil.  Humus is a dark coloured amorphous colloidal liquidy material that leeches out of a compost heap.  It seems to have a very complicated chemical make up and is formed when dead plants and animals decay.  Animal excrement also seems to be important in its formation.  By animals I mean all the mini beasts that live in the litter.  It is a colloid and this enables it to retain water and this helps to improve the water holding capacity of the soil.  A colloid is a mixture but not exactly a solution of one finely divided material suspended within another material.  Humus is usually a colloidal solution.  Humus also increases soil fertility and makes it more friable.  Humus that is made from more acidic materials such as coniferous trees is called mor.  This type of compost is made mainly by fungi decomposing the material.  Humus that is more akaline is called mull and is the type that is more likely to be found in allotment soil.  Mull is much more likely to encourage earthworms and other small soil organisms.

Really this is what we want to obtain from the compost heap. When  the heap goes that friable black soil like material it contains a lot of humus.  Putting it on the soil allows microorganisms to  finish off the decomposition and turn the humus into nutrients.  However, this is a very long process and some material will spend years if not centuries locked up in the soil.

Why would anyone want to go to the trouble of making raised beds if they don’t need to?  The only reasons that I can come up with is to help to drain the allotment or for people who cannot bend down easily.

I have raised the whole of my allotment to get running water off it.  Being near the top of a hill means that springs emerge in several places.  I have burried two 6 inch diameter pipes across the allotment to drain them and with 3 soak aways under the paths this is coping with the water and the top is rarely too wet to walk on.

In the past I have sunk up to the top of my wellingtons, if not more, at this time of year.   Eric suggested a long time ago that I should raise the allotment with upright slabs.  They were more than adequate.  The only downside of them is that they allow little trickles of soil to escape through the joins.  This really is skirting around the fact that they are blooming heavy and take a lot of heaving about to get them planted in into the soil with any kind of asthetic effect.  I would not advise you to do this particulary around a 30 by90 allotment.

At its lowest the allotment is about 18 inches above the trackway.  At its highest it is about 2ft above the trackway,  although where I have burried the brushwood it is much higher in the middle of the allotment.  It looks quite dome shaped.  The streams bubble out under the slabs and onto the path so you can imagine the state of the path at the moment.  Still it keeps the nutters off the allotments because they don’t like walking through quagmire.

One of my next jobs is to take all the slabs out along the path to the tap and make sure that this bed is square.  It is really irritating that, when planting rows of vegetables there is a triangle of soil that is useless to plant in effectively and  is left to the weeds.  I just need to straighten up this bed and then I will move the path over a little.  This old path was laid on top soil so I am going to take a spit out where the path is going to go and replace it with stones removed from the Council soil.  Both Don and Tony, who got the Council soil too, have been removing stones avidly and leaving them by my allotment.   I will have plenty especially as I am going to bury the old greenhouse concrete foundations too.   I will use the topsoil to raise where the greenhouse used to be because it is a little low.  I might put slabs along the other side of the path too because this soil is getting high and falling onto the path in places.  It will get even worse when I take out the apple mint and the raspberries.

I have got to find somewhere good for the apple mint.  I planted it here because, when I walk up to the tap, I crush some of the mint leaves and it smells really good.

Aromatherapy  - gardeners had this a long time before it got fashionable.

Which brings me back to raised beds - as opposed to raised allotments.  Is this just a fashion too or is there some good horticultural reason for using them.  There are too many paths for me to be doing with.  If I am paying for the ground I want the maximum to be for growing.  I have three paths.  One to the tap and used to be to the greenhouse before I took it down.  Another is to the new shed.  The third is to two big water buts and along the raspberry row.

So why raised beds?  Has anyone done any comparison of yeild from raised verses ground level gardening?  Is there a relationship between the hight off the ground and the yeild you get from the raised bed?  Should we be building 8ft, 12ft or higher beds?  Should we be putting vegetables into a large wooden box and raise it up into the air with a tower crane?  Should we be suspending raised bed boxes from hot air balloons.  Maybe the best effects would be on the Space Station… What do I know?  I’m just a simple allotment gardener.  Keep talking bull shit - it is good for the allotment, Tone.

I woudl suggest, and I only have anecdotal evidence for ths, that gardeners that go to all the trouble of making wooden skirts for their beds are also those that have a lot of time on their hands and spend it carefully cultivating their works of art.   If you are going to all the trouble of making easy access beds then you are going to make sure that you easily access them as often as you possibly can.  This is what produces large yeilds of beautiful vegetables.

In my opinion yeild is all down to the enthusiasm of the gardener.  Those that put the hard work in will reap the rewards of a good harvest. And this will be regarless of elevation.

Which brings me to Roundup…

New allotmenteers are sometimes discouraged because their allotments are covered in brambles, nettles and couch grass.

There seems to be three camps for allotment clearing.

•  Spray, slash and burn
• Cover with black plastic and wait for a couple of years.
• Do a bit of gardening and dig the weeds out.  It is harder work but far more satisfying.

So, what do we have an allotment for?  Do we put in that much work for chemical covered vegetables that we could easily buy down at the nearest supermarket?  Do we go down to the allotment to breath in noxious chemicals that we can easily breath in down by the nearest main road?

I would rather put my hands in good rich soil that is not contaminated by man made chemicals.  I would rather eat vegetables that do not have to grow in contaminated soil.

I am in the hard work camp.  Get your spade and fork out and do some graft.

Now some will moan that they do not have time to dig out all the weeds.  Well if that is so, why are you cultivating an allotment in the first place because it does not get easier.

If you have no time to clear, you have no time to maintain.  They are equally time consuming.  Chemicals will do things sooner but why not cut out the middle man and go direct to the supermarket because you will get the same…

To  all you chemical fiends - not near my allotment please.

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.

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 aren’t they beautiful?’  No.  Flowers are beautiful.  Gardens are beautiful.  People are beautiful.

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 dumps pollution onto 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.

What do you do with diseased plants?  Well one thing I would not do is heap them into a smelly, smoke ridden pile of wet plant material because I will guarantee that you will not destroy  pests or diseases in this way.  Heat is one of the ways of killing microorganisms, however I would be surprised if the heat generated and the achitecture of a normal smoky garden fire would be a reliable way of safely disposing of diseased material.

There are alternatives to having fires.  You could use your green bin if your local council 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.I have never met a problem that shredding, burying or composting did not solve.  Burning is not the answer.

I have experimented for several years now burying large logs and tree branches.  The accepted wisdom is that this practice will remove nitrogen from the soil. Bacteria and fungi rotting the logs need nitrogen and they absorb it from the surounding soil.  Now this may be the case, however, if the logs are buried below the normal root run of vegetables any nitrogen that the microorganisms remove would not be available to most vegetables anyway.  I am talking here about burying at least two spits down in  subsoil.  Nitrogen is usually leached from the soil and this may be a good way of trapping this nitrogen and giving us the potential of recycling it into the top soil when the logs have eventually rotted away.  In my experience the rotting process is relatively quick and the soil formed is very friable.  I call this the  Montezuma method. These South American indians knew what they were doing.  They were excellent horticulturalists and agriculturalists.  They built vast floating gardens that fed cities.  They floated gardens on logs and brush wood. In any case, it does not seem to have any adverse effect on my vegetables.

Earlier in the year I buried a leylandii tree two spits down by double digging and burying it under the subsoil.  I have just dug down to see what has happened to it and I cannot find any trace of it.

Burying  logs has several advantages.  It raises the soil above the surrounding area.  As there are two springs on my allotment, raising the soil level means that the water flows below the soil and into the subsoil.   The surface 6 to 8 inches are normally well drained.  The logs and brush wood seem to leave drainage spaces in the soil which water can flow through easily.  I am burying carbon that would otherwise be converted into carbon dioxide and add to the carbon load of the atmosphere.  While carbon dioxide and methane are produced from the rotting process, I would suggest that most of the carbon will be left in the soil.  There is evidence that soil could be a carbon sink and buried carbon in the form of logs and brushwood could stay in the soil for hundred or even thousands of years.

The council has now put a stake in the quagmire part of the allotment.  I think it is to indicate that this was one of the allotments that had the soil replaced.  They just need to look at the soil to know that.  It is yellow with large15cm stones in it.  Compared with the soil they removed as polluted, this so called top quality top soil is like my subsoil - but with stones.

I think that the stake signifies that I am about to get a load of muck delivered.  The council has said that they will dig over the allotments and take out all the stone.  I will believe that when I see it.  I hope that they dig in the muck as well.  However, anyone that tries to walk on that part of the allotment is in danger of sinking without trace…

Do I really want the hassle of draining this part of the allotment???  Not really.  On the other hand this is a substantial area of new soil that could possibly have potential if it did not have a flowing stream running over it.

To change the subject, my mate Tony with the horses and trap telephoned me at the weekend saying there was a substantial amount of well rotted horse manure ready for collection.  He also said that I could borrow his trailer to get it up to the allotment.  Therefore, I will be transporting horse manure for the rest of the week.  It is true to say that one man’s rubbish is another’s gold.  You can keep your banks and money and stocks and shares.  I will take a good load of horse muck any time.  You can’t eat money.

I will also have to take the greenhouse glass off the allotment.  Some really pleasant person has carefully smashed it up for me and left the shards all over the allotment.   So kind.  I just hope that I get it all because I really do not want to get cut by glass again.  Last time it was particularly unpleasant.  Really, I should go and get a new tetanus jab just in case.

The trouble is, if you put substantial amounts of muck on the allotment, you increase both the bad and good bacteria.  I define good and bad as those that will and will not give you nasty diseases.  They are not inherently good or bad.  They don’t sit there in the soil plotting to infect you.

But this is by the by, I am starting to clear off the old brassicas.  Believe it or not, because I can’t, after about 15 years of clubroot free growing, the allotment has got clubroot again.  Never mind.  Good hygiene, good rotation and dressings of lime usually gets rid of it.  I did get a 6foot brussel sprout this year - regardless.  However, the cabbage white stripped the leaves and it only produced tiny sprouts.  Fresh sprouts taste the same whether they are large or small so I don’t worry.  Well the old sprout plants went into the green bin to be taken away by the council.  I do not burn diseased material if I can put it into the green bin.

I have taken the hedge clippings down to the allotment.  I have also dug out several of the overgrown shrubs in the garden and taken these down too.  They will be buried at the bottom of the double digging trench.  Now some will say that woody hedge cuttings will rob the soil of nitrogen.  Admittedly the carbon to nitrogen ratio will be quite large but there is little information that I can find that indicates that; this will be substantial; will affect the vegetable plants if it is buried more than 12 inches below the surface; and that the nitrogen will not be returned to the soil once the hedge cuttings rot down.  At the moment, my jury is out but I have to say that putting woody material this far down in the soil does not seem to have affected vegetables in previous years.  You might say that the vegetables would be bigger; nevertheless I don’t really want brussel sprouts bigger than 6 foot.  I wish I had taken a picture of the big brussel now.

I am still getting veg off the allotment.  I haven’t had all the parsnips or carrots yet.  As I take out the brussel sprouts, I am gleaning all the little ones and taking them home to cook.  I am still using up both my red and white onions and the potatoes have not run out yet.  Together with the frozen peas, beans and cauliflower that is quite a substantial array of vegetables for cooking.   The winter cauliflowers look very bedraggled at the moment but I am hoping that they will perk up during the next couple of months.  I will give them all a dose of comfrey liquid during March just to give them a boost.   The garlic has not sent up any leaves yet.  Last year they were showing before Christmas.  The snow and frost has kept them tucked in the soil but the warmer weather we are getting now may make them throw up new shoots.

I need to order some more seeds and I must send off for some Sante potatoes.  I have the Kestral already.  They are beginning to sprout so need to be put out in the greenhouse where they can get lots of light.  I have bought some new raspberry canes again and hopefully this year they will take.  Last years ones were hopeless.  I think one out of ten canes sent up shoots.  Never mind.  I reckon that I had a fairly substantial harvest last year and I looking forward to the new year.

At a time when recycling has become very popular the UK government is suggesting that we should have to pay to be allowed to compost organic material on our allotments and gardens.  Did you see anything about consultation?  Did they contact allotment associations?Who are the 286 people who replied to the consultation and what did they say? To say this is foolhardy is doing foolhardiness a disservice.

Jane Kennedy (Minister of State (Farming and the Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Liverpool, Wavertree, Labour) | Hansard source

Holding answer
22 January 2009

Between July and October 2008, DEFRA, in conjunction with the Welsh Assembly Government and the Environment Agency, carried out a consultation to review the waste exemptions from environmental permitting. This included holding several workshops.

The consultation proposals seek to retain an exemption from permitting for small scale community composting, which would include allotments, schools, churches and the grounds of voluntary organisations where they meet the other requirements of the exemption. The consultation also proposed that exempt waste operations would be required to re-register every three years and pay a registration charge.

Officials are currently analysing the 286 responses to the consultation. No decisions have been made as to whether to introduce charging for some or all exempt waste operations. A summary of the consultation responses received and the Government’s response to them will be published as soon as possible.

I haven’t done much down the allotment except to dig over the new bit.  I have been packing in several barrowloads of muck into each trench.  The double digging is mainly to help to drain off the water lying on the allotment.  During December and January, I have had running water on the allotment from a winter spring that rises under one of the paths on the allotment.   This has dained to collect in the new soil on the bottom third of the allotment creating a monumental quagmire of stony mud.   I really don’t know if I will keep this part of the allotment.  There is a chance that I could get the top half back again because Bill P is giving it up this year - or so the rumour goes…

Now it is February and nearly half term and I have not really done anything with the allotment.  Last year it was neatly tucked away into its winter hibernation.

Never mind.