Snow has all gone  now.  The water hasn’t  though.  Very wet.

This blog has been read by 100,200 people.  Now come on folks you don’t think I have read my blog that many times…

Sometimes I despair about the way that misconceptions are readily passed on in education.   I look  at quite a few gardening sites and it is remarkable how many of them just repeat the same advice without any reference to where it originally came from.  I think that a lot of this is self perpetuating and feeds off itself.  I have just found  this again on  crop rotation.  AHHHHHHHH! I have rotated crops every which way but loose and have never found any difference in the way that the vegetables grow.  Just don’t grow the same crop in the same area year after year if you can help it.  I have a six year rotation and I am fairly strict about not planting brassicas in the same place for at least 6 years.

Too many so  called scientific facts are based on little empirical data or evidence.   Don’t just repeat: make sure that you do  it yourself or at least  look at the data and make up your own mind.  Science is not  the recalling of facts.  It is the interpretation of data and evidence.  While anecdotal evidence is anecdotal at  least it is evidence which can be interpreted.  Repeating facts unquestioningly means that you are not making a judgement about their worth.  This is the problem with the public understanding  of science.  People do not understand that science  is not a body of facts.  It is a body of best interpretation of data.   And that interpretation will change as more data is obtained.  The most sensible interpretation of the data is that Jeremy Clarkson, TV presenter, is wrong.  Global  warming is happening and human augmentation is significant.

I hear that nowadays you can become a master composter.  My word, I don’t know how I could possibly have successfully gardened for fifty years without this accolade.  I have been piling up vegetable matter into a heap, leaving it for a while and digging it in every year since I started gardening, when I was eight years old.  Some compost was better than others and I must admit, if the layer technique; which I learnt from the old Victorian books, was used I got fairly good friable compost.  However, just piling it in a heap did more or less the same job with much less time and effort needed.

Who makes up these awards and what authority do they have  to  hand out these qualifications?

The layer technique was:

• Put a good layer of brush wood at the bottom for drainage.
• Start  the  compost off with a 1 foot layer of difficult to decompose material like straw, hedge cuttings,  woody perennial  material, leaves and  woody weeds etc.
• Next put on  a 1 foot layer of easily decomposable material like annual weeds, lawn  grass cuttings, vegetable  peelings,  cow, pig, chicken and pigeon manure etc.
• After that put 1 foot of sieved garden top soil.
• Dust the topsoil with a couple of handfuls of lime.
• Then  put  a new layer of difficult to decompose material maybe shredded  paper this time and then repeat the process  again

There were several reasons why I never was able to do this kind of composting.  You never have the right kind of material at the right time.   During  the autumn and winter  I  have lots of difficult  to  decompose material and in the summer I have tons of the  readily decomposable material.  Secondly, where am I going to get good top soil to put on a compost heap?  Digging holes in the allotment and using precious top soil was never an option for me.  I have used poorer soil and subsoil on the compost to try and improve the soil and use it on the allotment. It  has worked to some extent but it made the compost very stony.

Now I have made the heretical assertion that you should put leaves on a compost heap.  Shock and horror.  By leaves in this context I do mean tree leaves.   For some unknown reason they should not be added to the normal compost heap but should always be composted on their own.

I think that this is because in the Victorian age  the  estate gardeners would use rotted tree leaves as  a potting compost.  It does make a really good friable medium for seed compost and when mixed with sieved topsoil and grit will make a very acceptable potting compost. Yet there  is  no law  that states that  you cannot put tree leaves on  an ordinary compost heap.  I have heard people say that tree  leaves are rotted down by fungi.  That’s true, but so  is virtually all the other things  that you put onto  a compost  heap.  If you don’t believe me look  at grass cuttings  after  they have been on the compost for a while.  They have  the  tale, tale signs  of white threads running  through them.

There are few composts that  will add appreciable amounts of nutrient  to the soil.  However, plants do not necessarily need an  awful lot of nutrient.  Just as  long as you put back what you took  out you can’t go  wrong.   In  addition to compost from the compost heap,  I  add cow,  horse,  pigeon,  sheep and goat  manure when I can get it.  It’s all  grist  to the mill.

For  many years I did  not have a compost heap at all.  Now I  have  three that I put up last year.   Before, I liked  to bury all the compost material directly into a trench between the comfrey plants and I may continue to do this this year now that the comfrey has established itself again.  I was always cautious about adding grass cuttings that people had left near the  gate because you never knew what  noxious substances they had been putting on their lawns.  Allowing it to first  be processed by comfrey plants seemed the best thing to do.

I was up the allotment today for the first time  in  about three  weeks  to  do some serious work.  I  have  been harvesting  the Brussel,  parsnips  and leeks but doing nothing  else.   The bloke with the shire  horses on the common brought some horse muck over and when he was tipping it out got the trailer stuck in the mud.  The amount of  running water on the surface is phenomenal although I have seen this before when  there has  been  a thaw.   I said that I would help by taking off as much of the horse muck  as I could to lighten the trailer.

Well he tried several times to get the trailer out and it was stuck fast.    He went off to get a four wheel drive big tractor while I and two other blokes from the allotment tried to offload as much as we could.

We must have emptied about a third of the trailer before he came back and it took  a couple of seconds for the big tractor to extract the trailer.  The rest of the manure was dropped off and he left.

I think  that the new concrete bins are  far too far back from  the trackway and this means that the trailers need to cross the soft ground before they can be off loaded.

Still I got some  manure and put it around  the black current bushes.   I  had a good look at the bushes because I thought that I had some big bud. (Eriophyes ribis).  Now I don’t think I have.  They are  just good big plump buds.

I think that a lot of people  dig out a runner bean trench and put peelings, lawn  mowings and other composty things at  the bottom  of it then  backfill.   I have done  that with impunity for years, never having  any problems with the beans. I may not have time  to  do this this year because I still have not transplanted the raspberries yet and this is where I have decided to put the runners.   Having said this,  I will dig a trench if I have the  time.   I don’t know if it makes any difference to  the crop  you get and I have never compared trenched with untrenched.

Some people  line their trench  with newspaper.  I don’t  do this mainly because I never  remember to take newspaper up the allotment at the appropriate time.

I  am sure that while the newspaper will inevitably cause nitrogen  to be removed from  the  soil for a while, (while the bacteria are decomposing the paper) at this depth it would not adversely affect the runner beans.

What amuses me is, although these people do  this for their beans,  they criticise me for doing it with the whole allotment.  If it is good enough for beans why is it any different for the other vegetables? I don’t use newspaper.  I use brushwood.  I expect it does a similar job.

My runner beans this year will be “Aintree”.   It cropped really well last year and the year before.  Although I do have a soft spot for “Scarlet Emperor” and grew if for a great number of years, it does not do as well as Aintree.

At about 12 o’clock today I harvested several parsnips,  leeks and  some brussel sprouts.  They were washed and cooked by 4 this afternoon and  eaten for dinner.   By jove the taste was wonderful…

Makes it all worth while.

Beetroot seems to have gone over.  They  were affected by the snow.

Well  this  is  interesting.  We  have not had  a winter  like  this for  years in  England.  When I started to  garden  seriously - when I was about eight years old,  winters were like this.  The soil was like iron  and water froze  solid  in the butts.

Well I cannot get the leeks or the parsnips out of the ground at the moment.   During the Christmas  break, however,  we had fresh  parsnips,  a few leeks, brussel sprouts, beetroot and  brocolli.  We also  used  frozen  peas, maize, beans,  carrots and stored  pumpkin,  onion and potatoes.    That  is twelve  vegetables for Christmas  lunch…

Some nutter has  been  pulling  out my winter cauliflowers  for  some reason  and  I  have  lost  about  a  row of them.   Not  to  worry because I  have another two  rows.

What  can  you say?

All  the winter digging has  stopped.

The  four large silver birch were taken down by friends in November.   There was a large amount of brushwood and branches which I took down to the allotment.  I also  took down  the  large 5-8 cm branches.  I  would  have taken the  trunks  as  well  but they wanted them for their  log fires.  I took  out a line of gooseberry bushes and buried them as  well.  They keep on getting American mildew and I want to buy some resistant ones.  I love gooseberries.  I took out several of the blackcurrents as well and buried them with the gooseberries.  They were very old varieties that I was given ages ago when I first got the allotment.  They were not really producing very many fruit so I have replaced them with cuttings I took  of the new varieties.

I dug pits three spits  down carefully making sure that the layers of soil were not mixed.  Now  you can believe this or  not  but  I still had  top soil at this depth.  The top spit was  exceptionally fine  and  friable because  I  had  sieved it  several times over the  years.   I put quite a layer of  brushwood,  leaves and  compost in the bottom of the  pit.  The  larger branches  at the very bottom and the finer  pieces  nearer the  surface.   My son had cut the smaller pieces into approximately  5cm pieces so  a  lot  would fit into a small  area. I replace  the soil carefully mixing each  layer using the conical pile method.  If you make a pile of soil into a cone  shape  then each time  you put another spade full of soil on the top of it, it  mixes down the sides.  This  is how I used to mix potting composts when I worked  in tomato glasshouses.  Each  layer  was  mixed  like  this when  I  put the soil back  into the pit.   I did not mix the layers though.

Now the conventional  wisdom  is that this  addition of high carbon to nitrogen material  will  deplete  the soil  of nutrients.  After doing this  for  many  years,  I  question whether  this  is true in  all circumstances.   My new stainless  steel  spade  has a blade about 12 inches which means  that I am  going down about 3 feet.  At this level would  decomposition cause nutrient loss?  Nitrogen  is used both by bacteria  and  fungi to make their bodies.  This  nitrogen must be  obtained  from the  soil  some how or other.

The bacteria  could only get the  nitrogen from  the decomposing  material  itself.  The  fungi on  the other  hand  could stretch out mycelium into  the surrounding soil in  search of nitrogen.  The most  likely  place  that  they would find  it is  in the top 6 inches of topsoil.  Would  this be  feasable for  fungi  to  grow  mycelium  this  long.  Well in  this  though experiment,  I  have to say there  is evidence that mycelium do  grow remarkably long and this would not be unusual.  So,  I  want  to  find  out  next  year if the onions  suffer  with  nitrogen  depletion - although  I  have been  given  some  free  blood,  fish  and  bone and have already put it on the winter  onions,  shallots  and  garlic.   I  don’t really think that burying brushwood this deep will affect the plants growing in the top soil significantly. I would like a harvest of onions that is  not affected by Napomyhza gymnostoma, the onion miner fly, which  is a much more pressing problem than  worrying about nutrient depletion.  To that end I will be covering the  winter onions  with enviromesh  as soon as the cold whether has gone.

The effect  of burying brush wood  like this is to raise the allotment soil up at least 6 inches or so.  The theory is  that the brushwood would keep the subsoil  open and porous to  excess water.   Where the soil has  not been able  to fall through the brushwood, there would be  voids which water could pass through with little obstruction.   This would cause  the ground to be  much better drained.   There has not really been a water problem on this part of the allotment since just after I took it over,  however I would like to make sure that  the  water that  is on the rest of the allotment has  an  easy route off, and this  route will also include this  area now.

Another  reason  I  think that this  is will be  advantagous  is  that the decomposition  will produce heat  and  warm  the soil.  This is the theory behind the  ridge  for  ridge  cucumbers.   I must admit that when I went up and tried to dig this  area at the start of  the very cold weather it was just as hard as any other part of the allotment.  Maybe the heat had not penetrated across to the area that I was digging in.   Maybe I need to wait until  the  spring  before the bacterial and fungi start doing their job.

I must admit that the  pumpkins  did  well  on the  manure pile (that  I  left because  it was contaminated  with  aminopyuralid herbicide) possibly because of  the heat the manure  generated .

Moreover, a layer  of decomposing organic  matter like this could also  help   to  prevent  water loss during  the  summer. Evaporation from the  top of  the  soil  would cause water to  rise during  periods  of hot  dry  weather due  to  capillary action.   A thick layer of  brush  like  this  would  slow this process  down with  any luck.  Whether  this  is  infact  what  will  happen  remains to  be  seen, although I  think  that  this  is  the  theory  behind  digging  a  bean  trench and  putting  lots  of compost at  the  bottom  of it.

I am  encouraged  by finding  out that the South American early civilisations used this as a method to make terraced fields and also to  drain  fields  around  lakes.  These  are the  peoples that bred  potatoes, beans, tomatoes, maize,  cucumber,  marrow,  squashes,  and many more  food  plants.  Respect…

As my back  has  improved a lot,  I  will probably be down at the allotment as soon as the  weather improves.  I really hope that this cold  weather will have seen off a lot  of  pests on the allotment.   With that  in mind the only reason that  I  want to  go  to  the allotment at the moment is to replenish  the bird feeders.

The sweet peas seem to be holding up in the greenhouse.  I would have liked to transplant them  into their opend ended  pots before  the cold weather  really set in but I  haven’t so we will just have  to  wait and hope they will  survive.   There is  no  heat  in the greenhouse.

I am looking  at catalogues and  websites at the moment because I will have  to order my seeds soon especially if I want the  varieties that work on the allotment.   I am going to go for kestrel and Sante potatoes again.  They worked fairly  well even though they had the contaminated horse manure on them.   They have decided to use aminopyuralid again after banning it last year.  I cannot see how they can keep it out of the manure.  Still I  will get some  horse manure  from  Tony in the next few weeks.  I have left a space on  the  allotment to pile it  on.  I will  put it under the potatoes again because  I  see little benefit  to  leaving  it  to  rot  down  for  a year on a pile.   I have  always dug in manure fresh  or not -  it  might as well rot down in the soil as on a heap.  By the time  I get around to planting the potatoes in this area the manure will have had  at least threee  or  four months to decompose.   I  never find that it is so hot that it  damages the  plants.  The only manure that I would be  very careful with is pigeon  because that can seriously damage  the  soil if  put on  neat.   Pigeon  manure  will  be  put onto the compost heap  as an accelerator - not that I  have a  compost heap for any lenght  of time.   I  like  to dig stuff in  straight  away if I have a space on the allotment.  I  dig  it in at least two  spits deep  so  that it  does not affect the top soil.

I will put most of  the compost that  I  have collected this year onto the bottom plot.   It still needs to be raised up a lot - it has still got running water on the surface.   With the very poor new soil that the council have given me, there is a big need for  organic matter to be incorporated into it.  It will be the area for the peas this year and this will give me the opportunity to add lots of manure and compost into the trenches before planting.  I doubt that I will get such good peas this year as  last.  We will  see…

Other jobs that I would be doing if the weather was a little more clement would be to move all the raspberries to their new home and to straighten the old path.  As the  allotment has been raised up, where I am going to straighen the path is about 2 feet below the soil surface.  I will have to dig away some of this bed,  move the  soil retaining  paving slabs across and  then replace the  soil.  There may be some soil  left over so I will use it to raise the  ground where I took the old greenhouse down.

I took down a 30 ft silver birch on Saturday.  I dig around the trunk exposing the roots and then cut through them with a bow saw.  My son and I then pulled it over.  This is the only way I know of easily removing the stump.  The roots are then left in the soil to rot.  We cut the branches off and put them into bags - I like to cut them up quite small with the secateurs.  John cut the trunk into 1 metre sections.  We put the whole lot into the car and I took it to the allotment.  I dug down about 4 feet and into the subsoil and buried the whole lot.  It is remarkable what you can bury in a big hole.  The subsoil was replaced and I got several barrow loads of grass mowings and put them in the hole too.  I covered the grass with topsoil. This is what I call serious Montezuma method.

The reason why I am taking down the silver birch trees is that they are taking all the water from the top soil in the garden and very little will grow well near them.  They are getting quite old now and I have several younger ones to replace them.  I only have four more to take down now.  They will all be buried in the subsoil of the allotment.

I doubt if anyone out there believes that I do this and can still grow substantial vegetables.  While I agree that woody material will remove nitrogen from the soil in decomposition, I do not find that it adversely affects the vegetables that I grow.  Maybe I would get even bigger crops it I did not do this kind of thing.  I doubt it though.  Trees have relatively large amounts of nutrients locked up inside them.  Why send this up in flames when you burn them?  I would rather have the nutriments.

Doing all this deep digging means that the onion bed is not finished yet.  I will still have to bury the other silver birches.  I could not leave the onions any longer so I have put them in pots in the greenhouse.  I put a little mychorrhizal fungi in the pots as well to encourage association.  I also planted my garlic and shallots in pots as well.

I have started to plant the sweet peas today.  I have put them in those plastic sectioned seed trays.  I planted about 100 seeds and I have forgotten all their names.  Percy Thrower was one and Royal Wedding was another.  I will look and see what they are tomorrow because I don’t want to go out to the green house now. Its dark and cold out there.

I didn’t have time to take down the runner beans although I was going to put them into the hole I had dug in the onion bed.  I will do this next weekend.

I need to put some green manure on this area of the allotment.  I will dig it in during March next year.  I don’t want to make this area too fertile because I will be putting my brassicas in this ground.  If you make the ground too fertile the brussel sprouts start to blow (open out) and they do not make tight buds.  Also the purple sprouting will flower early.  I will put blood fish and bone on the cauliflowers and cabbage with possibly some chicken manure as well.  They will benefit from the extra nitrogen.

Everyone is asking about my green manure that I planted two weeks ago.  It is a mixture of annual meadow grass and tares.  It is a good mixture adding both body and nitrogen to the soil.

I am still cropping beetroot and carrots; however I am leaving the parsnips until the first frost.

The rocket and American cress has come well and I am looking forward to cropping that during the winter.  Most of the strawberries I moved are doing well.  These were all weeded at the weekend – I was amazed that the weeds had come back after I removed weeds last week.  Brassicas are doing well if small.  Brussel sprouts are about half the size I usually grow them.  This new soil that they gave us is not worth the trouble.  I am thinking of moving my grapes onto this. They like really poor soil.

Getting an immense crop of maize this year.  Another example of global warming.  When I started gardening over 40 years ago we would never have planted maize, cucumber, pumpkin, tomato and courgette outside.  Nowadays I do not give it a second thought.

 My mother used to preserve beans in salt.  She used the old glass sweet jars.  I sliced the beans with a traditional slicer and usually there were quite a few.  She used preserving salt and put the beans into layers of about 1inch or 2cm.  She did not blanch them.  I think that blanching does help to preserve the beans for longer by knocking out some bacteria from the beans. However, we kept our beans for a year at least and they were still as good as new.  If you want to keep beans for a couple of years, I think that blanching might help. 

She used to soak the beans overnight when she wanted to use them. Apart from fresh beans, I ate beans like this for years before I began to freeze them.
I seem to remember that the beans seemed to reduce in volume after you had filled the jar and more could be added after a few days.

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.

I just went down to Heathrow Airport to collect my daughter and it was really misty all the way down.  It is truly the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. 

I got another 5lb of peas off the Early Onwards.  The Aintree runner beans are also cropping better than any others on the allotment.  I am getting about 5lb every other day so although the weather is cold and wet the beans and peas seem to like it. Last year I was only getting about 2lb of beans off so there is an improvement there. I top and tail them and put them through a traditional bean slicer and then freeze them. I would rather eat them fresh if I can but I could never eat this many fresh.

The pumpkins have now decided to fruit but they are only about football size at the moment so I do not think that I will have any giant ones.  I will leave them on until September to see if they get any bigger. 

The carrots and beetroot have done very well this year too.  I am pulling about 5 beetroot and 10 carrots each week.  We cannot eat any more than this. 

The sweetcorn is nearly ready to pick.  We will probably freeze this because there is no way we will eat it all straight away. 

The leeks are growing well but some of them have rust and still need tender loving care.  I will hoe them up a little bit more today.  The purple sprouting broccoli is coming well.  I am only getting a handful off them at the moment but that is more than enough to be eating at the moment. 

The Kestrel and Sante potatoes have gone over now and the tops are dying back.  I will get the rest of them out today.  I am putting them into Hessian sacs which are not very good but I have some ideas about how to exclude the light. Remarkably there are some potatoes with blight.  I am just going to take out these and only store the best.  There are not many with blight but I think that they were affected just as they died down. 

I have cut out all the raspberry canes that fruited earlier in the summer.  I have tied in the new canes that will fruit next year.  The autumn fruiting raspberries are already tied in and are just getting to the stage of fruiting now.  I am not sure whether any of them will reach home though because I will probably eat them straight from the canes.  There are quite a few bumble bees and other types of bee on the raspberry flowers but very few honey bees.  I am not sure whether I have seen a honey bee all summer. 

The onions continue to get bigger but I think that they would have benefited from a little more warmth than we have been getting.  The ridge cucumbers and the courgettes seem to be ok though. 

The plums and the apples are starting to come now.  I picked quite a few off yesterday.  Might make plum jam. 

I still have only had a very few tomatoes.  I think that this is very disappointing because I planted the seed very early this year. 

I need to plant some more rocket, lettuce and radish if I can this week. 

After the potatoes come out I will be planting the Caliente mustard.  I would have started before this but I keep forgetting to take the seed to the allotment.  I am not too worried because I want to double dig this area and put some lawn mowings and turf under this soil.  With the green manure mustard on the top I think that this is all the manuring I will do for this area.  It will have the onions on next year.�

Some friends of mine are going to come down and see the allotment.  I have been telling them about it for quite some time and it is only now that they seem to be interested.  I think that it is merely the media interest in allotments that has encouraged them to make the effort. 

Interested or not, I wanted the allotment to look as good as it can do.  It is a working allotment and never looks pretty so tidying it up is the most that can be done to make it look presentable.  At least the tagetes and other annuals I have planted have begun to flower in earnest. 

 I tied up all the sweet peas and took off all the flowers that were open.  There are a lot of buds and these will come during the week.  Got a couple of pounds of runner beans off the plants and then went along the row taking out any growing points that had strayed above the canes.  I do this for several reasons.  The main one is to encourage side shoots to develop lower down the plant.  The second reason is because the plant may get top heavy if you allow the growing points to carry on growing and flopping about.  More and more growth develops at the top of the canes and the whole structure becomes  unstable.  This means that the least bit of wind will topple the canes over.   The final reason is that it is a bit of a stretch to get the beans at the top of the canes. 

I watered both the beans and the sweet peas with comfrey liquid. 

I sprayed the leeks with both liquid derris and aspirin against the leek fly.  I weeded them and hoed them up. Pulling a ridge of soil  up to them means that more of the stem will be white. 

 I have taken the enviromesh off the carrots.  Now I know that this is foolhardy and they will be infected by carrot root fly, but I am getting really irritated when I have to take off the mesh to crop the carrots and to weed. 

I took out a few of the carrots and several of the beetroot.  I washed them and took off their tops.  I see no point in taking the leaves home if you are not going to use them. 

I dug up some of the Kestrel potatoes.  There are some really big ones so I was quite pleased with that.  The potatoes are going over now and the tops are slowly turning yellow.  I will get the whole crop of Kestrel out this week.  I like to wash them before I store them.  So they will all get a quick wash before I put them into the Hessian bags. 

 There were several gooseberries still on the bushes so I stripped them off too.  I picked some lettuce, radish and rocket for salad.  A couple of the courgettes had developed so I took them home too. 

The raspberries have continued to fruit and I took home a couple of pound.  These will probably be frozen but I do enjoy eating them with yoghurt or ice cream.  The strawberries have finished now and sending out runners.  I will keep some of the runners for next year but I really need to get some more virus free plants. 

There are still no red tomatoes.  I put this down to the cold wet weather we have been having this summer.  It is a typical British weather and while the courgettes, cucumbers and tomatoes have suffered it has been great for the carrots, lettuce, peas and beans.  I don’t mind the wet weather but I think that it is time for us to have a little more sunshine and warmth. 

Lots of plants have put on phenomenal growth this past week.  The beans have covered the canes now and the plants are really bushing up.  The sweet peas have reached the top of the canes and will have to be layered soon.  The peas have overtopped their supports and the brassicas are getting enormous.�

For my 100th post I thought that I would put some photographs of the allotment on here.  Yesterday I got my first handful of beans off the Aintree runner beans.  I got a couple of buckets of sweet peas off as well.  That is why there are not many on them.   The weather is very overcast but not cold.  22^oC in the shade - not that there is much sun today.   

As you can see the allotment is beginning to become very green and there has been a lot of growth.  This lower half allotment is new this year.  I had to clear quite a lot of weed off it before I started to plant.  I double dug it all right up to the Onward peas. 

Comfrey growing well in the foreground and beans and sweet peas in the background.  You can’t see the pumpkins between the beans and the comfrey.  This is number 26. Number 25 starts by the shed. 

Carrots are under the enviromesh, beetroot next then two rows of annual flowers as companion planting. 

Then there are 10 lines of leeks interspersed with companion planting. 

You can just see the pumpkin in the foreground. 

Courgettes are big but not producing yet.  Lots of flowers but no courgettes.  Kelvedon Wonder peas are nearly finished now but you can see the Early Onward in the background starting to fruit.  Running alongside the sweet corn is a row of nigelia as a companion plant.  The shed is on Eric’s allotment not mine.  The plum tree is mine though. 

Sweet is corn growing well.

Please note that the weeds are on a public path between allotment 25 and 26.  Number 25 is my old allotment.  Behind the rhubarb there is a new blackberry plant and along the supports are a new line of raspberries.  If you look at the post that you can see going into the ground, there are two grape cuttings that are growing really well.   In the background you can see Florence fennel, radish, rocket, lambs lettuce and spinach.  There is also poached egg plant.  Not much yellow on these flowers though.   There are quite a few apples on the Granny Smith.  You can see how much I have raised the allotment using concrete slabs.  In the far background there are the brassicas.

And here they are winter cauliflower, Brussel sprouts, cabbage and broccoli.   I have left the nets over them to keep the cabbage white caterpillars off them.  I will have to drag some more soil around the stems at the weekend because they are getting quite big now and might start falling over.  I don’t really want to stake them because I have used all my stakes for the peas. 

The Sapo and Sante potatoes.  There are some Kestrel potatoes in the foreground and these are starting to go over now.  The tops look good but this is no indication of how big the potatoes are. 

The Kestrel potatoes are just going over.  I will have to start to harvest them next week.  I will plant Caliente mustard here after they have been taken out.  In the background you can just make out the blackcurrent bushes.  They have cropped very well this year. 

In the foreground are the Meteor peas that replaced the winter onions.  In the background are the onions interspersed with tagetes and a row of chamomile as companion planting. 

 

The onions are growing much better now but there is still some distortion in the foliage.  You can see two lines of parsnips in the background.  Not many weeds at the moment. 

This is what you can do with double digging, horse manure, chicken manure and comfrey liquid. 

I will be raising the new allotment up as high as the old one.  I will use turf, leaves and lawn mowings initially but will also continue to use horse and cow muck.�

I knew that there would be a lot of sweet peas because I had not cut any during the weed.  Well I filled a bucket with them.  I am getting exhibition standard blooms now but I doubt if I will show them.  I just like the fun of growing them.  They certainly smell wonderful.  The scent is everywhere in the house.  Well,  they have filled four vases. 

I took out the first row of Kelvedon Wonder peas completely.  I took the chicken wire off them last week and put it around the Meteor peas.  I gleaned the rest of the peas on this row and pulled out the plants.  The roots were all covered in nitrogen fixing nodules so I think that they have done a good job.  They have added nitrogen to the soil and I think that I have got quite a few pounds of peas off just this one row.  I have another four rows coming on well.   The rain has helped them to grow this year.  Several of the roots had mychorrhizal fungi on them so adding them to the soil seems to have done the trick.  Also I planted them directly under a small apple tree and they still did very well. 

I sprayed the onions and leeks with derris and aspirin.  They are still suffering with leek miner fly.   Tomatoes are fruiting but they are still very small.  They are in the greenhouse too so I think it is the rainy weather that is not letting them grow quickly. 

Courgettes are flowering well but the only courgette that they produced rotted. 

Several people on the allotments are taking out their early potatoes.  I was thinking of having a look at a root of Kestrel.  The tops are still very green so I think that they are still growing.  There is no sign of blight this year thank heavens.  I got a crop last year but I would not say that it was good.  Still it did last us quite a while. 

The beans are coming very well.  It will be the earliest that I have ever had runner beans.  The wet weather is to their liking I think. 

Some of the companion planting I put in is flowering now.  It looks quite good.  The convolvulus, poached egg plant and tagetes are making quite a show. 

Took a look at the grapes in the allotment greenhouse today.  There are some grapes on the black one but nothing on the white grape.  I doubt if they will ripen properly with all this rain we have been having. 

Most of the March lettuces have either been eaten or have gone to seed.  I have just started eating the April ones.  I will have to clear the seeding ones away and leave the ground to the winter cauliflowers. 

Not many plums on the plumb tree and not many apples on the apple tree.  Maybe Granny Smith was not a good choice for my allotment but Victoria plums have been very good in the past. 

The strawberries have finished more or less. However, the raspberries are certainly still producing prodigious amounts of fruit. 

Good job too because I eat so many straight off the canes.�

I think that there is a lot of mystique about the making of jam that is uncalled for.  The black currents that I bought home yesterday are now boiling away in the big pan. I like to use a very big wooden spoon - mainly to impress everybody.  I do not add any water at all.  Then I add the same weight of sugar as fruit - more or less.  Next, I bring this to the boil and wait until enough water has evaporated from the fruit to make it set.   You can tell when it is ready by dribbling some off the wooden spoon.  If it starts to set on the spoon then it is ready to put into the jars.  I think that mine is nearly ready now.  It has taken less than an hour to do it. 

I am going to mow the lawns now.

Oh dear I have broken the lawn mower.  I think that the motor has burnt out.  I will get some petrol for the motor mower tomorrow. 

Got down the allotment at about 1 o’clock and there was a heavy shower of rain.  I just wanted to pick some raspberries and strawberries so I carried on regardless.  After a while it stopped raining and the sun was very warm.  I picked the first of the sweet peas to take home.  They are smelling beautiful. 

I think that all gardens should have something to look at - colour; something to smell - scents; something to hear - chimes; something to taste - raspberries and something to touch - the soil. 

I spent some time washing the black fly off the runner beans.  I just used the sprayer and water.  I expect I will have to do it again next week.  I got them fairly clean though.  I watered peas, beans and sweetcorn with comfrey. 

Started at the bottom of the allotment and hoed the whole allotment.  The rain has started all the weed seeds germinating again. 

Finally, I took another cutting of the comfrey to put into the butts.  I have now filled two butts and have cut almost all the comfrey. 

Ate a dinner that included a salad of lettuce, peas, carrots, rocket and radish of my own.  My tomatoes have not started cropping yet so I had to use bought tomatoes.  Then I had strawberries and ice cream.  Lovely jubbly…