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.

I got down to the allotment on Sunday afternoon.  I took down the lawn cuttings and put them in the double digging trench.  Nearly the whole allotment site has taken down their runner beans now so I decided to do the same.  The tops went into the trench as well.  All the canes and the supports went into the greenhouse.  There were no more flowers on them and all that were left were the old beany beans that I had missed on previous picking.   The pumpkins were making a nuisance  of themselves because they had grown through the beans.  They are not very large ones, most being about the size of  a football, but there are one or two that have grown beach ball size.  Now all we have to do is eat them.  I might make pumpkin pie or soup with them and then freeze it.  It is always a good standby for the winter.

I cleared the area where the radish, rocket and spinach had gone to seed.  Put them all in the trench.  The Florence fennel went to seed too so I put that in as well.  Double dug another trench and was just about to start filling this one with lawn cuttings and manure left near the bottom gate when it started raining.

This time of year the allotment can be a little disheartening because the ravages of the summer are clearly evident.  Lots of the brassicas have been well and truly eaten.  The gooseberries have lost all their leaves.  Lots of the annual companion plants have gone over and need to be taken out.  So the poor old allotment really needs a good old tidy up.  I just wish that I had the energy and the time.

The nights are drawing in now and by the time I have organised myself to get up the allotment after work it is beginning to get very dark.  I doubt that I will be able to do anything substantial except at the weekends.

I have really cleared the bottom third of the lower allotment except for a few more comfrey plants.  I also need to take off about seven slabs which I had carefully levelled to put my shed on.  Never mind.  I have just stacked the other slabs on the path to keep them out of the way of the JCB digger.  I don’t know when they are coming to take the soil off the allotment but they did say that it would be the end of October because we would have harvested all our crops.

The leeks need another spraying with derris to keep off the leek fly , Napomyza gymnostoma. The leeks have got some rust on them but they are still growing very well.  If the fly stays off them they will be really big around Christmas.  I am loath to take the companion plants out around them because they seem to be protecting the leeks.  Maybe it is just my wishful thinking.  I also hope that the wet year has deterred the fly as well.

I am going to take out the old Granny Smith apple.  I don’t really want to but it is not producing many apples and the ones I do get are mangy and moth eaten.  The Victoria plum is also going over and needs to come out.  I might give them to the November the 5th people to put on their bonfire.  I am not too happy about burning things off the allotment but they came pleading for wood for the bonfire and this was all I had to offer them.  I will not be there so I don’t mind.

I have some black grapes.  If they fatten up any more and ripen I might get some raisin sized grapes before the end of October.  It has not been a good year for grapes.  The new strawberries seem to be doing very well.  I will move the cambridge strawberries because they will be smothered by the potatoes next year when I put them in that bed.  Also I want that room to put several piles of horse manure.  I am not too sure where to put the strawberries but they cannot stay were they are now.

The autumn raspberries are coming with great profusion now.  As is my want, I am eating them straight from the canes.  I don’t know if you agree but I do not find them as sweet as the summer ones but beggars can’t be choosers.  I still ate them for my mid afternoon break.

Eventually it became too miserable in the rain and I decided to call it a day and come home.  I dug up five or six pounds of carrots, washed them carefully and put them in the car for people at work.  I told them that they were organic and that they would be a little moth eaten.  The consensus seemed to be that they did not mind so they have  got some to chew the bones out of.

Today I am having tomatoes, cucumber, marrow, beetroot, carrots, red onion, potatoes, sweet corn and white onion for my evening meal.  I am making a vegetable curry with a salad on the side.  What could be better than that?  Maybe if I had brought home a few of those autumn raspberries?

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.

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.�

Very cold up the allotment.  I went up on Sunday because it was snowing on Saturday.  So Saturday was spent planting onion seed and garlic cloves.  I planted the garlic in pots with the mycorrhizal fungi.  I am hoping they will form an association in the pot.  When the garlic is about 10-15 cms tall I will spray with soluble asprin.  There is a very good debate about using asprin on

 http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/aspirin.htm

I am hoping that this will prevent the onion eelworm from infecting the garlic.  In any event it should enable the garlic to develop into a fairly good bulb.  I am going to do the same with the onions when they germinate.  I will prick them out into small pots with mychorrhizal fungi and grow them on in the greenhouse.   I will plant them out in about March or early April. 

There is a debate on allotments-uk.com about whether to start to chit potatoes.  I think that it is very early to start doing this. 

I discovered that I had ordered Sarpo Axona from Thompson and Morgan.  To tell you the truth I can’t remember ordering them.  They are a fairly new Hungarian variety which is reported to have very good blight resistance.  I am just wondering if it also has eelworm resistance.  I have all the Kestrel and Sante potatoes now and I am looking forward to planting them out and seeing how well they do.  I will be planting them with mychorrhizal fungi too.  You can’t have too much of a good thing and if it doesn’t work then I will not get any more.  I think that one of the reasons that an allotment becomes less and less fertile is that the mychorrhizal fungi do not like being disturbed and their host roots being removed every year.  This means that they begin to die out and the plants are left to fend for themselves.  Replacing the fungi in the soil may well increase the yeild considerably. 

I didn’t get any more horse muck because it was snowing and I think that Tony’s field is very wet.  I would not like to churn it up particularly as he is giving me the horse manure.  I will be getting a couple of trailer loads next Saturday.  It is also school half term so I will be able to go in the week too. 

I got a lot done on Sunday.  I dug down about 2-3 feet so that I could expose the roots of the plum and it was fairly easy to saw through the main roots with the bow saw.  I could leaver the tree out of the hole because I have left so much of the trunk on.  It is now on the comfrey patch while I consider what to do with it.  I will try to bury most of it in the comfrey patch but I will have to cut it up with the bow saw.   I have buried all the rubarb chard, blackcurrent prunings, some autumn raspberry canes, the peas, the sorrel and the few weeds that have grown over the winter in the plum tree hole.  I think that that will make the ground up quite well so there will be no depression where the plum used to be.   

I took out the peas, got nothing off them but they will be good nitrogen fixer for that area.   Dug over the ground where the peas used to be because I had put a lot of leaves between the rows of peas and I wanted to dig these in.

I raked around the brassicas to remove all the dead leaves.  I took the yellow ones off as well.  I dug a big hole in this area of the allotment and buried them all about 2ft down.  The brussels have come to an end now and I will take them out next weekend. 

Now we come to the gripe.  Why are there idiots that do not know how to treat allotments and proceed to cover them in stones and subsoil from a disease infested pathway?  I sieved the topsoil on my allotment to get rid of large stones and these nutters proceeded to undo all the good work. 

As I have said before there is a spring on my allotment that this time of year flows fairly continuously.  I put a land drain under the allotment and raised the soil up about 2 feet so that I could walk across the soil without sinking in to my knees.  (It did happen on several occasions). This meant that the water gushes out on the path next to the allotment and flows in a kind of a stream down the trackway into the undergrowth of allotments down the hill.  For some reason people (I don’t know who) have dug up the trackway for about 5 meters and put a land drain in.  Now the water gushes out in the middle of the trackway but 5 meters further on.  Not only this but they proceeded to remove my carefully sieved topsoil from the allotment and use it to fill their hole.     I THINK I WILL GIVE MYSELF PERMISSION TO SHOUT.  WOLVERHAMPTON COUNCIL, (ALLEGEDLY), LEAVE MY CAREFULLY SIEVED TOPSOIL ALONE AND DON’T LEAVE YOUR CONTAMINATED SUBSOIL AND STONE ON MY ALLOTMENT. To justify this rant I will post some pictures of the trackway and my allotment.  But not yet because I will not get down there until the weekend.�

Infamy, infamy, maybe I am paranoid but I have the distinct feeling that this badger has got it in for me.  It likes to sit under the current bushes on the straw cheeky beggar. It has really annoyed me this time totally destroying at least 5 leeks.  Look at the picture Tone.   You will have forgotten this by next year. 

What do you do when you have a leek serial murderer on your hands?  Well the blooming thing will not have any more of my leeks.  I have put a serious amount of netting over them.  Ok animal do your worst now!!!  Chew the bones out of this animal if you can. Ha haa……  Will I have the last laugh?

I ate all the autumn raspberries again today.  It did make me happier.  Everyone should have the opportunity of eating fresh raspberries straight from the bush.  

You know I cannot really understand this five portions a day lark.  I don’t usually eat five portions - I tend to eat about 10 to 12 portions.  PS I haven’t a clue what a portion is so I am talking through my hat.   What I want to know is  the ‘portion’ a new internationally recognised standard measurement?  Who was it that decided that 5 of these undefined portions was the right amount of fruit and vegetable to have during the day?  Are 5 portions a day applicable for adults and children, women and men?  Are 5 portions of grapefruit the same as 5 portions of pineapple?  Is fruit salad worth more because it is a mixture of fruit?  Is there a gold standard in fruit - is the pomegranate much more valuable than a strawberry?  The government will not tell me.http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/Healthandsocialcaretopics/FiveADay/index.htm

Now we come to the important question.  How many portions of raspberries did I eat today when I cleared all the red ones off the bushes?  And is this cancelled out by the three donuts I ate for my tea?  �

I didn’t realise that you could put photographs on here so I tried with some old ones first.  These photographs are from April 2005.  This August’s photographs are at the bottom of this page.  Still it is really good to see what I was doing two years ago and what the allotment is like now.   

These photographs are from April 2005 I have had to plant the potatoes around the winter cauliflowers because they have not flowered yet. If you look at the photographs of the allotment in August 2007 below you will see from this years photographs it is where I have planted the carrots, parsnips and the pumpkin. 

   

This is a photograph of the allotment middle piece in April 2005.  It had a row of Hurst’s Green Shaft and two rows of Autumn King Carrots under the Enviromesh.  The row of black current bushes seem to be very small in this picture.  If you look at this years photographs below you will see that it has the maize, chard and brassicas this year. 

April 2005. This is exactly the same place I have planted the leeks this year (see this years photographs below) but I have about 6 lines of leeks  in 2005 and only have planted 4 rows this year.  This years are two feet between rows but only 6 inches apart in the row. 

 

This must have been fairly early in 2005 because the peas are just showing through.  I planted the brassicas this side of the peas and onions the other side.  It looks like I have planted the peas in the same place in 2007 but they are much closer to the path this year. 

14th August 2007

I have dug over the top piece of the allotment while I was harvesting the potatoes. I buried the pea tops and put comfrey leaves in the trenches. I have tried not to bury old crops because I think that that is why I have eel worm on the allotment now, however I wanted to seed this area with the nitrogen producing bacteria on the roots of the old peas. I have removed the potato tops and any small potatoes that I do not want and will take them to the tip today. While I was digging so deep I decided to straighten the slabs around this part of the allotment. Only about 15 inches are above ground now so they should not lean any more. The ground went through the three tools treatment. First hoed, then used the hand cultivator and finally the rake. Although I have sieved this part of the allotment, there were a lot of stones brought up with the deep digging. No Japanese Onion sets in the sho ps yet so I have sown mustard as a green manure. I don’t have club root anywhere on the allotment so I am not worried about using mustard any more. On the rest of this area I am planting Feltham First peas. It is the first time that I have tried this. I know it is too early for an autumn sowing and too late for a summer sowing but I don’t want to leave the ground bare for too long. Before sowing I put chicken manure pellets over the area while I was raking. I watered in the peas with comfrey liquid diluted 1:10. I put supporting canes 2 feet apart down each side of the trench and used garden wire to attach chicken wire to the canes. We have a problem with pigeons on the allotment so I may also net the peas as well. The peas may not come before the winter but they are covering the ground and they will be a good green manure. I would have used Sainsbury’s dried peas, which I have used before, but they do not seem to sell them any more. I checked the leeks to see if there were any sign of eelworm (distorted leaves and falling over) and the dreaded Wolverhampton leek fly. I am told by other allotment holders that I am safe until October. We shall see. I have a tray of lettuce to plant out. They need to be in full sunlight or they do not heart up very well. I am also going to do a sowing of spinach, spring onion, rocket and radish in 1 yard rows next to the beans. Then the allotment will be full again. The pumpkin has covered the whole area where the onions and garlic used to be. I think the squashes and the ridge cucumbers are being smothered. I have a bet on with the children at school that I can grow a pumpkin bigger than they can. I am feeding mine on comfrey which seems to make lots of growth but not very big pumpkins. The Gardener’s Delight tomatoes seemed to have recovered from the blight so I have just removed the dead leaves and I am leaving them in. I will probably have to rely on the tomatoes I have at home though. The plums are very big this year but a lot of them are rotting on the tree. I will pick them as soon as they are ripe. One of the trees has got silver leaf disease so I will have to take it out completely. Shame because I have had that tree for over 20 years. I am going to spray the brassicas with sea weed this week because it does seem to make them green up and grow fast. It is raining now so I am going to go and pick some sorrel and make some sorrel soup.�

15th August
It had stopped raining by the time I got to the allotment so I decided to do a few things and eventually stayed there for about 5 hours. I took the potato tops to the tip and also put the bags in. I nearly said threw them away but there is no place called away. They will be put into a land fill site. I am in two minds about whether burying plastic is a bad thing. It helps to remove some of the ancient carbon from the carbon cycle sequestering it into the soil. I got three rows of peas in the space left by the potatoes also leaving about 8 foot for the Japanese onions when they are available. Planted a mixed row of lettuce between the peas and the beans but I have still got half a tray left. The wet weather is certainly making the beans come. I have been taking about 2lbs of beans home each day. 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. Checked on the Gardener’s delight tomatoes again and they are all turning a lovely shade of black. I think that the wet weather has finished them off. Not to worry I have 8 tubs of cherry tomatoes at home and they look great. I haven’t sprayed the brassicas with seaweed yet so if the rain stops I will have a go at this today. I cleared out the greenhouse during the showers. All the tomatoes had very bad blight. The peppers are still doing very well so not a complete disaster. I have one measly little aubergine left as well so I will let that grow on and see if it flowers. The ones in the green house at home are 3ft tall and have lots of flowers on them. No fruit as yet. The grapes do not seem to have as many grape bunches on them this year and they are not plumping up yet. Not sure if I will get any big ones this year. I will have to cut the vine back because it is shooting out of the top of the greenhouse. The leeks seem to be growing well. Fed them again yesterday. They are very green and they are standing up well. They may be slightly shaded by the raspberries but I can’t do anything about that. I have cut out the old raspberry canes and tied in the new canes ready for next year so there is more light passing through them. Note how early I have done this this year Tone. Don’t leave it till the autumn. The autumn cropping raspberries are just coming so they have fairly thick foliage. I looked at the brassicas yesterday to see if there were any caterpillars on them. They seem to be remarkably free but I am still leaving the netting over them. It is just laid on top and not secured anywhere so they can grow as tall as they want. The butterflies find it too difficult to get to them through the netting. Brussel sprouts and purple sprouting are both about 3 foot high but as you know Tone big plant don’t always produce big crops. Having said this the maize plants are doing particularly well. This is the first time I have had two or three cobs on each one of them. I think it was the very hot April that helped. I will have to find somewhere to plant the rest of the lettuce. I am taking out the lambs lettuce, rocket and spinach that has gone to seed so I might put the lettuce in here. The spring onions that I put in between the strawberries has not done very well. I think I may take these out as well. The carrots have done remarkably well this year. I think everyone’s have. I have used Flyaway this year for the first time. Lovely tasting. I have eaten them mainly raw. I leave them in an Enviromesh tunnel all year but this time I am not burying the sides in the soil. There seems to be no carrot fly this year. I sieved the soil this year so this may have helped them to get so big. I am just using the thinnings at the moment but they are still about an inch across and 6 inches long. I was just going to write that the rain had stopped and I was going to adventure out but it has just started again. You might have guessed that I did not bring home any sorrel yesterday working so late so I will today rain or not. If I don’t crop some of it now the pumpkin will smother it completely.

16th August
Again I thought that I would only go down to the allotment for an hour and it turned out to be 4 hours. I do more hours on the allotment than I do for my real job. It showered several times in the morning but the afternoon was dry. Gave the small piece of free ground by the beans the tree tools treatment - hoe, hand cultivator and rake. The soil came up really friable and crumbly. I think that this is because I tried not to tread on it. I have to step on it a bit to crop the beans. Used some more of the chicken manure pellets and the comfrey from the open butt. This is much more diluted because it fills with rain. I put in two rows of spinach and one row of rocket and hopefully they will grow well before winter. I have run out of radish and spring onion seed so I didn’t put any in. Filled some gaps where the lettuce are with those left in the tray. I weeded around the beans. Four of the runner beans are going yellow. Now this could be because they were waterlogged during the very heavy rains, I may have put a little too much comfrey liquid on them - I used it neat from the concentrated butt, or there may be something wrong with them. Looking at Tony2’s allotment, some of his runner beans have gone yellow as well and this is where there was a lot of water during the rain. So I don’t think that it is disease. It is probably water logging that caused it. I have used neat comfrey on the maize and it is going remarkably well.

I used the hand cultivator to hoe up the leeks some more and to keep down any weeds. Not much weed to speak of really. Took out the seeding rocket and lambs lettuce by the maize and buried it in the comfrey patch. Now I know that everyone will say that it is ridiculous to plant Brussels sprout so late but I had about 9 languishing about in pots that I didn’t plant in April. So a bit of free ground, where the brassicas are, needed something in it and I gave it a go. What is there to loose? Stuck the rest of the lettuce left in the tray in the pumpkin bed. The pumpkin is a thug of a plant. Cropped some more big carrots - best I have had for some time. And finally cropped the sorrel. Used 3 cap fulls of seaweed liquid to 5 litres of water to spray onto the brassicas. I gave them a good spray but still had some left over so I did the pumpkin (not a good idea? It is seriously taking over the world Triffids have nothing on pumpkins) the climbing French beans, the maize, the leeks and the tomatoes (what is left of them) Cropped two good lettuces and the courgettes. I walked around the allotments mainly to see if anyone has a better allotment than me. Several people have covered their leeks with Enviomesh. Obviously against the infamous Wolverhampton leek fly. Ive got a large area to cover - about 20ft by 10ft. I have got some Enviromesh that is not doing anything but it will not cover even half this area. Might give it a go later in the autumn. Not really anything to do at the allotment today so I am not going to go down. May mow the lawns if the rain stays off.

18th August
It seems that some people put photographs onto this so if I can find them I will put some photographs on as well.

21st August

Brought home a lot of Victoria Plums.  The tree was over laden with them and they were breaking branches.  The trouble is I cannot stop myself from eating them.  The lettuce seems to like this weather as well.  I picked 3 lettuces today and some rocket.  Had some for tea.  I do not usually grow the fancy red or red rimmed lettuce but this year I have.  I do think they taste very good so I might grow more next year.  I have not put any lettuce seed in - should have put some in on the 1st August- so I don’t think I will have any lettuce for October.  I might buy some winter lettuce and put some seed in now.  Thinned out a few more carrots.  They have definitely done very well this year.  The thinnings are larger than the carrots that I usually get in a normal year.  I decided to cover them again with Enviromesh  to deter carrot root fly.  The pumpkin is still rampaging through the bottom third of the allotment.  I am getting some fairly big ones but I don’t know if I will beat the children at school.  Roll on October 31st!  The climbing french beans have done remarkably well.  I only put in 9 plants and they have given me at least 5lbs of beans and they are still going strong.  Like the runner beans though there is not a lot of flower on them now.  I think that it may be the cold wet weather.  If it warms up a bit they may produce some more flowers.  I may get some red tomatoes as well.  The brassicas certainly have perked up a bit since I sprayed them with seaweed.  I am cropping the maize now.  I have discovered that they are best harvested when the anthers have gone very brown.  I think I did know this but I had forgotten and took some that were not mature. Still ate them though.  I have been thinking of cutting the blackcurrant bushes back a bit.  I did cut out a lot of old wood last year and still got a good crop of berries.  I do hate cutting out this years wood though because this will have berries on it next year.  I really need to keep them hemmed in a bit though.  Leeks are growing very well.  There is no sign of rust yet and with any luck I will not get any this year.  More people on the allotment are covering their leeks against the leek fly but I am going to leave it for a while.  The autumn raspberries are coming very slowly and I am eating the ones that come at the allotment.  I cannot resist raspberries.  If more came then I would be more inclined to take them home.  Courgettes are still doing very well.  I only brought two home today.  We are eating them raw in salads.  One of the allotment holders asked me for some courgette flowers because she cooked using them.  I don’t know the recipies for courgette flowers but I might ask her and try some myself.  Peppers are doing all right in the greenhouse.  Remarkably well as I am tending to ignore them now I have taken out the tomatoes.  Started transplanting the strawberries in the greenhouse.  I will transpant this years ones into the area where the lettuce is growing.  Next year I will put carrots in here so I don’t want to take up too much room.  I do need more strawberries though.   I am only taking new plants from the largest of the previous ones.  I think some of them have a virus and need to be taken out.  I am trying to decide whether to leave the three year old plants in for another year.  There are some good plants in the three year olds.    Cropping of strawberries does drop off after the third year and they are smaller strawberries.  Belive it or not peas were showing through on the 20th  of August  which means that they have only taken about 5 days to germinate.  The mustard had germinated about 3 days after sowing.  They are both doing well.  Saw a pigeon looking plaintively at the germinating peas but it will never reach them.  A man from the council came down today and was asking about the water on the allotments.  I told him that there was a spring between Eric’s and My allotment and that the water flowed off my allotment and onto the path.  He is trying to work out a way of draining the allotment so that noone has to suffer waterlogging.  I have put in a pipe and raised the allotment so that the water runs off and onto the path so I am not too bothered about where it goes to then.  I will make no comment about the new carpark and pathway except to say that I do not like to be told that I have to make sure that I wash vegetables.  I only spent about an hour at the allotment today.  Was this a record Tone?   I will need to go again tomorrow to weed around the parsnips and to either transplant or pot up new strawberry plants.  Oh and I might prune back the blackcurrants as well. 

22nd August 2007

As you might expect, a beautiful day and I have to be a taxi driver for my daughter.  She wanted  to go around and see wedding venues.  Much more important than my allotment.  I will have to go up tomorrow to pick some more lettuce.  We have been eating a lot for salads.   Still I seemed to have been able to put some pictures here of the allotment in 2005.  Not much to see because they were taken in April.  I will take some of the allotment now and put them on tomorrow.  I have two photographs of February 1982 when I first took over the allotment just to show you I had to take over a jungle as well.  Unfortunately all the weeds have died down in February and the allotment does not look too bad.  I can assure you that it was.  I have had the allotment for 25 years now. 

23rd August 2007

Went down to the allotment in the afternoon.  The newly planted strawberries needed a water.  I watered the ones in the pots too.  I have to decide where to put the new strawberrry bed.   Took a few photographs of the allotment and I will put them on this site tomorrow.  I watered the peas with  1:10 comfrey liquid  and noticed that the badger had been digging holes in the allotment again.  I thought that it was a fox but other allotment holders have seen a badger.  I wondered why a fox would be digging for worms.  Made quite a mess of the allotment but I would rather have holes than no badger.  It seems to like leeks because it dug up about 3 of them.  I spent some time hoeing them up again.  I have hoed them up for several reasons.  The main one being to make the stems white so that more can be used.  I think that the infamous Wolverhampton leek fly may be detered by hoeing up and finally there was another reason but I have had too much wine to bother what it was.  Now that I have hoed them up using an onion hoe I have to decide whether to use the photograph I took before I realised that the badger had flattened the groung around the leeks or after when I had hoed them up again.  I decided not to pick any runner or french climbing beans today although there were plenty on the plants.  I will leave them until the weekend.  I watered the leeks with neat comfrey.  Now you will say that leeks and comfrey do not necessarily go together but I don’t really care (tooo much wine again). The comfrey smells so bad that I hope that it will keep the badger off the allotment.  Its my own fault because I collect worms from where ever and put  them on my allotment.  Now should you use neat comfrey or water it down.  The comfrey barrel is above a bed of apple mint and it always seems to spill onto the mint foliage.  It does not seem to do the mint any harm at all.  Now, can we extraploate this data to other plants.  I think that you can.  I think that it could be a waste of comfrey liquid because the plants do not need  neat comfrey so watering it down may make it last longer while still giving plants like peas and beans a good boost.  Comfrey is good for fruit and flowers. Its got lots of phosphorous.  That is why it is good for tomatoes, aubergines and peppers.  I am slowly loosing it here Tone so I might call it a day and go to bed.  There was a bloke on the forum that was asking whether comfrey could break up a clay pan.  Everyone said no.  I am not so sure.  I know that my comfrey and horse radish goes way down into the clay.  This must help to break up the clay.  I don’t know how deep our clay goes.  I have tried to dig sumps and fill them with bricks and gravel but they always fill up with water and overflow.  Where I have planted the comfrey the ground has become less water  logged but is that because I double dig it or because of the comfrey and horse radish?   Someone else was talking about planting seeds according to the Moon.  Notice I spelt Moon correctly Tone.  I.e. with a capital letter.  Well if you are lucky enough to be able to plant according to anything except the month of the year then go for it because working full time I can’t .  I find that planting seeds any old time during the spring and summer produces really good results.  Its having time to pick the results that is problematic.  Regardless the Moon was really weird tonight, shrouded in cloud.  Mars was very bright as well because it is getting quite close to us at the moment.  Do you realise that gullible is not in the dictionary.  It  is always good to find that you do something well.  That you can say that you are an expert at something.  I do not think that I am an expert.  I grow vegetables to eat.  Sometimes they are big and sometimes they are small.  Sometimes I have good crops and sometimes I have poor crops.  And mainly because of my own mistakes.  I like to think that I get something off the allotment every year that justified the amount of time I spend here.  You have to add up the enjoyment of having your hands in the soil, having time to look at plants …., the deep happiness of things going well.  Hey, eat your money, eat your expensive cars, eat your big expensive house, eat your money.  I will eat my fresh, tasty, vegetables and fruit  and enjoy the beauty and the taste of that. 

 24th August

As you can see I like to have a full allotment.  I try not to tread on the allotment unnecessarily if I can help it so I do not need paths everywhere.  If you have a good canopy of vegetables then you don’t get so many weeds.  Or that’s the theory anyway. 

 Beetroot in the foreground did not start very well and are not very big yet.  Had a couple but I may need to wait for a couple of weeks before we can crop these.  Carrots are under the Envirofleece doing very well.  Parsnips are to the left and if the tops are anything to go by, the roots will be fairly big.  You can see the pumpkin on the right slowly taking over the world. 

A good view of the pumpkin.  It is growing on the ground used earlier in the year for Japanese Onions and garlic.  You can see it has already covered the ridge cucumbers, lettuce and the sorrel.  There are a couple of squashes under there as well.  On the left are the plums.  I use the old climbing frame ladders to hold up canes or wire to grow things up.  This year it was to be tomatoes but the blight scuppered that idea. 

 

Brassicas in the background.  I put them in a little bit closer than I usually do.  I will see how well they do this year.  Chard in the foreground.  You can see how much the blackcurrants have grown this year.  In March I gave them some blood fish and bone and then covered the ground underneath them with 6 inches of strawy horse manure.  If you look at the leek photograph below then you can see what remains of it. 

The maize - you can see on the nearest plant where I have already cropped some of the cobs.  In the foreground is my courgette/pumpkin cross.  Believe it or not, it seeded itself from a pumpkin that was squashed by a car coming along the track.  I just left it here and it rotted into the soil.  The seed germinated and this is the result.  Some very weird fruit are forming.  More evidence of global warming.

 

If you look at the 2005 pictures you can see that I put leeks here that year as well.  I put these leeks directly over where the peas were earlier in the year.  The right hand row was on the Early Onward’s, the two middle rows were on the Hurst’s Green Shaft and the row on the left was on the mange tout row.  So two crops in one year.   They have grown very well since I put them in in early August.  You can see how I have raised the allotment with paving slabs so that the water from the spring flows along the trackway rather than onto my allotment. 

 

This is where the Disiree potatoes were until early August.  I got two hundred weight bags off and this will be more than sufficient for me.  Remember to get eel worm resistant varieties next year Tone.  In the foreground is mustard growing as a green manure. Hopefully it will also produce nasty chemicals in its roots that will deter eelworm.  I am going to plant Japanese onions in this patch in October.  The Feltham First peas are behind the mustard and the beans and lettuce are behind the peas. 

 

 Evidence of the badger digging holes to find worms.  Blooming animal. 

This is Italian rocket which tastes really good.  The British rocket tastes very unpleasant.  There is various different types of lettuce here.  The cherry tomatoes in the foreground seemed to be immune to the blight that has affected all the other tomatoes.  There is a bit of chicory still growing in the rocket.  I did not like the chicory very much so I dug it in as a green manure.  The trouble is is that the chicory does not realise that it is a green manure and keeps growing back.     

 

You can see how much I have had to raise the allotment to keep the water off it.  The water runs out between the two top left hand slabs onto the path.  It only runs with water during the winter or when there is torrential rain like last months.

This is my comfrey patch.  You would not believe that I had cropped it to put under the peas and mustard.  This lot of leaves I will take off and put into the butts on Sunday.  This is not your fancy bokking watsit.  This is serious  Symphytum officinale - a veritable thug of a plant.  You have to keep it under control because it will grow 6ft if you let it. 

My Scarlet Emperor runner beans.   There are a couple of freebee Enorma on the right grown by the children at school in the gardening club.    They do not look very healthy in this picture but they are fine.  I have 4 canes in pyramids in three rows of three.  There are about 36 plants in this block.  The canes at the top are for stability because we have some high winds during the autumn.  I wanted them in a block like this because they seem to take up less room.  They are still cropping as well as they do in a double row across the allotment.  I will continue to use this block method in the future.  You can see the number of beans on the plants and I have been cropping these nearly every day for the past three weeks.

I didn’t go down the allotment today because I had taken a wisteria off my shed to replace the felt on the roof.  I was bagging the clippings most of the morning and was a taxi driver for my daughter again in the afternoon. 

I am getting really fed up with gardening programms on the television.  It seems that anyone can create a garden if they throw enough money at it.  We have flouncy garden designers that seem to cover gardens in wood and gravel so much so that they look like building sites. 

What I would like to see is a good down to earth allotment program that takes you through the year.  It would be lovely to see their mistakes and how they remedy them as well.  Have you noticed that everything in gardening programms grows perfectly.  It never has insect damage. The pigeons never eat the brassicas and the badgers never dig big holes in their gardens. 

I would really like to see a whole patch of potatoes go down with blight on one of these programms.  I would really like to hear a presenter say, “We have a right mess here because we forgot to spray with Bordeaux mixture at the end of May.”

So this is my allotment in August 2007.  I may not grow the largest vegetables but I have produced what I have needed for 25 years and that can’t be bad.  If it is still producing this much veg after this long then I can’t be doing much wrong.

 Wednesday 29th August

Still August.  I got the Japanese onion sets yesterday.  Next year I might try to grow them from seed.  I am not going to put them in until October though.  I might get some garlic to put in on Boxing Day.  There was no winter lettuce in the shops at the moment.  Buying things from the internet seems to be the best way of getting things when you want them. 

I had too many plums so I think that I will take the old plum tree out when the frost has killed the pumpkin.  I am still cropping some good carrots.  I don’t know how long it will be before I have eaten them all.  The pumpkin has some good big pumpkins on it now.  I am still hoping to get really big pumpkins.  I will weigh them using bathroom scales.  The broccoli has decided to flower now.  I think that feeding it with seaweed has brought it on.  I don’t mind having it now but I hope that it flowers next year as well.  I made an omelette with it and it was beautiful. 

I must remember that the Brussel sprouts and broccoli do not need much feeding.  I have planted the Brussel sprouts very close this year – about 18 inches.  So I am hoping that this puts them under a little pressure so that the sprouts do not blow. 

The badger is still having a go at my leeks.  I do not know what it has in for them but it keeps on digging holes in the leek bed.  I will keep hoeing up the leeks until it gets the message.  I looked carefully at the leeks today and they are all doing well.  I have lost one or two of them but if you work out that I will be able to eat about five each week – if they get big – I will have enough for about 10 weeks.   The mustard has grown well and is getting quite big now Tone.  I will dig it in during September/October if I get time.  Peas are doing fine.  I am watering them each day because there has been no rain for some time now.  I will water them today as well. Beans are still coming but there are few flowers on them now.  I might feed them today to see if they will produce any more flowers.  I did not pinch them out at the top and I may not have encouraged side shoots.  The new flowers will grow on the side shoots.

Still need to deal with the strawberries so that I get a good crop next year.  I will plant some more of the sports today.   

Friday 31st August.

Went down to the alloment for an hour and stayed for about three hours.  I watered the lettuce and the peas.  Then I noticed that the badger had been eating the leeks again.  Went along the rows hoeing them up again.  Hoed around the lettuce and the peas.  The mustard is growing quite big now. 

There were quite a few beans again so I took them off and filled a couple of carrier bags.  There are still very few flowers on them.  Not to worry I have had more than I want off them.  Watered them quite a bit to encourage some flowers.  Picked two lovely lettuce and quite a bit of rocket then went down to have a look at the pumpkin.  Believe it or not someone’s nicked my pumpkin/courgette cross.  I was a bit taken aback by this.  I don’t care too much but I was looking forward to growing it very big.  Still the pumpkins are growing really big now so I should worry. 

I took off the last of the apples and the plums.  Afterwards, I decided to summer prune the apple.  I took all of this year’s growth back to five leaves.  The tree looks very tidy now.  The squash has lots of flower buds on it.  I would like to see it flowering though.  The ridge cucumbers have quite a lot of fruit on them but they are all  a little too small to pick.  Thank heavens for the greenhouse cucumbers that have been fruiting since the begining of August.  Remember to plant some more of these next year Tone. 

I suddenly realised that the damsons were ready and picked quite a few.  I ate a lot of them but I took a few home.  No autumn raspberries have reached home yet. 

The spinach and the rocket have germinated well but the badger has dug a big hole in the spinach row.  It did not touch this area when there was nothing in it but as soon as I plant seeds it decides to dig them up.  Blooming animal. 

Made some damson jam when I came home and it has turned out quite well.  It made about 8 jars and there are still some more damsons on the tree.  �