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.

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.

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.�

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.�

Went up to the allotment on Sunday to get some vegetables.  The ground was not frozen thank heavens but the weather was very cold.  I started to clean up the allotment in earnest.  Took the bean tops, brassica leaves and the pumpkin stems down to the comfrey patch to bury.  Finished digging over the patch where the beans were.  Started to hand weed the onions.  They are coming fairly well but not as well as I thought they would.  Took out some leeks, parsnips, the last of the beetroot and brussel sprouts for the kitchen.  All were adequate but not spectacular.  Not a lot of canker on the parsnips they have done very well this year. 

Right so that I remember:

There are three major nutrients in fertilizers.

Nitrogen (N) Required for stem and leaf growth.

Phosphates (P) Required for root growth.

Potash (K) Required for flowers and fruit.

There is no such thing as plant food.  Plants generate their own food from carbon dioxide and water using light from the Sun. 

We like them are just wisps of air………

Do the days get shorter in the winter???

I thought that a day was 24 hours.  Does the Earth spin faster on its axis during the winter?

Too blooming cold.  Dug over a bit more of the beans area to warm myself up.  I left my spade at home and it felt like I had lost a limb.  I use it for vertually everything.  If I write it here then I will not forget it next time.  So, I used the fork.  Its just as good if not even better but you cannot take out a really good trench so the bean tops still have not been dug in.  Telephoned the man with the horse manure but he was out.  I hope he will be there next week.  Took out about 10 leeks but they were not very good at all.  Leek fly in almost all of them.  Compared with a few years ago, with leeks as thick as my arm, these are ones I would have thrown on the compost…

Staked the brussel sprouts and took off the lower leaves.  First harvest of brussels today. 

Although the beetroot are very small they will do.  Dug up 3 really good parsnips. 

So for evening meal we have had parsnips, brussel sprouts, leeks, potatoes, and pumpkin.  All grown as naturally as possibly and only potatoes and pumpkins from store.  Having said that, I don’t know how to grow things unnaturally.  The rest were in the ground at 4 o’clock (it was going dark) and eaten at 6 o’clock.  You can’t say fairer than that Tone.   For a bad year this is not too dispiriting.

The pea experiment has not worked out.  I need to plant them as soon as the potatoes are taken out or they do not have time to pod up.  Gobal warming might give me an advantage - but not that much of one though.Â

I haven’t forgotten this blog it is just that I have not done much except harvest in October and beginning of November. 

The winter onions are coming quite well and there are big pods on my peas.  I doubt if I will get any though.  I will need to take the beans down soon but there are still some flowers on them.  

Still no frosts.

Went down the allotment last Saturday and brought back 6 large pumpkins,

some runners, carrots and lettuce.  Not much to do down the allotment until the frost comes.  The runner beans are still flowering so I will leave them for the moment.  The peas have grown and they are about 3ft high now with lots of flowers.  I doubt that they will form pods but you never know.  Rocket is not growing as fast as it was in the summer so I could not take any home.  Rocket has a beautiful taste. 

Well I will have a big pumpkin for the children to make into a horrible face.   There are several big ones but we are eating them fairly quickly.  Stews and vegetable curries are the favourite way of eating them at the moment but I am threatening to make some pumpkin soup.  I didn’t bother taking one today because we still have a large one at home. 

More large carrots are coming.  They are the largest carrots I have had in several years.  Bit of damage on them but that easily gets cut out.  There are some quite small ones next to the rubarb chard that I will use when these big ones have finished.  I think that they will last into November but I doubt if I will get to Christmas with them. 

Beans are still flowering and I took off about 5 lbs of beans today.  We are eating them with the stew and vegetable curries. 

The beetroot are very small this year.  Earlier in the year they were being eaten by something and this seems to have put them back a lot. The other beetroot also seem to be very small this year.  They taste fine though and we are using them as another vegetable in the stews and curries. 

Took four fairly good lettuce, some rocket and some spinach for salad.  A few radish are coming but these are from the seed I droped and they are not very good.  A bit moth eaten because the slugs are treating them as a delicacy.   I am still getting quite a few tomatoes off the greenhouse tomato plants.  The patio tomatoes have finally got blight and they are going brown.  I might take off all the green tomatoes and put them in a paper bag.  They do ripen in a warm dark cupboard.�

I don’t know about mists and mellow fruitfullness but the allotment is still producing a noticeable amount of vegetables.  Went down today after work and picked carrot, beetroot, pumpkin, courgette, beans, lettuce, rocket, radish and purple sprouting broccolli. 

I am having quite a bit off the broccolli and it is from plants I planted this year in April.  They should not be flowering until next year.  Why should I worry; they are lovely to eat so I will continue to crop them.  I expect that they will continue to flower until next year - great!

I will have to dig the mustard in next weekend.  It has not gone woody like I expected but it is all flopping about and it is trying hard to shade  a row of peas out.  If I do dig it in I will wang the japanese onions in as well.

The comfrey has grown up again, believe it or not.  I will take another crop off and see if it will fit into butt with the tap.  If I cant put it all in here I will put some in the blue butt. 

Remember to take some photograps as well Tone because this is getting boring without photographs.  �