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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this is infact what I am doing. 

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Well, I went up to the allotment after work and it was the best thing I could have done today.  The tap between Eric and my allotment is broken so I told several committee members that I had turned off the water.  I hope that no one decides to turn it on again or we will have a permanent fountain and stream between the allotments. 

As I got to the allotment I saw a myriad of people and wondered why there were so many there.  Then I realised that a load of horse muck had been delivered.  I decided to get some and put it under the bean canes as a mulch to keep the weeds off. 

There was a shed for sale on the allotment and I should have gone for it but it was £100 and that is a bit steep for something that is going to be vandalised as soon as I put it up.  I am hoping that Phil will bring an old one down that no one will bother with.  The trouble is that now that there are a lot of people who are working allotments, there is more demand for cheap tools.  There is a danger of loosing the lot from the shed.  An old and dilapidated shed will not stick out and attract nutters to break in.  Hopefully… 

Temperature was 18^oC at 4’oclock today and that was pleasantly warm.  I felt like planting some seed but food beckoned me home.    

Tagetes got knocked hard back by those cold north easterly winds.

Lettuce, peas and rocket doing well on the old allotment. Bean and sweet pea canes on the new allotment.  You can see the amount of stone on the comfrey bed.  This used to be the carpark.

Went down to the allotment  fairly early.  Blooming cold.  Raked the horse muck about to tart up the middle area.  Now the muck is covering all that area right up to the gooseberries.   I had nothing else to do except tidy up the greenhouse.  It is continuing to fall apart.  Looked at the tap again to make sure it was on tightly. 

The weather forecast is for a very sharp frost (-5 in the Midlands) so I went home and took the chitting potatoes out of the green house and put them in the spare room.  I told you it was too early to put the potatoes out to chit.  Maybe I should have put them in the spare room in the first place.  Still they are safe and sound now.

As I am a glutton for punishment, I went down to dad’s and dug over 1 1/2 of his plots in his garden.  He still has leeks, parsnips, beetroot and purple sprouting left.  He has a lot of mares tail and it is a devil of a job taking it all out.  It slows the digging down or I would have finished both plots. 

Garlic and onions are growing well in the greenhouse.  I don’t think the frost will harm them very much.  Put them in plastic bags though for a little extra protection.

I have not planted the sweet pea seeds.

Went up very early today and dug over the middle area.  There are still broccolli and winter cauliflowers in here so I mulched them with the horse manure.  I dragged the pile of horse muck over the dug area but it was not enough. 

Drove down to Tony’s to get some more horse muck and he insisted that I took a ride on his horse and trap.  The trap is 4″ the gate was 6″ ;I was a little anxious.  Brilliant experience though.   I could get quite interested in driving horses but could never afford to do anything but have an interest. 

Filled up the trailer with some good muck and went back to the allotment to unload.  Wheelbarrowed it up to the allotment so I could put it on the area that I wanted to cover and heaped it up.  It is amazing how the time goes.  It was half past one and I hadn’t done very much. 

I had to go to the meeting to see what was going to happen about idiots putting subsoil on my allotment.   The meeting certainly was good and a lot of things were sorted out.  They will be coming to the allotment to have a site meeting… Whatever that might mean.  Still they did say that they were going to do something about it. 

The trouble is, I only have half term in which to sort the allotment out.  Then it is back to weekends. So, I decided to sort the mess out by raking up all the topsoil and stone and putting it in the tubs.  I took out all the strawberries, replaced the gooseberry and straightened the slabs.  I have dug over the whole of the allotment now and it looks a treat.   When the council come down they will say what is the problem?

I will have to say that it is a good job it was half term because otherwise I would not have been able to put in over 4 hours of remedial work that I should not have had to do. 

Still, I have the photographs. 

And why can’t I upload photographs again???  I have to delete some of them before I can put others up.  I might just put them on flicker and the weblink on here but it makes for very boring blog sites.

At the meeting they said a very interesting thing.  The water table in the West Midlands is rising because industry is no longer taking as much water out of the ground as it used to.  In the 1980s and 1990s we were worried about the amount of water that industry was taking out of the soil.  Rivers dried up and cracked mud was the only thing that could be seen.  Now we are being hit by two things.  More rain due to global warming and rising of the water table because of the decline in industry.  Maybe we are in for a lot more flooding.

One thing that the environmental health officer said at the meeting with the council is that there could be contamination on the allotments due to fires.  Some of the chemicals and materials we burn may be putting nasty chemicals into the soil.   I would suggest that you think very carefully before you burn anything on the allotment.  My policy, for a number of years now, has been to bury everything but what cannot be buried take to the local tip.   Don’t bring things from home to burn on the allotment.  If you hear me coughing in the background its me slowly dying in your smoke.

I finally got to Tony’s and got a load of horse muck and took it to the allotment.   It would be a lot better if we could get up to the allotments.  Bill said why didn’t I take the muck round to the other gate because that way I could get right alongside my allotment.  But with the piles of stone on the car park, I could not get through that way and I really did not want to reverse all the way back to the gate. 

I don’t mind barrowing it up to the allotment because then you can tip it out exactly where you want it. 

Bill reminded me again about the meeting with the council tomorrow.  He really wants me to be there to give him moral support. 

I mended the tap today.  I put a new one on.  The old one was well and truely Knackered.  Phil said that he would leave me 20 slabs on Fred’s allotment and I have been deciding what to do with them.  The allotment greenhouse is really past its sell by date.  I could take it down and put the slabs there for a shed.  I really need to raise the shed above the level of the ground because of the water on the allotment.  I only need a little shed so I could put two or three layers of slabs on top of each other and then put the shed on top of this.  We shall see…

Finally, I dug over the last bit of the new potato patch.  I will put horse muck over the top of this and then dig it into the trenches when I plant the potatoes.  

Onions are germinating with some vigour and the garlic is sprouting well.  All is looking well at the moment.  I will end up with nothing to do - except plant sweet peas.�

I couldn’t get muck .  Really, it was a good job because I spent all day, and a beautiful one too, doing other jobs.   I have replaced all the strawberries that were covered in subsoil and stone with some runners.  Now I have about 6, 14 ft strawberry rows.  I planted them with mychorrhizal fungi and I will compare these with the ones that have had none.  

I then turned my attention to the new potato plot.  I took out the leeks and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were quite good.  No leek fly in them.   I forked over the areas of soil that were still exposed and then covered  with horse muck.  I didn’t bother to dig in the horse muck.  When I plant the potatoes some will inevitably fall into the trench and the rest can stay on the top of the soil as a mulch. 

Then I noticed that the 2′6″ slabs holding up the soil were leaning, probably because of the new land drain.  So I took out 6 of them and made sure they were standing up properly.  Sounds easy but I can assure you it was not.  Now it looks as perfect as I can make it.   

I planted the tagettes, Gardener’s Delight tomatoes and the Iceberg.  They are sitting on a warm windowsill. 

Fran says that she bought me some Sweet Peas seeds for Christmas but I didn’t get them and I am wondering where they are now.   I know I had them because I opened them inadvertently before Christmas.   They need to be planted now if I am to get good blooms off them.Â