It was snowing today so, apart from picking some brussel sprouts and leeks, I did not do anything on the allotment.

I’ve seen on a website that a so called expert said that adding animal manures to the soil was dangerous because  bacteria like E. coli could infect the soil.  Splashes of soil onto plants would then infect the plants causing illness when they are eaten.  Well, I should have died years ago then.  I have been eating vegetables from soil fertilised by animal manure since I was weaned.  I am sure that there are a lot of perfectly healthy people  that have lived in the eons before me that have eaten vegetables grown in this way too.

The problem is that people used to the sterilised, vacuum packed, plastic coated vegetables from  supermarkets are not used to washing their food thoroughly -or cooking it properly.  One of the best ways of adding organic matter, that is in a form readily available to be mineralised (changed into nutrients), is in the form of cow, horse, pig, goat and sheep manure.  While I am a vegetarian, I am not a vegan.  Which is a bit like saying that you support the liberal democrat party -sitting on the fence between labour and conservative. So I do not object to using animal manures.

I am not sure of why vegans do not like to use animal manure.  The animals were not harmed when they were producing it.

You can see I have put fresh horse manure around the blackcurrent bushes.

The heap of soil indicates  where I am doing the Montezuma digging. There is also annual grazing rye and tares green manure ready to be dug in in the Spring.  This is where I am going to grow the runner beans and the sweet peas.  As you can see the garlic and the winter onions have suffered a little with this hard winter.  Particularly up here on the top of the hill.  The slope is north facing too and I always say anyone who can garden successfully on Wakey Hill is a blooming good gardener.

So the next question is: “Can you put fresh manure on the soil and can you dig fresh manure in?”  Well I have as you can see here.  I have used it around the blackcurrents, like this, for over 15 years now.  So much so that the blackcurrents have roots growing out of their branches and these are exposed when the manure has rotted away.  So frankly, I think that this is another of the great misconceptions about gardening.  I have always dug in fresh manure this time of the year.  Leaving manure in a pile to leach out all the nutrients seems completely ridiculous to me.  However, what works for me will not necessarily work for anyone else.  Therefore, I will be digging in fresh manure for the potatoes and last year when I did this I got a good crop regardless of the aminopyuralid herbicide contamination.

In the above photograph you can see the laylandii that we cut back last year because it was growing throught the fence.   This is the laylandii that I burried in the bottom allotment.

 

It is somewhere underneath the grass green manure on this plot. It grew some really good peas last year.    I am getting a really good crop of tight brussel sprouts off the plants in the background.  The plants are about half the size they  are on the rest of the allotment but why should  I bother.  You might not be able to see that the soil is completely different colour to that of the rest of the allotment.  This was were the council replaced the original soil contaminated with benzo(a)pyrene with soil that seemed to us to be subsoil.  Evidently soil that farmers and council employees think is top soil, allotmenteers would regard as subsoil.  Still I added a lot of organic matter and sieved topsoil and removed about ten barrow loads of big stone and is now amost acceptable.  It is quite a large area to try to improve particularly as it is so infertile.  The brussel sprouts seem to have liked the heaviness of this soil and I hope that the winter cauliflowers do half as well.

The allotment looks very untidy this time of year. Particularly so because of the weather.  It is preventing me from getting on.

I saved that trellising from the bonfire.  I am going to pin it to the shed and grow black berries up it.   That will be the job after I finish off squaring up the top bed.

 

You can just about see the slabs along the path on the left hand side.  This is the task I am on now.  I need to square up this bed.  I will take out all the upright slabs and move them over towards the bay tree.  This will make a 14 ft wide bed.  The corner with the bay tree in is where Bill’s, Beryl’s and my allotments meet.   I grew that bay tree from a cutting!!  I will try an take off the suckers and grow them on to make new plants.  This is the rye grass that I am experimenting with to see if it is an effective green manure.  I put the seed in very late last year so it has not grown very much.  It will be dug in at the end of March probably during the Easter holidays.  I don’t want to dig this plot very much this year because I will be putting the brassicas here.  I will just fork in the green manure.

 

 I have used slabs to retain the soil on the allotment.  I don’t do raised beds - I do raised allotments.  You can see my mixing cone of soil where I am doing the Montezuma digging.  That is finished now and I have levelled it out.  The plot in the foreground will be for potatoes.  I may double dig this plot too.  The pile of soil in the foreground is some turf “top soil” that Phil has left me.  I have put most of this on the bottom plot around the brussel sprouts.  It is all grist to the mill…  The allotment does look untidy but it always does at this time of the year.  What can I say.  It would look a lot better if it would stop snowing so that I could get on and tidy it up a bit more.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The layer technique was:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Makes it all worth while.

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

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

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

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

What  can  you say?

All  the winter digging has  stopped.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know if I agree with all that Dr David Bellamy says, however I must admit he impressed me this afternoon.  He was at a local allotment site and we had taken a class of children down to meet him.  He was really good with all the children and shook each of them by the hand.  For those that do not know, Bellamy was a TV presenter for wildlife programmes on UK television.  He is fairly well retired now and does not do very much television but I think he is still involved with various environmental organisations. 

The trouble with celebrities like this is the media scrum that surrounds them.  I can’t be doing with it.  So after the photographs were taken we took the children down to do some pond dipping - much more interesting. 

Bellamy was opening a sensory garden that the allotmenteers had made.  Great sentiment with lots of raised beds and pergolas.  I just wonder how sensory it was and who would use it.  I am much more interested in introducing children to growing and getting their hands into the soil than pussy footing around in a sensory garden.  There were lots of herbs - cliche or what? and touchy feely things.  Well I may be cinical but when we are changing our environment at a quite frightening rate I really wonder what we are doing playing about at sensory gardens.  This was what I was doing in the 1980s when I was a lot more naive  and enthusiastic. 

I met a lot of interesting people in the allotmenteering world while I was there and there were others that I would have liked to have chatted to , but I was actually told to be quiet by some woman because Bellamy was talking about planting a cherry tree of all things.  I was talking to Dr Ian Truman about a flora of the West Midlands that he was writing and the interesting wild flowers that he had found on this allotment site.  Much more interesting than the media scrum. 

Bellamy is much more self effacing than a lot of other people who think they are important but the sycophantic responses from people who think that I should bow down in the presence of celebrity just irritate me.  I was much more interested in what Dr. Ian Truman had to say than Bellamy.  Ian was one of the influential academics that encouraged schools to develop environmental areas in their grounds.   Bellamy did go on about the importance of allotments in maintaining populations of useful small creatures.  I hesitate to call them minibeasts because I seem to get a lot of flak from people, who should know better, about using this word.  It is really easy to explain moluscs and arthropods in simple terms with the word minibeasts.  If we can use the term microorganism or microbe why not minibeast?

As I was walking up and down, I checked out all the allotments to see if any of them were better than mine.  As you do.  They have got some wopping leeks over there.  I doubt if mine will grow that big.  Just so long as I get some leeks, I will be happy.  Well I am usually underwelmed by things and allotments like this but I had an enjoyable afternoon out, met a celebrity and did some serious pond dipping.  Quite a sucessful afternoon don’t you know.

Much more information than you could possibly want to know on

http://www.wolverhampton.gov.uk/government_democracy/council/documents/news/press_releases/2008/october/091008a.htm

I finally got down to the allotment on Sunday afternoon.  It was a beautiful day.  The sun was shining and the air was warm.  I was all ready for a good 4 or 5 hour stint.  I looked in the back of my car to find that I did not have any wellies. 

I was not pleased.  I had taken out all the gardening things and put them into the shed so that I could collect Frances’ boy friend who had just arrived from Hong Kong, large cases and all.  So where had I put them?  I put the fork, spade, sprayer, tub and lawn mowings into the car but no wellies.  (Wellies -short for wellington boot.  A rubbery boot used when gardening.)

I decided to continue regardless of my bootless condition.  I was wearing stout shoes, however I had forgotten the perilous nature of a semi waterlogged soil.  I kept to the paths after several incidents of sinking pecariously up to my ankles in the quagmire that I call my allotment. 

Fortunately I have a very long armed sprayer so I endeavoured to spray all the leeks with liquid derris while still remaining on the path.  A task that I achieved with remarkable ease considering the handicap I put myself under. 

This was my main task for the afternoon.  The weather was very pleasant so, when the allotment chairman came over to chat, unusually I did not mind at all.  It seems that the council are going to bring in large trucks and diggers to remove the soil from the allotments.  They are going to try to take out all the soil and replace it in three days.  My experience of  local councils leads me to believe they will not do this in three months, however I am very open to being surprised. 

Two of the allotmenteers that are also affected were moving their sheds and other equipment off their allotments so I and several others gave them a hand.  We have moved two sheds without dismatling now. 

If anyone wants expert shed movers, we have a cracking team at Mount Road Allotments …

I played about trying to dig out comfrey and heeling it in further up the allotment, but with little success.  I could not find the rhubarb under the comfrey and pumpkin.  I don’t think it has died back that much yet.  My main rhubarb patch is still in leaf.   Everything is disappearing at the moment. 

Well, having arrived home, I looked for my wellies in the shed.  They were not there. I cannot for the life of me remember where I put them.  However, as my friend Liz says, if you stop looking for things they turn up when you are least expecting them.  I am still waiting…

I got down on Saturday for the first time in about three weeks.  It is a good job because it is pouring down today (Sunday). 

I have finally removed all the concrete paving slabs from the bottom 1/3 of the allotment.  I have just piled them up in a corner.  They will go back on as soon as they have replaced the soil.  I then dug up the Jerusalem artichokes and heeled the tubers in on the top allotment.  I doubt that we will eat them but they will be useful as a standby.  I am going to use them to shield the shed from nutters that want to break into it.  I am also going to use nettles Urtica dioica around the shed for the same reason. 

Jerusalem artichokes grow about 7-8feet tall and if you have a good number of them they will shield anything.  The nettles will be used for both liquid fertiliser and a pesticide.  The stinging hairs on nettles contain a histamine and  this is what causes the rash.  I don’t know if this is what makes it a good pesticide or not.  I am not going to keep the nettle bed.  All the nettles came from weed seedlings throughout the allotment so I will collect up all the young plants that germinate next year and plant them around the shed.  I have a lovely bed at the moment, all growing about the same size since I cropped it last time.  

I took off about 10 pumpkins and brought them home.  The shed is full of potatoes, onions, marrows and pumpkins.  I don’t know how I am going to get the mower out. 

After completing these tasks, I started to put more gone over plants into the double digging trench on top of the old bean and sweet pea plants.  The leeks are very weedy now so I decided to use the hoe, three pronged cultivator and the rake to remove them quickly.  The weed was put into the trench with the companion plants which were well and truly finished. 

This is a time consuming task and I wanted to stop at about 5 o’clock so I have not finished it yet.  I must remember to take the large sprayer with me next time.  I will spray against Napomyza gymnostoma because it lays eggs around this October and it devastates the leeks. 

I still want to take some more comfrey plants out and heel them in where I am digging now.  It has stopped raining so I might get down there this afternoon.

Before going home I picked 5 large beetroot for pickling.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can just see the pumpkin in the foreground. 

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

Sweet is corn growing well.

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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