As you can see, I have dug down three spits so that I can fill the trench with brush and shredded material.  You can see the green manure in the background and some of the shallots and winter onions.  As I dug out each spit I mixed the soil using soil cone heaps.  This was the area where the apple tree was and I have not dug down this far for over 15 years.  However, I must have dug down here in the past because I found two of my old sandles at the bottom of the trench.  There was also some unrotted sawdust horse manure and leaves that I must have burried a long time ago.  This shows that carbon can be sequested in the soil for a long time.  Behind the spade and fork you can see the brushwood from the silver birch trees I buried here.  And if you are wondering where the apple tree is, that’s under there too.  I dug down another spit with the fork but I didn’t take this soil out of the trench.  I was able to put four barrowloads of shreddings into  the trench.

    

  As you can see it is mostly laylandii.  Most people would avoid using this on their allotment because it has such a bad reputation for making the soil acid and incapable of growing anything.  This far down though, I don’t think that it will have any effect on the top soil.  It will help me to keep the soil drained though.

    

After filling the trench I put back the third spit soil mixing it thoroughly with itself.  Next, I put two or three barrowloads of leaves in the trench.

The second spit soil goes in next and finally the top soil.  You can see the soil heap cone that I have used to mix the soil with itself.  I level out the soil afterwards.  And that is all there is to it.

Got down to the allotment around 11 ish and started on the winter digging right away.  I dug a trench four spade widths across and three spits down.  I wanted to bury some of the shredded laylandii.  It is not just laylandii; it is also other woody material however it is mostly laylandii.

Dug the trench out fairly quickly now that I have a system for putting the soil where I know which spit it has come from.  Topmost in front of me on the dug soil, next spit on the left side on undug soil and the final spit gets put on the end on the left too. Even at this depth the soil did not really look any different to the top soil so I have to be careful to replace the soil in the correct order. The bottom of the trench got a good forking over.  I got four barrow loads of shreddings and put them at the bottom of the trench.  I make sure that I meet up with the shreddings that I put into previous trenches by cutting the soil right back to the previous trench.

I covered this with the third spit soil using the cone piles method of mixing.  I build up a cone of soil when I am replacing soil in the trench.  It was the way that I was taught to mix soils at the Glasshouse and Crops Research Institute when I was working in the glasshouses there.  The main reason for digging like this is to mix the soil completely so that nutrients are fairly well distributed throughout the soil.

I leveled out the mixing cones of soil in the trench and then went to get some leaves.  Two barrow fulls of leaves were put into the trench and then covered first with second spit soil and then with first spit soil.  It left a bit of bump in the soil and I have taken my rake home to make some new lawns so I could not level it out very well.  I could have used the claw but I wanted to carry on with the digging.  I did the same procedure three times which I felt was quite good going particularly as the shreddings and leaves were so far away and I had to wheel barrow them up the hill.

Yesterday, I picked some Brussel sprouts, dug up some leeks and parsnips, took them home, washed them and had them cooked for tea.  They tasted really good.

I really do not know how people can eat Brussel sprouts any other way.  They taste foul if left for even one or two days.

Also known as Amazonian Dark Earths. After watching The secrets of El Dorado on http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/secret-el-dorado,  I now have a new project.  I want to begin to work on developing ADE on my allotment.  It is not just down to charcoal though.  There is a complex interaction between charcoal, nutrients, organic matter and mychorrihzal fungi. I have to thank Uriel 13 for putting me onto this.  His suggestion is that it is not mychorrhizal fungi but yeast that is important in producing this kind of soil.  He is suggesting sour dough yeast.

Whether it is mychorrhizal fungi or not, yeast is another avenue to follow.  I don’t know where to get sour dough yeast from, however my local garden centre sells mychorrhizal fung.
As to producing my own charcoal, I think that I am going to experiment with various commercial charcoals first and I am going to mix them with blood fish and bone in a solution of undiluted comfrey liquid to start with.  I am  going to dry the resulting mixture to produce a powder because this will be easier to mix evenly though the top soil.

I have a particularly infertile area of soil on the allotment, (If you want to know why look on my allotment blog under benzo (a) pyrene).  I am going to set up a proper comparison plot with several sections.  Another problem is what proportions should be used to make the most efficient soil additive.  I am going on the assumption that it is the adsorbsion of nutrient into the charcoal that is the inportant factor.  Also the provision of micro habitats for bacteria and fungi may be important.  The provision of very small crevices within the charcoal may prevent predation by other microorganisms.   As yeasts can be very small, as other fungi, they may find a sanctuary within the charcoals labyrinth. The trial plots will be:

• One with charcoal on its own,one with blood fish and bone on its own,
• one with comfrey on its own,
• one with blood fish and bone and comfrey
• one with comfrey and charcoal
• and finally one with all.
• I would like to check out fungi as well, however that might make it complicated :-)).

I will  grow peas on the different plots.  They may confuse the issue because they have nitrogen fixing bacteria in their roots, however it will be the same for all plots and that is my rotation so get over it…
Trying to think of ways that the soil remake itself may not be too problematic.  The increase in microorganisms within such a fertile soil may cause it, if they are produced in enough numbers.  Any nutrient from decomposition seems to be adsorped by the charcoal and this also gives soil fungi a really good habitat.  Together with an increase in the population of roots and leaf litter from above ground you are very likely to get an increase in volume of soil.

If the film’s suggestion is correct and the plots are set up like the ones reported then I should get enough information to convince myself of the value of this method of soil management.  I doubt very much whether it is properly scientific, however it is good fun.

Why would anyone want to go to the trouble of making raised beds if they don’t need to?  The only reasons that I can come up with is to help to drain the allotment or for people who cannot bend down easily.

I have raised the whole of my allotment to get running water off it.  Being near the top of a hill means that springs emerge in several places.  I have burried two 6 inch diameter pipes across the allotment to drain them and with 3 soak aways under the paths this is coping with the water and the top is rarely too wet to walk on.

In the past I have sunk up to the top of my wellingtons, if not more, at this time of year.   Eric suggested a long time ago that I should raise the allotment with upright slabs.  They were more than adequate.  The only downside of them is that they allow little trickles of soil to escape through the joins.  This really is skirting around the fact that they are blooming heavy and take a lot of heaving about to get them planted in into the soil with any kind of asthetic effect.  I would not advise you to do this particulary around a 30 by90 allotment.

At its lowest the allotment is about 18 inches above the trackway.  At its highest it is about 2ft above the trackway,  although where I have burried the brushwood it is much higher in the middle of the allotment.  It looks quite dome shaped.  The streams bubble out under the slabs and onto the path so you can imagine the state of the path at the moment.  Still it keeps the nutters off the allotments because they don’t like walking through quagmire.

One of my next jobs is to take all the slabs out along the path to the tap and make sure that this bed is square.  It is really irritating that, when planting rows of vegetables there is a triangle of soil that is useless to plant in effectively and  is left to the weeds.  I just need to straighten up this bed and then I will move the path over a little.  This old path was laid on top soil so I am going to take a spit out where the path is going to go and replace it with stones removed from the Council soil.  Both Don and Tony, who got the Council soil too, have been removing stones avidly and leaving them by my allotment.   I will have plenty especially as I am going to bury the old greenhouse concrete foundations too.   I will use the topsoil to raise where the greenhouse used to be because it is a little low.  I might put slabs along the other side of the path too because this soil is getting high and falling onto the path in places.  It will get even worse when I take out the apple mint and the raspberries.

I have got to find somewhere good for the apple mint.  I planted it here because, when I walk up to the tap, I crush some of the mint leaves and it smells really good.

Aromatherapy  - gardeners had this a long time before it got fashionable.

Which brings me back to raised beds - as opposed to raised allotments.  Is this just a fashion too or is there some good horticultural reason for using them.  There are too many paths for me to be doing with.  If I am paying for the ground I want the maximum to be for growing.  I have three paths.  One to the tap and used to be to the greenhouse before I took it down.  Another is to the new shed.  The third is to two big water buts and along the raspberry row.

So why raised beds?  Has anyone done any comparison of yeild from raised verses ground level gardening?  Is there a relationship between the hight off the ground and the yeild you get from the raised bed?  Should we be building 8ft, 12ft or higher beds?  Should we be putting vegetables into a large wooden box and raise it up into the air with a tower crane?  Should we be suspending raised bed boxes from hot air balloons.  Maybe the best effects would be on the Space Station… What do I know?  I’m just a simple allotment gardener.  Keep talking bull shit - it is good for the allotment, Tone.

I woudl suggest, and I only have anecdotal evidence for ths, that gardeners that go to all the trouble of making wooden skirts for their beds are also those that have a lot of time on their hands and spend it carefully cultivating their works of art.   If you are going to all the trouble of making easy access beds then you are going to make sure that you easily access them as often as you possibly can.  This is what produces large yeilds of beautiful vegetables.

In my opinion yeild is all down to the enthusiasm of the gardener.  Those that put the hard work in will reap the rewards of a good harvest. And this will be regarless of elevation.

Which brings me to Roundup…

New allotmenteers are sometimes discouraged because their allotments are covered in brambles, nettles and couch grass.

There seems to be three camps for allotment clearing.

•  Spray, slash and burn
• Cover with black plastic and wait for a couple of years.
• Do a bit of gardening and dig the weeds out.  It is harder work but far more satisfying.

So, what do we have an allotment for?  Do we put in that much work for chemical covered vegetables that we could easily buy down at the nearest supermarket?  Do we go down to the allotment to breath in noxious chemicals that we can easily breath in down by the nearest main road?

I would rather put my hands in good rich soil that is not contaminated by man made chemicals.  I would rather eat vegetables that do not have to grow in contaminated soil.

I am in the hard work camp.  Get your spade and fork out and do some graft.

Now some will moan that they do not have time to dig out all the weeds.  Well if that is so, why are you cultivating an allotment in the first place because it does not get easier.

If you have no time to clear, you have no time to maintain.  They are equally time consuming.  Chemicals will do things sooner but why not cut out the middle man and go direct to the supermarket because you will get the same…

To  all you chemical fiends - not near my allotment please.

You know I  really do have a great respect for the agricultural and horticultural knowledge of the ancient South  American  indian civilizations.    I think that  the jury is out as to whether the terra preta soils were deliberately produced or just resulted from  humans throwing out their waste materials.  I would  like to think that they were making these soils consciously.

There seems to be some  advantage to  adding composted activated charcoal to the soil.  Looking at the  properties  of activated charcoal, it  seems to be able to adsorb large amounts of organic compounds and this  characteristic seems to allow it  to  contribute to the fertility of the soil - for  hundreds if not thousands of years.  This interests me because apart from contributing  to the fertility of my allotment it would also help to sequester carbon in the soil.

Now previously in these blogs I have berated people for  lighting smoky fires  and  allowing  the  smoke to  blow over my allotment.   However, do I have to modify my opinion of fires now?  I don’t think  so.   Charcoal burning  may well be a good way of increasing  and  sustaining  the fertility of the soil but not near my allotment.

I am told there are charcoal producers that prevent noxious fumes from  venting  to the atmosphere.   I  am dubious… However, in the spirit of scientific or at the least horticultural exploration I will indeed try composting some activated charcoal  and see  if  it adds to the fertility  of the allotment when I dig it in.  Maybe  I  will also  put some under the peas because it  seems to help with the nitrogen fixing bacteria.

Snow  has gone now and I am looking forward to  digging on the allotment again.  I will continue with my Montezuma method because I think that this will also help to sequester carbon in the soil.

Charcoal and compost I can cope with.   I doubt very much if I will make my own especially if it involves burning fish and  bones.  How about mixing it with blood fish  and bone?  Worth thinking  about Tone…

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 cannot do much on the allotment at the moment which is a little frustrating back problems.  I am still taking down the 4 silver birch in the garden though.  The way that I do this is to dig around the trunk and expose all the roots or as many as I can.  After this, I tie two ropes as high as I can onto the trunk to guide the tree as it falls.  Next I cut through all of the roots which is not a particularly arduous task if you have a sharp bow saw.  I also put a little oil on the blade to make it even easier.  With my son holding one of the ropes to steady the tree and prevent it from falling in the wrong direction we both pull the tree over.  We cut it up into 1metre chunks and then I take it to the allotment to bury.  As I have said in previous diary entries, the burying of logs and brushwood has a long history in Central and South American agricultural culture.

I call this my Montezuma method.

I am planting my sweet peas for next year now.  They are being planted in peat free compost with a little  myhchorrhizal fungi mixed in it.  Last year, when I did this, the plants grew very well and although some of the sweet peas did not make an association there was a substantial number that did.   I am putting them into the tray dividers.  It is much easier to deal with plants when you use these plastic dividers.  The plants come out with thier little block of soil and the roots are not disturbed.  I could not find any of the bottomless pots in the garden centers at the moment.  I will transplant them when I can get some.  I am planting more than I usually do because several people have asked me if I could plant some for them.

The varieties that I have chosen this year are.

                Chatsworth                                                             Mollie Rilestone

1. Chatsworth for frangrance Thompson and Morgan
2. Molie Rilestone  for  fragrance Thompson and Morgan
3. Lilac Ripple for  fragrance  Thompson and Morgan
4. Royal Wedding for  fragrance Thompson and Morgan
5. Percy Thrower for  fragrance Thompson and Morgan
6. Flamingo Unwins
7. David Unwin Unwins
8. Norman Wisdom Unwins
9. Castle of Mey Unwins
10. Rosy Dawn Unwins
11. Peacock for  fragranceUnwins
12. Lipstick Unwins
13. Red Arrow Unwins
14. King Size Navy Blue for  fragrance Thompson and Morgan.
15. Blue Ripple for  fragrance Thompson  and Morgan
16. America fragrant  old variety 1896 Thompson  and Morgan
17. Miss Wilmott Fragrant old  variety 1901 Thompson  and Morgan
18. Cathy  for  fragrance Unwins
19. Appleblossom Thompson  and Morgan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now I may be a grumpy old man but I do find the need to light bonfires at the slightest excuse really irritating.  Gardens do not need fires.  They are the  antethesis of gardening.

The whole point of gardening is to get out into the fresh air, give yourself exercise and grow some good wholesome vegetables. Or that is what I thought but what do I know.  Autumn seems to be the season of fire lighting.  A season that culminates on the 5th of November where people vie to get the largest most dangerous pile of flammable material that they can and then proceed to burn it all.

Not only that but insult is added to injury by firing off of fireworks.  As if we did not have enough pollution.  Why not add a little more heavy metal contaminated smoke to the atmosphere?

‘Oh’ I hear you say, ‘but aren’t they beautiful?’  No.  Flowers are beautiful.  Gardens are beautiful.  People are beautiful.

Garden fires produce carcinogens - cancer producing substances.  You loose the nutrients locked up inside the plants when they burn.  It adds carbon dioxide to the atmosphere unnecessarily and it dumps pollution onto surrounding allotments.  You do not get rid of stuff.  It is still there - just changed- and some of it gets onto other people’s allotments.

What do you do with diseased plants?  Well one thing I would not do is heap them into a smelly, smoke ridden pile of wet plant material because I will guarantee that you will not destroy  pests or diseases in this way.  Heat is one of the ways of killing microorganisms, however I would be surprised if the heat generated and the achitecture of a normal smoky garden fire would be a reliable way of safely disposing of diseased material.

There are alternatives to having fires.  You could use your green bin if your local council provides one, you could take it to the tip or you could bury it on the allotment.  Ah but… I hear you say - regardless of the ‘buts’ there are alternatives.I have never met a problem that shredding, burying or composting did not solve.  Burning is not the answer.

I have experimented for several years now burying large logs and tree branches.  The accepted wisdom is that this practice will remove nitrogen from the soil. Bacteria and fungi rotting the logs need nitrogen and they absorb it from the surounding soil.  Now this may be the case, however, if the logs are buried below the normal root run of vegetables any nitrogen that the microorganisms remove would not be available to most vegetables anyway.  I am talking here about burying at least two spits down in  subsoil.  Nitrogen is usually leached from the soil and this may be a good way of trapping this nitrogen and giving us the potential of recycling it into the top soil when the logs have eventually rotted away.  In my experience the rotting process is relatively quick and the soil formed is very friable.  I call this the  Montezuma method. These South American indians knew what they were doing.  They were excellent horticulturalists and agriculturalists.  They built vast floating gardens that fed cities.  They floated gardens on logs and brush wood. In any case, it does not seem to have any adverse effect on my vegetables.

Earlier in the year I buried a leylandii tree two spits down by double digging and burying it under the subsoil.  I have just dug down to see what has happened to it and I cannot find any trace of it.

Burying  logs has several advantages.  It raises the soil above the surrounding area.  As there are two springs on my allotment, raising the soil level means that the water flows below the soil and into the subsoil.   The surface 6 to 8 inches are normally well drained.  The logs and brush wood seem to leave drainage spaces in the soil which water can flow through easily.  I am burying carbon that would otherwise be converted into carbon dioxide and add to the carbon load of the atmosphere.  While carbon dioxide and methane are produced from the rotting process, I would suggest that most of the carbon will be left in the soil.  There is evidence that soil could be a carbon sink and buried carbon in the form of logs and brushwood could stay in the soil for hundred or even thousands of years.