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 think that there is a lot of mystique about the making of jam that is uncalled for.  The black currents that I bought home yesterday are now boiling away in the big pan. I like to use a very big wooden spoon - mainly to impress everybody.  I do not add any water at all.  Then I add the same weight of sugar as fruit - more or less.  Next, I bring this to the boil and wait until enough water has evaporated from the fruit to make it set.   You can tell when it is ready by dribbling some off the wooden spoon.  If it starts to set on the spoon then it is ready to put into the jars.  I think that mine is nearly ready now.  It has taken less than an hour to do it. 

I am going to mow the lawns now.

Oh dear I have broken the lawn mower.  I think that the motor has burnt out.  I will get some petrol for the motor mower tomorrow. 

Got down the allotment at about 1 o’clock and there was a heavy shower of rain.  I just wanted to pick some raspberries and strawberries so I carried on regardless.  After a while it stopped raining and the sun was very warm.  I picked the first of the sweet peas to take home.  They are smelling beautiful. 

I think that all gardens should have something to look at - colour; something to smell - scents; something to hear - chimes; something to taste - raspberries and something to touch - the soil. 

I spent some time washing the black fly off the runner beans.  I just used the sprayer and water.  I expect I will have to do it again next week.  I got them fairly clean though.  I watered peas, beans and sweetcorn with comfrey. 

Started at the bottom of the allotment and hoed the whole allotment.  The rain has started all the weed seeds germinating again. 

Finally, I took another cutting of the comfrey to put into the butts.  I have now filled two butts and have cut almost all the comfrey. 

Ate a dinner that included a salad of lettuce, peas, carrots, rocket and radish of my own.  My tomatoes have not started cropping yet so I had to use bought tomatoes.  Then I had strawberries and ice cream.  Lovely jubbly…

I pricked out the lettuce, tagetes and the tomatoes.  Put a pinch of mychorrhizal fungi in each of the dibber holes but I don’t know whether this will help them. 

I realised that Nemaslug has a use by date - its a good thing to read the instructions isn’t it.  Well I did refrigerate it getting that part of the instructions but I didn’t realise about the use by date.  So, I decided to go down to the allotment and water in the Nemaslug.  No problem there.  I thought that as the winter onions were growing so well, I would spray them with asprin.  One thing I didn’t think about was the solubility of asprin.  Maybe I should have got soluble ones.  Still I broke a tablet up and swished it around in the sprayer in hot water before taking it down to the allotment.  It had a while to either dissolve a little or settle out. 

I got down to the allotment and did the jobs.  Watered in the Nemaslug and sprayed the onions, broccolli, winter cauliflower and the soft fruit with asprin.    If it does them any harm the allotment will be devastated this   spring.  Still, I do like to experiment.  I think that it will not have any effect at all.  It is one thing spraying but another to expect chemicals to penetrate into the cells of plants. 

I fed the broccoli, cauliflowers and the soft fruit with comfrey again.  The allotment taps are still turned off so I  am running out of water in the butts.   I looked at the pile of prunings on the comfrey patch and decided that I did not want to look at them any more.  I went down with my sparkling new stainless steel spade and dug a big hole.  It was about 4′ deep and I was digging in the clay subsoil.  I cut the old plum tree in half and pushed both parts into the hole.  I didn’t think that it would go in but it did.  Put the branches of the leylandi I had cut off in there as well. Prunings went in next and to cap it off someone had left some turfs on the allotment.  So I put some of them in too.  It is amazing how much you can get into a really big hole.  Then I filled in the hole and raked over the bed.  Looks a treat now.  I thought that I would get some turfs to put in the bean and pea trenches so I went down and got three wheelbarrow loads. Stacked them grass down on the allotment.  They will be fine there until I put the trenches in.   Looked at my watch and amazed to find that I had spent four hours down the allotment.  My excuse is that I talked to Beryl about how Eric was getting on and then when I was getting the turfs I went and asked Phil about his shed.  His is about 6′ by 4′.  I will get one smaller than that though. 

Several little nutters decided to walk through the allotments which I was not going to challenge until they started to throw stones at one of the sheds.  I walked down towards them and they moved off.  Another allotmenteer had walked down and I said that I would lock the gate.   I would like to say that these types of youths are in a minority but I don’t think they are.  They were still giving me a lot of abuse after I had locked the gate.  Then they started to climb over the fence of the next house.  I expect my greenhouse will be smashed up tomorrow but as I am going to take it down anyway I don’t really care.

I just think that it is sad.  �

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

Well, I finished planting the new raspberries (Glen Prosen)  which fruits from mid July to mid August with bright red fruits.   Straightened the frame for holding them up.  Just as I had finished one of the allotment holders came over and gave me about ten Autumn Bliss raspberries which is reported to fruit from September to the frosts.

I think that when I take out my old canes at the back end of this year, I will plant all the Bliss along that row.  I have got most of them heeled in near the greenhouse.  

The blackberry is Adrienne, which is thornless and fruits from late July to August.  The new gooseberry is Invicta.  Fruit ripens about late July and can be both dessert and cooking… I planted all of them with mycorrhizal spores so I will sit back and see if they seem to make any difference.   

Watered them all in with comfrey liquid.  I decided to do the purple sprouting and the winter cauliflowers as well.  I may mulch these with horse muck tomorrow.   I will have a look to see if any more purple sprouting is coming as well.  

Finished off the strawberry bed and planted the new strawberries with mycorrhizal spores too.  This is Cambridge and I bought plants at least 15 years ago and they are still going strong.  I am a little worried that they have a virus now though, so I will see if they do well this year and get some more next year if they do not crop.  

There is nothing more dispiriting  than seeing a mess on your allotment so I decided to scrape all the subsoil and stones off the allotment and put it into  tubs.  Good job I have big tubs.  The allotment looked much better but I still had to fork over the bottom plot to  ameliorate my irritation.   It looks quite good now. 

Alright, alright, I will put my potatoes in the greenhouse to chit.  I know that they will get frosted particularly when we have had three very heavy frosts this week but I will put them out anyway.  As the man says, how can you stop them from chitting?  They don’t have any shoots on them anyway so I would still rather leave them for the moment.  But the man in the forum says chit so I will chit. 

I am also going to plant some Gardener’s Delight tomatoes, some Tagetes patula and some Iceberg lettuce in the warm somewhere.   I might sow Sweet Peas. 

Tomorrow I get horse muck…

Sunday morning I always go to Tai Chi and get myself thoroughly tired.  Most people think that Tai Chi is very slow and relaxing.  Slow I would agree with, relaxing I would not agree with.  It is blooming hard work - for me any way.  Which means, to get back to the allotment I did not get down there until about 2 o’clock.  There were about two people on the allotments appart from me. 

I dug over the last of the area where the peas were and then used the cultivator and rake to smooth the soil.  Looks great now.  I wanted to extend my strawberry bed a lot so this is where they are going to go…

I have decided to replace my old raspberries, which were given me by someone on the allotments 24 years ago, with a known variety.  I have now gone and forgotten what variety I bought.    I got ten canes at about £1 a cane which is fairly good.   I also got a really good variety of thornless blackberry and a gooseberry which claims to be immune to American mildew. (Sphaerotheca mors-uvae)  We shall see.

 So, I started moving the strawberries and planting them in the new bed and suddenly a great multitude of people appeared on their allotments.  Most of the committee were there.  And, just by chance, a big load of free horse manure turned up and was off loaded on the gate car park.  Now isn’t that amazing. 

So I got a barrow load of muck because I scraped off all the subsoil and stones from around the dalek compost tub that the council contractor very kindly left on my allotment, and this left a bit of a depression.  Dug a hole, after taking out the rhubarb filled it with muck and put the rhubarb back in but raised up a lot more so they cannot cover them with subsoil easily again.  Next I put in the thornless blackberry.  I decided to use the mychorrizal fungi for the soft fruit bushes so they got a dose of those as well.  I mulched the blackberry with some of the muck as well. 

I took down the old frame I had for the beans and rebuilt it for the blackberry and the raspberries.  So I will have these at the bottom of the allotment.  I am going to use some old pea wire that I have to give me more wire to tie them in to. 

The garlic is showing and growing well and the onions have begun to germinate today.  I am going to plant some Gardener’s Delight, Tagetes patula and some iceberg lettuce seeds tomorrow.  Thank heaven for half term. 

 �

Just putting up some more photographs of the mess they made of my allotment. 

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You might not be able to see the difference between the blacker soil from my allotment that they used to fill their hole and the lighter soil of the trackway. As you can see they did not cure anything.  They just moved the spring into the center of the path away from the side where it used to be and created a quagmire for me to have to walk through to get to and work on my allotment. 

 

You can see here some of my topsoil with a root of sorrel lying on top for good measure filling their hole while above it you can see the white stone they used for the pathway.  I grew sorrel on my allotment last year.  I am not going to let this go.  I am complaining to the council and anyone else I can think of. 

Right I have written to Rob Marris MP. Now for the council.�