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.

     

It says in the books that sweetpea seeds need a temperature of 18-20 0C to germinate.
I think that this is a little warm and will make the plants drawn - thin and spindly. I plant mine in October in a cold greenhouse and leave them in there overwinter. I use a bog standard peat free compost but I add mychorrhizal fungi to it to encourage fungi root associations. Seems to have worked this year don’t you think? They are in open end pots and the pots are pushed into gravel. I find that they are more hardy than you expect. I am going to insulate my greenhouse with bubble wrap this year just in case. They need a lot of light to stop them becoming drawn and this reminds me I need to wash the glass in the greenhouse. It gets very mucky during the summer with tomatoes in there.
When the seedlings have grown their second or third leaf, I pinch out the growing tip to encourage side shoots. I pick what I consider to be the strongest one and then remove all the others. Some growers leave two side shoots.
I plant sweetpeas out fairly early - end of March or the beginning of April. I grow them as cordons i.e I take off all side shoots and tendrils and tie them to a cane. It is really the only way to get large flowers. The other secret, and please don’t tell anyone else, is to feed the sweetpeas with comfrey liquid. They love it.

Yesterday, I worked on the allotment with just a thick jumper and it was quite pleasant. My main task was to hoe the leeks and spray against Napomyza gymnostoma. I got all the weeding done using the dutch hoe and the three pronged cultivator.  I did not really need to hand week or use the onion hoe.  I sprayed with liquid derris only because I have lost my soluble aspirin tablets. 

I put all the weeds into the double digging trench that I have started.  This trench is full now so I would have dug another trench but the time seemed to filter away and it was dark before I realised the time.  Its all this putting the clocks back that threw me off I think. 

I was expecting the contractors to be taking the soil off the allotment when I got there but Phil the chair of the allotment society had put a letter in the greenhouse saying it would not happen till the end of the week. 

 I heeled in some more of the comfrey from this area on the top section and eventually found the rhubarb and moved that as well.   All the rest of the comfrey I took the leaves off and put them in the trench - overfilling it a bit but comfrey does rot down quickly.  I don’t mind if they take the rest of the comfrey and the horse radish away with the soil.   Horse radish is seriously invasive. 

I dug up some beetroot and carrots to eat with the pumpkin and then came home. 

Today it has been snowing so I have done nothing.  I cannot believe it is snowing in October.  The sweet pea seeds came today.

The varieties I have chosen this time are:

Ethel Grace;  Jilly;  Exclipse; White Supreme;  Nora Holman;  Anniversary;  Charlie’s Angel;  Restormel; Rosina and Gwendolline.  I might put them in tomorrow but that will mean I will have to wash some pots up carefully. 

We shall see.Â

Picked over 12lbs of beans off the runners.  I could not believe my eyes when I eventually got up the allotment.  The beans were doing very well even though there was running water flowing over their roots.  The sweet peas have well and truely gone over now and need to be taken out.  They will be dug in on the top half of the allotment. 

I have taken one of the small pumpkins off to eat.  We will probably use it in a stew or vegetable curry. 

Plenty of carrots although some were being eaten by slugs most were almost perfect.  Not as long as I would like but that does not really matter.  I bought home about 8lbs of carrots.  Beetroot doing well bought home about 10.  I didn’t weigh these.  The ground around the carrots and beetroot was sodden and waterlogged.  I could not walk on it without sinking.  I will have to spend quite a bit of time on this area if I want to crop it next year. 

Red onions are great.  Not very big but ideal for salads.  I am going to make a couple of salad sandwiches later and the onions will go in them. 

A very good crop of sweet corn.  After all the cold weather and rain, I thought that they would all rot off.  However, they have seemed to have thrived.  I bought back about 20 cobs some of which we have already eaten. 

The autumn raspberries have come in a rush and I picked quite a few.  I was given one a long time ago and I don’t know the name of it.  I have also been given some Autumn Bliss canes which have cropped this year. 

Cropping all these vegetables meant that I did not have any time to plant the strawberries or the mustard.  Maybe next week.

Someone has made a right cockup with the seeds of one of my sweet peas.  I have pink on cream Oxford Blue sweetpeas.  I don’t think that is quite right.  Mr Unwin sells all the right sweet pea seeds but not necessarily in the right packet.  Still I have a 1961 first edition of Mr Chas Unwin’s “Amature Gardening Handbook No 36 Sweet Pea” which I recieved on my 10th birthday and has been my sweet pea bible ever since.  So they cannot be that bad.  Also I have been growing Unwin’s sweet peas most years since then. 

I knew that there would be a lot of sweet peas because I had not cut any during the weed.  Well I filled a bucket with them.  I am getting exhibition standard blooms now but I doubt if I will show them.  I just like the fun of growing them.  They certainly smell wonderful.  The scent is everywhere in the house.  Well,  they have filled four vases. 

I took out the first row of Kelvedon Wonder peas completely.  I took the chicken wire off them last week and put it around the Meteor peas.  I gleaned the rest of the peas on this row and pulled out the plants.  The roots were all covered in nitrogen fixing nodules so I think that they have done a good job.  They have added nitrogen to the soil and I think that I have got quite a few pounds of peas off just this one row.  I have another four rows coming on well.   The rain has helped them to grow this year.  Several of the roots had mychorrhizal fungi on them so adding them to the soil seems to have done the trick.  Also I planted them directly under a small apple tree and they still did very well. 

I sprayed the onions and leeks with derris and aspirin.  They are still suffering with leek miner fly.   Tomatoes are fruiting but they are still very small.  They are in the greenhouse too so I think it is the rainy weather that is not letting them grow quickly. 

Courgettes are flowering well but the only courgette that they produced rotted. 

Several people on the allotments are taking out their early potatoes.  I was thinking of having a look at a root of Kestrel.  The tops are still very green so I think that they are still growing.  There is no sign of blight this year thank heavens.  I got a crop last year but I would not say that it was good.  Still it did last us quite a while. 

The beans are coming very well.  It will be the earliest that I have ever had runner beans.  The wet weather is to their liking I think. 

Some of the companion planting I put in is flowering now.  It looks quite good.  The convolvulus, poached egg plant and tagetes are making quite a show. 

Took a look at the grapes in the allotment greenhouse today.  There are some grapes on the black one but nothing on the white grape.  I doubt if they will ripen properly with all this rain we have been having. 

Most of the March lettuces have either been eaten or have gone to seed.  I have just started eating the April ones.  I will have to clear the seeding ones away and leave the ground to the winter cauliflowers. 

Not many plums on the plumb tree and not many apples on the apple tree.  Maybe Granny Smith was not a good choice for my allotment but Victoria plums have been very good in the past. 

The strawberries have finished more or less. However, the raspberries are certainly still producing prodigious amounts of fruit. 

Good job too because I eat so many straight off the canes.�

I went down to the allotment after work primarily to pick the strawberries before they rotted in the ground due to the continuous rain we have been having. 

There were plenty of raspberries so I started to pick and eat them.  I did manage to take a couple of pound back home. 

The peas have filled out really well due to the rain.  I have podded (taken the peas out of the pods) some of them already.  I think that I will sit infront of the tv and pod the rest.  It is still raining and quite cold and dark outside. 

Most people complain about the British weather but I don’t.  I like it when I can grow easily.  No need for watering at the moment.  The runner beans are beginning fruit now and there are several about 14 - 15 cms long.  After washing off the blackfly aphid at the weekend, I thought that I was going to be free of them at least for a while.  However, they are back again.  I will have to spray them again with water to get them off the leaves and flowers. 

As you might expect, the sweet peas have shot up.  I took all the open flowers off at the weekend and put them in a vase at home.  Their scent is amazing.  It fills the house.  The plants are flowering again but still only three blooms on a stem at the moment and they are nearly at the top of their canes. I would really like to have all of them producing four or possibly 5 flowers on each stem. 

Picked some more radish and rocket and then went home.  �

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 decided to take the leeks down to the allotment to harden off.  I know that they have only been out of the greenhouse for a day but I could not help myself planting them directly into the allotment.  Now, this is one of those times when you can’t do this until you do that.  I was worried that I would not have room to put all the leeks in so I needed to move the slabs that Eric had left on the allotment.  When he had had this allotment he grew tomatoes here on the slabs.  I have moved most of the concrete slabs to the side of the allotment giving me a very useable path.  I completed it today.  Now this patch is almost a rectangle.  The soil under the slabs was not very good so I decided to double dig it.  More turfs have been left by the lower gate car park so I got some of these to put at the bottom of the trenches.  It helps to raise the soil on the allotment and help with the poor drainage.  I have double dug most of this allotment now. 

I put in about 98 leeks adding some mychorrhizal fungi to each of the holes.  I like to knock them out of their pots and then plant them as I would any other seedling.  The others that I planted earlier were done in the traditional way by making a dibber hole and just sticking a bare rooted leek in it.  Both sets of leeks were watered in with comfrey liquid. 

I did not fill the whole of this area with leeks so I put two lines of carrots in.  I doubt if they will do very well but they are Flyaway so they might produce something. 

I weeded and hoed all of the rest of the allotment - or the areas that needed it.  I also put in a new row of radish and lambs lettuce where the February lettuce came out.  The March lettuce is hearting up very well and I will be cropping this at the end of the week. 

After finishing off here I went down to take off side shoots and tendrils off the sweet peas. They are not doing as well as I wanted.  I think that they are best sown in the autumn rather than very early in the spring.  Tied them all up carefully.  I am not sure whether growing them up strings is the best way of doing cordon sweet peas.  It has been particularly windy this year and they are being blown about whereas the ones on the canes are growing much better.   Remember that for next year Tone. 

I kept on putting the side shoots and tendrils in the tools tub.  Swapped the tubs round to stop myself and blow me if I don’t carry on doing it stretching over the right tub.  I struggle on like this all down the row and then I asked myself why I needed the tools tub in the first place…  I didn’t so I put it away and then found that I put all the side shoots in the right tub. 

I think that I have tired myself out again with all that double digging so sorry folks no reports will get done this evening.  I am going to go to bed early.�