Allotment Garden

2025-01-26T20:11:00.005+00:00

Vegetable Mould - Taking Organic Matter to a Totally New Level.

Regardless of soil type, texture, structure pH, and the amount of available nutrient, the one thing that makes the most sustainable impact on crop yields is vegetable mould. Vegetable mould is the friable, sweet smelling, life rich, blackish material made by kitchen garden compost heaps.

I am not going to pretend that making good vegetable mould is anything but hard work. I certainly don't find vegetable mould making a spiritual experience. However, being pleasantly worn out, in the fresh air, with the Sun on your face, listening to the hum of nature, on a warm afternoon is ample reward for time in the composting area.

When I was a toddler, I was sent down the garden to put kitchen scraps onto the vegetable mould windrow and I am still doing this, seventy growing seasons later. Both my father and grandfather were enthusiastic composters putting copious amounts of vegetable mould onto the growing plats and digging it in. They were greatly influenced by Albert Howard's promotion of the Indore method of composting. Howard qualified as a botanist and worked as an agricultural educator throughout the world. His methods of composting were made popular during the dig for victory campaign during the second world war.

The Indore method is one of the most recognised by British gardeners and involved composting green residues with manure. With the tragic loss of so many horses during the wars and the relentless onslaught of mechanical devices, stable manure became scarce and much less was used in composting.

In my experience only mixed plant residues were used and put into a bay made from corrugated iron sheets. One spit of soil was dug out of the base and the top soil was kept neatly to one side to be added as the heap grew. Brushwood prunings were put at the bottom of the pit to "aid drainage". Whether this practice had any effect on heap drainage is beyond me. I continued adding brushwood to the base of heaps for many seasons until I finally decided that it was not improving the vegetable mould. Cutting brushwood into <10cm. pieces and mixing with other residues is much more likely to improve the drainage of the heap than having a layer of brushwood at the base of the windrow. Large pieces of brushwood do not make turning easier. If the heap is sited at the top of slope, drainage should never be a problem.

Weeds, prunings, leaves, kitchen peelings, crop residues and lawn mowings were added in no particular order. After each foot of litter, a layer of soil was added and dafter three applications of soil, a little lime.

Nowadays most allotmenteers build a pile of residues at the back of their allotments and do little else until removing the confusion of undecomposed residues on the top of the heap to reveal the disappointingly small layer of vegetable mould below.

Although the festering pile of rubbish at the back of the allotment is not recommended, even the least maintained of heaps provides some vegetable mould that is a valuable addition to plat soil.

The compost heap that my friend Fred inherited was at least fourteen feet tall and was slowly enveloping his shed. It was a heap that was neglected and forlorn. As I dug it out for Fred, I found various plastic trays, tubs, pots, netting, and other broken, miscellaneous garden paraphernalia. The heap remained uncared for for twenty one years. The sides and top were covered in a mass of Elymus repens and Calystegia sepium stolons that needed to be sieved out before the friable, life rich soil could be reached.

The Bread Tray Sieve

Luckily, I found a bread tray buried deep in the heap that had a one-inch mesh that could be used to sieve out the couch grass and bindweed. A buried treasure that fitted neatly over the wheelbarrow.

This vegetable mould windrow had never had its carbon to nitrogen ratio worked out, been turned, layered, or otherwise mollycoddled, yet it was as good as any carefully crafted vegetable mould I could make.

It is amazing what twenty-one years can achieve.

The mega vegetable mould windrow was teeming with various invertebrates like worms, millipedes, centipedes, spiders, mites, woodlice, and flies. Their burrowing and churning played a crucial role in maintaining oxygen-rich air throughout the heap.

I Can’t Wait.

It takes hundreds of years for worms to make a centimetre of top soil and I can’t wait. Twenty one years of continuous additions of residue can achieve remarkable results. However, so much vegetable mould is languishing in a heap doing nothing. The purpose of composting is to speed up decomposition so that vegetable mould can be cycled quickly. By managing the moisture content, aeration, particle size, residue sources, mixing and temperature I can add a reasonable sized heap of vegetable mould to the growing plats every three or four weeks.

The Berkely Composting regime.

The University of California developed Alan Chadwick’s biodynamic intensive method of composting. The Berkely method relies on regular turning, highish temperatures and keeping the heap very moist. The turnover of hot vegetable mould is remarkably fast, and nutrient elements are not subject to excessive leaching or outgassing. Continuous addition of residues and consolidation are avoided speeding residue breakdown.

The Heap Is Made in One Go

The heap is made in one go and once it is constructed nothing more is added. All residues have the same time to rot down and there is no confusion of undecomposed residues covering the top layer of the windrow. To prevent the temptation of further residues being added to the heap, new material is stored, nearby, in dalek bins so that ingredients are to hand to make the next batch of vegetable mould.

Residues from the dalek bins together with litter from around the allotment (path sweepings, lawn mowings, hedge clippings, comfrey leaves, sweet cicely leaves, nettles and other weeds) are teased out to release any consolidation and added to the new windrow – not necessarily in any particular order.

The Berkely Method of Regular Turning.

Once the heap has been made, thoroughly wetted and mixed, it is left for four days to enable microbe numbers to multiply and for other organisms to migrate from air and soil. To get heat into the heap there must be life. You can’t sterilise vegetable mould by turning it.

After four days the heap is turned every two days.

There are some that would say that this is excessive. I suspect that even more would say that turning once a year was excessive. However, the more that the heap is turned the quicker vegetable mould is formed and the sooner it can be added to the plats. Turning the vegetable mould windrow keeps you warm in winter… It keeps you warm in the summer too if you live in Britain.

Slumping and Consolidation

Vegetable mould windrows shrink over the composting period. Microbes use a massive amount of carbon from organic molecules like cellulose and lignin mineralising them to carbon dioxide and water vapour leaving residues limp and floppy. After following the two day turning regime you might wish that the heap would loose weight and volume a lot more to save your poor back.

The physical strength of residues is undermined as carbon is stripped away during catabolism and the loss in turgidity causes slumping and consolidation. Air filled pores are critical in moving oxygen around the vegetable mould by both diffusion and convection. Air and water tend to have preferential routes through the vegetable mould matrix producing anaerobic and dry volumes. Regular turning reduces consolidation by loosening residues and introducing new macro and micro pores. A good network of pores helps to create an even flow of air and water throughout the whole volume of the vegetable mould windrow.

Turning does introduce fresh air and allows gas exchange, but this is short lived lasting just a few hours. It is the diffusion and convection currents of gases through pores that introduces oxygen into the core of the heap and allows excess carbon dioxide to escape.

Pores can be managed by the type of residues added and the number of times the heap is turned. Residues like ramail keep their frame strength for longer than other material while being small enough to be easily turned.

New surfaces are exposed by turning, invertebrate churn and larger animal burrowing and are quickly colonised by microbe biofilms. Decomposers mainly colonise surfaces so the more exposed surfaces the more decomposition. Fragmentation by invertebrates grazing constantly generates small pieces with large surfaces. Turning relatively evenly mixes these newly exposed surfaces with saprophytic fungi and bacterial biofilm infected particles enabling rapid migration onto pristine surfaces. The intimate gossamer growth of fungal hyphae can extend its reach between particles finding new surfaces with little effort.

Size of Particles.

Large residue pieces make big voids that threaten to quickly dry the vegetable mould. Brushwood is a poor matrix for decomposition having a hydrophobic nature and large dry air spaces. Cutting up longs seriously reduces voids enabling easier movement of organisms from one piece to another. With smaller spaces, films of water covering pieces are less likely to evaporate and air pores are saturated with water vapour. Small pieces of woody twig, stem or branch reduces confusion making turning much easier. Ramail mixed with lawn mowings heats the windrow surprisingly quickly.

Longs need to be cut up or shredded. Small pieces are easier to wet and keep damp. As top fruit trees and soft fruit bushes are pruned the trimmings can be cut into small <10cm. pieces that wet more easily and break down quickly. The size of residue pieces regulates the surface exposed to microbial attack. Small pieces can be eaten by invertebrates and processed through their guts. The smaller the particles the quicker the decomposition. Although long fragments of residue should be cut into <10cm fragments when the heap is made, chopping up longish pieces should continue during turning, teasing and stirring.

Breaking up residues by turning seriously reduces large voids within the vegetable mould matrix and with smaller pores the films of water covering every particle are less likely to evaporate excessively and air gaps are saturated with water vapour. Short dense woody pieces added to the mould reduces soil evaporation and mass flow of groundwater.

Shredding, cutting up, mashing, breaking and chopping brushwood prunings still leaves voids but these can be filled with finer material like grass mowings, weeds and vegetable residues as the heap is turned. Small pieces of woody twig, stem or branch reduces confusion in the heap considerably and makes turning much easier.

To attract beneficial invertebrates the range of vegetable mould thickness should reflect those found on woodland floors. Although a lot of woodland floor natural vegetable mould is usually less than 10cm. thicker pieces are included in the mixture creating habitats. Longer thicker pieces that last longer in the vegetable mould windrow play an important role in evaporation reduction slowing the mass flow of ground water and attracting different rarer woodland floor organisms.

Larger denser pieces of vegetable mould provide habitat for less common microbes, invertebrates and fungi. As denser small pieces of residue build up in plat soil so too do the numbers and diversity of forest floor decomposers. To attract beneficial invertebrates, the range of vegetable mould thicknesses should reflect those found on woodland floors. Thicker denser pieces are more resilient and make longer lasting habitats attracting different rarer woodland floor organisms.

Mixing

Turning the sides and top into the center of the heap ensures all the residues contribute to decomposition. Evaporation causes the outer layers to lose water and become too dry for efficient composting. Some effort is needed to mix undecomposed residues with the cool, dry, oxygen rich outer layers of the heap with residues from the hot, steaming, carbon dioxide rich core helping to achieve a more uniform distribution of residues and temperature throughout the heap.

However, I just go for it not worrying too much where individual fork loads end up. The residues are being folded in, mixed and broken up regardless of where they originate.

Turing allows assessment of the moisture content of the heap. Adding copious amounts of water as you turn the residues maintains rapid decomposition. There must be a substantial amount of water throughout the volume of the heap for hot composting to continue apace. Microbes feed, move, communicate, grow and develop consortia in water films covering vegetable mould pieces. Fungi can survive dryish vegetable mould by translocating water from wet volumes of the heap; however, they thrive in moist mould.

Moving the core to the outside cools the heap and this is the only way of controlling the temperature. Spraying the windrow with water may initially reduce the temperature but increased microbe activity soon increases the heaps temperature far beyond its original warmth. Barn fires are often started by wet hay or straw decomposing.

Microbes and invertebrates are moved around the heap when it is turned creating a more even spread of organisms throughout the vegetable mould windrow quickly introducing them to new surfaces. An even distribution of microbes throughout the heap gives a quicker and more thorough decomposition.

Bay Partitions.

Why have a bay partition that you have to heft heavy vegetable mould over? If there are no pallet barriers in the composting area, it is so much easier to turn. Building one large bay makes turning easier because the mould does not have to be hoiked over a barrier.

What To Use for The Base of The Heap

It is difficult to know where the bottom of the heap is when vegetable mould windrows are built on soil. I annoy myself digging holes in the soil as I turn or excavate the mould not noticing where vegetable mould ends, and soil begins. Cardboard can be used to separate soil from residues, but card rots away surprisingly quickly, regardless of its 378:1 carbon to nitrogen ratio. The rapid decomposition of card leaves the soil vulnerable to my enthusiasm. Copious amounts of sticky tape cover corrugated cardboard boxes most having absolutely no functional use. As I am not fastidious in initially removing sticky tape and it does not rot down in the heap, I have the chore of removing long strings of tape from the vegetable mould.

Next, I tried using old woollen carpets but they have an irritating habit of rucking up making turning difficult. They last longer than cardboard but eventually decompose.

Tarpaulin bases make turning easier but prevent microbes and invertebrates reaching the residues quickly. They are made of plastics and do not allow free drainage.

I now use a broken concrete slab base, crazy paved style, covering the soil but not concreted in. They are higgledy piggledy with large gaps between to allow access for microbes and invertebrates.

Matting.

If a wide variety of residues are added to the vegetable mould windrow, then there is less danger of materials matting together. Matting slows decomposition by excluding oxygen and retaining too much water.

Invertebrate Churn.

Fragmentation by invertebrate grazing constantly generates small pieces. When a new face of organic matter is exposed by turning, invertebrate churn or animal burrowing it is quickly colonised by microorganisms.

Heat In The Heap.

If the vegetable mould warms up it is probably large enough, has enough water and has been regularly turned. To get heat into the mould there must be life. It is very unlikely that there are separate consortia of mesophilic and thermodynamic microbes. A diversity of microbes adapted to a wide range of temperatures is much more likely. The heat tolerance of ordinary bacteria, archaea and fungi must change over the composting period. Archaea and bacteria have the biofilm matrix to protect them from high temperatures. Due to the changes in temperature, composition and structure of the heap there may be some kind of succession over the duration of composting but the succession is more to do with genetic and structural change of microorganisms within the biofilm consortia enabling common or garden microbes to tolerate highish temperatures. There also may be a secretion of a more heat tolerant biofilm matrix to protect consortia in the biofilm.

High temperatures do not winkle out pathogens. Heat is nonselective and kills all life by denaturing proteins. I do not want my vegetable mould windrows to have a temperature higher than 40°C. 40°C does not kill off many pathogens – other things do that but 40°C temperatures accelerate decomposition. Temperatures over 40°C kill the very organisms needed to decompose residues. I want to maintain and increase my beneficial saprophytic and plant growth promoting microbes by keeping the mould at or below 40°C by regular turning. Long lasting high temperatures were used by Victorian gardeners to keep hot beds warm during the coldest seasons. Microbe activity can be sustained during winter. My vegetable mould was 55°C on December 17^th because I did not have the time or inclination to turn it.

While there is adaptation to high temperatures, we are not talking about mid Atlantic hydrothermal vents or boiling volcanic sulphur pools. Whilst I would not put it past thermophilic microbes to travel around the world in the air fog of microbes reaching my little vegetable mould windrow, an evolution of specialist thermophilic bacteria and archaea in a temperate maritime climate would be puzzling. Bacterial biofilms adapt to the changes in temperature so they can remain active even at highish temperatures. Microbes have life cycles and their preference for warmth or coolness is less likely to cause fluctuations in specie numbers that the weather, the season, the availability of particular residues or the availability of other specific microbes.

Insulators

After the heap has been turned, coverings can be put over the vegetable mould windrows. The heap does not have to be completely covered. You need to allow oxygen rich air to enter the through the base of the heap and carbon dioxide rich air to leave the top. Old cotton or woollen rags are useful insulators for covering the heap. Tarpaulins are good coverings for heaps but they are plastic.

Journey to the heap.

Root hairs, fine roots and root tips are covered in actively recruited plant growth promoting microbes feeding on biomolecules generated by plants during photosynthesis. Exudates, sheared off cells and fine root dieback provide a valuable, long term food source encouraging archaea, bacteria and fungi to congregate and multiply in the intimate couple of millimetres around roots.

The interaction between microbes and roots is not a one-way process. Apart from breaking down organic matte and cycling nutrients, bacteria make auxins, cytokinins, gibberellins, abscinic acid and such like that can increase crop growth by up to 30%. Microbes also secrete beneficial siderophores that enable iron and other micronutrients to be absorbed by crops. The motley associations of bacterial consortia around, on and in plants do not produce the same medley of secretions at identical times or in uniform amounts. With a wide diversity of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria there is more potential for an even distribution of growth promoting biomolecules over the growing season.

Although my vegetable mould windrow comes a close second, the greatest diversity of life on Earth is in the soil and the rhizosphere is by far the most dynamic. When unwanted plants are pulled from the earth, much soil remains on the roots even when the plants are shaken vigorously. The contribution of diverse microbes from around the roots of residues and weeds ensures there is always some valuable consortia of bacteria thriving and multiplying in the vegetable mould windrow. The descendants of these beneficial microbes are returned to the growing plats when vegetable mould is spread over the soil.

Every plant has its own life cycle and root exudates wax and wane during the growing season altering the diversity and numbers of plant growth promoting rhizobacteria. Adding the diversity of weeds even a small allotment generates, provides the vegetable mould windrow with multifarious accompanying microbes.

Ephemeral and annual plants provide a fleeting source of food for microbes, while biennials and perennials provide greater stability of exudates. Cut into <10cm. lengths I often add roots of Rubus fruiticosus (bramble), Rosa arvensis (field rose) and Rubus idea (raspberry) in the hope of gaining novel consortia of microbes.

Each time a new vegetable mould windrow is constructed many endophytes and foliage microbes piggyback in and on the residues. Plants may be infected by several mycorrhizal fungi, numerous nitrogen fixing bacteria, a myriad of root surface bacterial biofilms and various saprophytic fungi. Many symbiotic and endophytic organisms find survival without a living host challenging and have to resort to producing propagules. Nitrogen fixing Rhizobium bacteroids living symbiotically in the root nodules of Fabacea (legume) plants produce free living platonic cells. These cells no longer fix nitrogen but contribute to the breakdown of residues in vegetable mould windrow biofilms.

Mycorrhizal fungi

Mycorrhizal fungi gain their sustenance mainly from their host plants and cannot break down residues to produce biomolecules they can feed on. Mycorrhizal fungi propagules remain dormant in the heap until vegetable mould is cycled onto growing plats where spores encounter

Bacteria in the soil.

I am not impressed by the number of bacteria in a teaspoon of soil. It depends on where you look. The bulk soil millimetres from roots is a microbial desert except for huddles of microbes around scant fragments of organic matter. Although increasing the soil organic matter by adding mulches of vegetable mould boosts the bulk soil microbe numbers, I really want plant growth promoting microbes concentrated around the roots of crops. The bulk soil may loose out when it comes to numbers, but it wins hands down when it comes to diversity. Building the vegetable mould on soil – or with access to soil attracts a great variety of these saprophytic microbes enhancing decomposition.

There are some remarkably hostile microbes in vegetable mould and soil. However, their numbers are so insignificant that they do not pose much of a threat. It is only when these species reach a tipping point of high numbers that quorum sensing kicks in and they cause a problem. Always wear gloves when gardening and keep a bar of soap in the shed first aid box. Wash cuts immediately with tap water, drying them with a clean paper towel finally covering the wound with a plaster. (Put the soiled paper towel on the compost heap. Blood cells and plasma contain protein and protein contains nitrogen.)

In nature bacteria and archaea are always found in consortia. Biofilm consortia are highly diverse, multispecies associations continually adapting and cooperating to organise decomposition. It is not until the establishment of mature consortia that residues warm and decomposition continues apace.

Biofilms

The formation of biofilm consortia begins with the permanent attachment of unicellular colonising bacteria to a surface. Once bacteria, like Bacillus subtalis are tightly attached to residue surfaces, their structure and genetics change so that they can work synergetically with other species attracted to the biofilm.

The basic structure of the biofilm looks like a forest of rubbery towers built from bacterial secretions of mucus, enzymes, nucleic acid and debris. Cellulose microfibers reinforce the attachment to residue pieces. The polysaccharide mucus matrix is punctuated by water pores so that oxygen and nutrients can diffuse into the film and unwanted nutrient elements excreted.

Biofilms provide a protected and stable microenvironment where microbes are safeguarded from changes in temperature, pH and antibiotics. Bacterial grazers like slime moulds and nematodes are less likely to prey on biofilms than free living platonic bacteria.

As the biofilm grows it secretes biomolecules that attract an influx of unicellular bacteria. Biofilm recruitment of new bacterial cells is very sensitive to the watery biochemical environment. The use of xenobiotic pesticides and herbicides hinders the important messenger molecules causing the absence of critical organisms. Only when the messenger molecules are able to diffuse without the masking effect of xenobiotic chemicals can co-option and critical stages of biofilm development take place. While the overarching numbers of microbes are said to remain the same before and after xenobiotic chemical application the diversity of biofilm consortia and the prominence of species change most being severely depleted.

2024-03-26T02:07:00.000+00:00

Sowing the Douce Provence Peas

I finally got around to sowing the peas. I dug in the green manure, mostly grasses, and raked to give me a good tilth. The soil in this bed is particularly friable. I had put some seed in sectioned trays and they had germinated well so I decided to set them out as well. I covered the Douce Provence with scaffol netting over cloche wires to give them a little protection from the cold weather, pigeons, rats and mice. The seeds I had left over I will put with the Kelvedon Wonder so they are sown and not wasted. Some would say that it is a little early to sow peas but Douce Provence is a hardy early variety and survives the colder nights. I am going to sow Kelvedon Wonder next week.

The parsnips I sowed were Tender and True, Gladiator, and Sabre - one line of each. All three lines are covered with enviromesh to give them a litte protection from the weather.

I cleared up the last of the ramail next to the allotment putting it onto the plastic sheet over the abandoned allotment opposite. There was some good remail on the other carpark so I went down with the barrow to collect some for the new vegetable mould windrow. This remail is just like leaf mould because it had so many leaves in it. I mixed it with the scrapings from the path. The blackbirds like to cover my paths with soil and ramail dug out from the beds. This means that the remail is process by the birds and I walk over them crushing the pieces. I will empty the darlek bins mixing the contents and adding them to the windrow. Eventually I will have a 5 foot vegetable mould windrow.

I walked a 2" square concrete paving slab around to the pea and bean bed to finish off the path but it didn't fit so I just left it on the allotment path and put remail around it. The allotment path could be improved by concrete slabs, however I will not have enough to stretch all the way to the trackway.

The sweet pea plants will have to be put out soon because they are getting quite big. The weather forecast is not too good for the rest of the week so I am keeping them in the green houses for the moment. Flea beetle is a major pest of sweet peas this time of the year and is another incentive to keep the plants indoors for the moment.

I need to take a note book down to the allotment to record where I plant each variety. The wooden lables rot away and are made illegible in the process.

2024-03-24T10:14:00.001+00:00

Starting to sow a lot of seed.

I have already germinated mellon, cucumber, tomatoes and pepper seeds. The propergator is full and I still need to sow more seeds.

I am going to sow all the brassicas next week. Early peas and parsnips are going to be sown this week but there is some suggestion that the week is going to be very cold. I intend to protect the peas and parsnips with scaffle netting or enviromesh. It seems to give seeds just that little bit of protection and allow them to germinate when otherwise they wouldn't.

I have grafted 16 apple trees all of which are new varieties for the allotment. Most of the grafts have been simple grafts but I have tried a crown graft using the East European varieties. I had two Pitmaston Pineapple apples so I cut one down to do the crown graft. If I get a lot of the grafts to take I will grow them as cordons just so that I can fit them in the allotment.

I am starting to dig in the green manure but leaving as much as possible to grow on until I need the beds for sowing or planting.

Sweet pea beds are all prepared and I am just waiting for the flea beetle to die down a little before I plant out the October sown sweet peas. I have used poles rather than canes for the supports. I had just enough to do seven double rows. I gave the bed a sprinkling of garden lime to protect the plants from yellowing during the summer. I have done the same for the sweet peas at Wightwick Manor gardens. (National Trust) They are January sown seed so they will flower at the end of June onward. October sown seeds will flower at the beginning of June.

All the sweet peas are going to be grown as cordons with one stem tied into the supports with garden twine. Garden twine rots eventually and is better for the garden. Side shoots and tendrils are taken off so that more of the plants energy can be diverted into flower production.

The paths between the sweet peas have been cardboarded and then covered in remail. This helps to prevent the paths becoming too consolidated, breaks down the remail so that it begins to compost, provides a bit of a mulch for the sweet peas and keeps my boots clean. Luckily the tree people bought some remail and left it right next to my allotment. Saves wheelbarrowing it uphill from the bottom car park.

Potatoes are chitting in the greenhouse. I do not need to plant them just yet. I sowed green manure on the bed in January. Remarkably the green manure has germinated under enviromesh and scaffol netting so the ground is not exposed to the elements. I have taken the nets off now, rolled them up and stored them away in old dustbins. I will need some of them for the peas and parsnips.

I have already planted the oca tubers. They seem be cold resistant. I have two rows of about 12 feet so may be able to use a lot more of them this year.

The yakon is in the small greenhouse. I put them in pots with my own compost over winter. They would probably survive during the winter in the soil but I wanted to make sure they would be ready for this spring.

Things to do today. Check the greenhouses to see if the seedlings need watering.

Continue putting ramail on the paths.

Sow peas Douce Provence and parsnips Tender and True.

Take some photographs of the allotment.

Heating up the compost heap.

2020-10-18T13:20:00.002+01:00

It is probably good practice to get the compost heap to heat up, although I think that you can make good vegetable mould without the very high temperatures that some advocate for compost making. I turned my compost for the second time yesterday and the vegetable mould was steaming.

Not sure whether it is clear from the photograph but the compost is steaming away.

This is what it looked like when the breeze had blown the steam away

My composts include all the residues from the allotment regardless of their woodiness. Woody prunings are cut up into small pieces before I add them to the compost heap. I also use rabbit bedding and woody shreddings.

The temperature was quite hot and this probably helped to kill off some of the wildflower seeds and diseases that were on the residues. However, I am never sure that even my best compost heaps are very effective in getting rid of seeds and pests and diseases. The heat of the vegetable mould only helps to suppress them. Other good husbandry needs to be employed to continue the suppression on the allotment.

Usually the compost does not seem to warm up very much but recently it has decided to become much hotter. I think this is mostly due to the strimmed grass given to me from another allotment and grass mowings from the lawns. I don't know why grass heats the compost heap so much but I always like to put it on the compost heap if I have it.

This is what it looked like a week ago.

And after two turnings it looks like this now.

Compost after the second turning

I keep the compost moist not letting it get dry. I have been making compost in this area for seven years now and I think that I have built up a good community of decomposing microbes in the soil and on the pallets around the area. There are certainly lots of invertebrates like flies and worms. This all helps to break down the organic matter. I am hoping to get some useable vegetable mould during the first week of November. Maybe a little later if the weather gets any colder. I will probably dig it into next season's potato bed.

I cover the windrow with old rags and a tarpaulin to keep the heat in and excessive rain out. It doesn't look very good but it makes good compost. So that the tarpaulin does not blow off the windrow, I put a bread tray with bricks in it on the very top. The tarp only blows off in serious windy weather.

2020-10-17T23:20:00.002+01:00

Bastard Digging or True digging.

There are methods of bastard digging that the Victorians developed that allowed you to dig continuously without having to stop. I do not use these methods but dig out trenches. The trenches are usually about three spits deep. Bastard digging mixes 'subsoil' with topsoil or replaces the top soil with 'subsoil'. This begs the question, "What is subsoil." In the past, I could have easily described subsoil. It is that part of the soil that is below the topsoil and is usually a different lighter colour to that of the topsoil. The dark colour of the topsoil is due to the presence of organic matter. The lack of dark colour in the subsoil is probably due to the lack of organic matter. The subsoil usually has a different structure to that of topsoil and feels different. However, after bastard trenching for several years the 'subsoil' has become more and more like topsoil and there is little difference throughout the profile until you get below the third spit deep.

It has been said that the subsoil is less fertile than that of the tops soil and should never be brought to the top of the soil. It usually has a greater number of stones in it than the topsoil. The lack of fertility and the abundance of stones would make the germination of seeds difficult and the growth of transplants slow.

So why did the Victorians develop bastard digging husbandry where topsoil was buried below 'subsoil' and the subsoil was placed on the top?

The main method of transport in Victorian and earlier times was the horse. Horses produce prodigious amounts of manure. Manure was seen as a waste material that needed to be disposed of. The stables of the super rich were bulging with horses which produced lots of manure. One way of disposing of this waste material was to bury it deep within the subsoil. Large trenches were dug and manure laid at the bottom, covered with subsoil and the topsoil replaced. The exceptional gardeners of the Victorian era and earlier noticed that horse manure helped vegetables grow. However, they had just buried the manure deep in the soil. Here horse manure decomposed and formed a very friable fertile layer that mixed with the subsoil. They dug this fertile soil from the bottom of their trenches and placed it on the top of the soil. Stale topsoil full of weed seeds and disease was put at the bottom of the trenches and covered with copious amounts of horse manure together with any other organic matter they could find. The trench was filled to the top with 'subsoil' infused with horse manure and vegetable mould. Eventually they achieved a very deep topsoil. A spit of topsoil could cheerfully be buried because the subsoil had become organically rich and could be brought to the surface increasing the fertility of the soil to at least one metre deep.

If very poor subsoil from deep in the soil is composted with organic matter it changes very quickly into a topsoil like soil.

I am bastard trenching at the moment but I am not necessarily bothering to separate top spit soil from that of the lower spits. There is a difference. The top spit has noticeable amounts of vegetable mould mixed within it and the lower spits have the remnants of previous year's hügelkultur.

One of the reasons I dig is to add organic matter. The larger and deeper the trench the more organic matter I can bury. I have buried the remnants of two goat willows and a small oak tree from my neighbours allotment. Also the brushwood from a branch that fell from an ancient oak tree further down the allotment site and some sycamore brushwood have been buried in the most recent hügelkultur trenches.

As I removed soil from the trench, I passed it through my bread tray sieve.

The vegetable mould mulches and the old hügelkultur wood that had rotted down to a friable, spongy mass are being mixed thoroughly with the soil removed from the trench making it a very homogeneous mixture. Whether mixing topsoil like this makes an iota of difference to the growth of crops is debatable. But I think that it does; on the anecdotal evidence that I have accumulated over 60 seasons. Why would commercial compost makers mix their concoctions if it did not make any difference to the growth of plants.

So why do I dig? I dig - particularly bastard dig - to add copious amounts of organic matter to the soil. What some would call compost trenching nowadays. Logs and brushwood can be added to the bottom of the trenches and dug into the true subsoil at the bottom. I dig to mix vegetable mould and the decomposed remnants of hügelkultur with the top soil. I dig deeply to remove the rhizomes of bindweed and the rhizoids horse tail. I dig deeply to bury topsoil wildflower and grass seeds deep within the soil. I bastard dig to bury stale and disease ridden top soil well away from from next year's crops. I don't necessarily dig to add air to the soil. Air and the oxygen within it will infuse the topsoil whether I dig or not. I add more air when digging and sieving the soil and this removes organic matter by encouraging aerobic microbes to mineralise it to carbon dioxide, water and micronutrients. This is what I want to happen. My vegetable crops need the micronutrients. However, at this time of year few of the nutrients would be used. So I sow a good cover crop like rye grass to mop up the nutrients and lock them up until next spring when they can be dug into the soil to release them again for the new crops.

I bastard dig to deepen the soil. Adding big pieces of organic matter like branches and brushwood raises the level of the soil and breaks down adding to the volume of soil.

I do not raise beds. I raise allotments.

Pinching out all the sweet pea seedlings.

2018-01-06T08:14:00.000+00:00

In order to grow exhibition sweet peas with very long stems and large flowers, you have to pinch out the growing tip of the seedlings after one or possibly two leaves. This makes the seedling throw out side shoots which will become very strong vibrant vines producing the big flowers. I just keep one side shoots because this gives stronger and bigger flowers but you can keep two and get twice as many flowers. It is a little more complicated taking them up the cane supports and layering them when they have reached the top but still possible.
I have finished pinching out the growing tips of the main crop of sweet peas but I sowed some in December and these are only now germinating. I will pinch them out when they get a little bigger.
Some of the seedlings that I have in Wightwick Manor greenhouse have been eaten by woodlice right down to the compost. I am leaving them because often they regrow from the seed and produce very vigourous shoots that produce the best flowers.
Not done much to the allotment. I have started to dig up the woody shredding paths and put the decomposed shreddings around the fruit trees as a mulch. I replace the old shreddings with new to maintain the path.
The soft fruit bed has been thoroughly mulched with woody shreddings. I might pull this back and put some farm yard manure around the bushes before pulling the shreddings back over.
I have two infant classes coming to visit the allotment in March. There will not be much for them to see so we are having to pretend. I will bury some potatoes so they can dig them up and leave some carrots and parsnips for them to see in the ground. It will be quite spectacular to dig out a big parsnip and carrot. I have suggested that they come back in June when the allotment will be full and I think that they are considering it.
Spent some time at Wightwick Manor cutting back the large cherry laurel hedge around the vegetable garden. It looks very tidy now. The gardeners are going to burn the considerable heap of prunings but I have suggested they get a shredder instead. They are having to dredge the large ponds because they have silted up quite badly and this will take up much of their budget so I think that a shredder will not be at the top of their list of things to buy this year. I just don't like to see so many nutrients going up in smoke.

Sowing sweet peas.

2017-11-25T23:39:00.001+00:00

I have been quite busy recently so I have not written the blog with as much regularity as I have in the past. However, now that the colder weather has set in and the allotment has been covered with green manure, I have more time to reflect on things.

I have sown all the sweet pea seeds in three inch pots and they are in the greenhouse. Some that had been sown in October have germinated successfully and are growing on remarkably well. They are still too small for pinching out but they will be big enough soon. I have kept the sown seeds fairly dry and this seems to be the secret of getting almost 100% germination. They do not seem to rot of quite so easily.

After taking some of my sweet peas down to Wightwick Manor National Trust property to show to the volunteer gardeners, I suggested that I grow some for them in their vegetable garden. So the large mound that you can see in their vegetable garden is the result of my triple sieve digging. I added quite a lot of their compost and scraped out a horse manure bay to add to all three spits. I do feel a little guilty about using so much of their resources so I am going to continue triple digging across the bed to recompense.

So if you want to see some exhibition sweet peas cordons similar to the ones I grow on the allotment then come and have a look at the ones at Wightwick Manor. The gardens and house are fantastic anyway and worth a visit regardless of my sweet peas.

I am not going to be able to use canes so the supports will probably be hazel.
Now that I have settled into my new house, I can start to consider the design for my garden. It is just a pocket handkerchief in size but with the allotment and my volunteering at Whitewick Manor, that is just about what I can cope with.
I have already bought some Elaeagnus x ebbingei for the hedge alongside the house. The hedge will be very near the road and Elaeagnus is very good at resisting the effects of pollution. The bed for them is south facing and will get dry and Elaeagnus is good at resisting drought. It also has nitrogen fixing Frankia alni actinomycetes in nodules on their roots. It flowers in the autumn and although the flowers are little white jobs their scent amazing. They produce berries in the spring which are edible but whether I pick them depends upon whether I think I can wash off all the road pollution.
I will probably plant some of the Sorbus I grew from seed in the hedge as well just to add interest.

The back garden will probably be all shrubs but I want to get some really good ones and to make sure that I have flowers throughout the year.

Allotment photographs for July 2017 third post.

2017-07-18T19:06:00.001+01:00

Still more photographs of the allotment.

Sweet Peas

I have left the sweet peas to grow where they will now that they have reached the top of the canes. I could have kept taking out side shoots and tendrils but I did not have time to do this properly. They are from seeds I kept from last year. I think that I will buy some new seed and plant varieties in rows next year. The plants grew much better this year. I sowed them much later than I usually do - in March and planted them out late to miss the flea beetle damage. Although the soil is quite fertile, I don't think that the right Rhizobium bacteria has colonised the ground. The plants are not as good as those on my old allotment. I reconsidered the effort I was putting in to produce four and five flower stems and it was not really worth it for cutting for the house. I don't exhibit so it is not quite so important. I have shown to myself that I can grow really good outdoor sweet peas and that is all I wanted to do.

They are a break crop, flowers for the house and a green manure; all of which are of great use for the allotment.

However, I might put in a little more effort next year. I will trench the rows, use compost and woody chippings as a mulch and possibly use some hoof and horn to fertilize them. The hoof and horn is very slow acting nitrogen fertilizer. This will provide a little nitrogen but also allow Rhizobium to colonize the roots of the sweet peas without being inhibited.

I have started to collect some dahlia plants

One of the plants I liked to grow to exhibition standard when I was younger was the dahlia. I have started a new collection with the five planted here. One of them was eaten back by slugs but it seems to have recovered. I am not sure whether it will flower though. I got some seed from a strikingly red Canterbury bells I found on the waste ground at Shrugborough Hall when I was gardening there. I am hoping that the seedlings will be as good as the parent. They are planted around the dahlias. Lots of borage here which has self seeded. It has been very good for the bees and other pollinators.

Leeks under the enviromesh.

There are few people still bothering to cover their leeks on the allotment site. It would seem that Phytomyza gymnostoma is not as prevalent pest as it has been. I have leeks that are obviously infected but most are very healthy and so are other people's unprotected ones throughout the site.

I will continue to cover the leeks until I am sure that it is not going to cause the leeks problems. I took the covers off during the summer last year and did not put them back on soon enough to prevent the fly from laying eggs so this year the covers will stay on. The flies emerge at the end of summer and lay eggs through September and October and these are the ones that cause the damage in leeks.

A weedy patch of leeks.

This shows what would happen to the allotment if I did not weed and mulch the ground. There are lots of weeds under the scaffold netting because I have not taken it off to remove them. I need to do it fairly quickly so that they are not infected by leek miner fly. As I spend little time on weeding the allotment because I have strategies to suppress their germination, people think that I do not have a weed problem. I am not daft enough to think that there are few weed seeds on the allotment. There are lots but I try to suppress them with mulches and getting the vegetables to form a shade producing canopy. However, the weed seeds are there just waiting to germinate as this photograph shows.

I got an email from someone whose new allotment had been reinfected with couch grass after having to leave it for four weeks.
Well, you can't leave the allotment for four weeks and expect to come back to a pristine allotment. Weeds grow, get over it. Gardening consists of 99% weeding and is hard boring work. That is why we try lots of strategies to reduce the amount of weeding we have to do. The paths alongside the leek beds are covered in a thick layer of woody shreddings. This helps but is not the final remedy. I find that it is a very long way along the track though.

These leeks are quite large and could be used now but I have so many other vegetables that it would be a waste to use them now. They will just get bigger during the summer and will resist the frost so I might as well leave them well alone, except for weeding them, until I need to use them during the autumn and winter when there is little else.

Onions under the scaffold netting.

All the onions are falling over now indicating that they are ready for drying and stringing up. There is no longer any use for the net and this can be taken off now. When the garlic and shallots have dried and been stored away, I will have room on the shed roof to dry these off even more. The drier they are the longer they will store.

Clary sage, lemon balm, rosemary, mint etc alongside
the path. The apple is Winter Density.

The giant Victoria rhubarb has not recovered from the move during last autumn. However, they are beginning to show their true colours and producing two to three foot petioles.

Giant Victoria Rhubarb

The potatoes have gone over the most where the top of the plum and pear tree were buried in a Hugelkultur. It is similar to what happened on the bed on the other side of the path. The potatoes are fine if a little smaller than last years. They have not liked the really hot weather, particularly as I have not watered them at all. I am hoping that the Hugelkultur will mature a little more during the summer and winter, rotting down and making a water sponge. When the potatoes have been taken out, dried and stored in the large paper bags, I will cover this bed with rows of clover for the winter.

Kestrel potatoes

This redcurrant and the white currant beside it have been fan trained and this pruning procedure still produces an abundance of currants. They are later than the other currants on the allotment and this means that I have no room to store these in the freezer. I will just have to start to make jam or jelly. This has shown me just how successful fan and espalier training can be.

Red currants

I counted five immature black birds trying to get to the currants. Netting them has shown me just how many they take each year - I don't usually net them.

Fan trained redcurrant.

The white currant next to the red currant.

The sorrel is ready to make some soup with and that is what I am going to do for the weekend. I have not thinned the parsnips because I don't like the really big roots. These will come in for vegetables during the winter.

Sorrel and parsnips

I am not sure that the construction over the carrots has been particularly successful. It is falling apart and there are lots of holes in it.

Carrot protection

There are carrots in the frame and they are growing well. These frames were given to me at the beginning of the year so I used them more as an experiment than anything else. The wood has really rotted away in places so I will ether add it to the compost heap or bury it in a Hugelkultur. The ripped scaffold netting will have to be taken to the tip.

Beetroot and chard

I have just started to harvest the beetroot and having them in salads. I have been using the leaves of both the beetroot and chard in salads but they are getting a little large for that now. Not really bothered about having chard when it is this big so I will take it out and resow for the autumn. I have left the chard because I was going to see if I could keep the seed but this is a bad idea and I should wait until the plants flower next year before taking seed. I do not want to select for chard that bolts in the first year.

Second sowing of rocket and spinach

Has lots of rocket and spinach for salads. I have sown some more but they really needed to be watered regularly. The germination of spinach is very erratic. The florence fennel is growing well and I should have some soon.

Some radish and lupins

Radish and mizuna growing together. Not sure that I am going to get much of either. I am growing the lupins as perennial nitrogen fixers. And they look quite good too.

So that is the allotment in July. Everything has grown well this year despite the very hot weather and me not watering.

Allotment photographs for July 2017 second post.

2017-07-17T13:35:00.001+01:00

As I have quite a bit on the allotment at the moment I thought that I would divide this post into two. I got down to the first potato bed.
The black berries and loganberries are next alongside the mini swale path.

So the three sister and carrots bed.

Potatoes gone over.

and

Herbs down the path. Sage, lemon balm, mint, marjoram,
rosemary, hyssop, chives, garlic chives, fennel, chamomile, etc.

I have let the herbs grow over the path which is a bit irritating in the wet weather especially when I have my best trousers on. You might say that I shouldn't go down the allotment in my best trousers but I am not going to change just to water the tomatoes. I will let them flower because they seem to attract a lot of pollinating insects.

The loganberry and blackberry have thrown up a lot of
long stems.

The loganberries and blackberries have virtually finished fruiting and the old stems will be cut out and the new will be carefully tied in. I will be using the old stems on the new windrow compost heap. The canes will be cut into small -5cm -10cm pieces before adding to the compost. The new canes will fruit next year so I will give each cane about 6 inches of space above and below and then cut out all of the extra canes. If I try to tie in all the canes then they get even more crowded than they are now.

The shallots, red onions, elephant garlic and garlic have all
been harvested.

I have put the harvested alliums on the shed roof because it get really hot up there. It is in full sun for most of the day and if that doesn't dry them off, so that they store well, nothing will. The onions don't need the net now but I will leave it on until I harvest them. They are all bending over now. I will dry them on the roof of the shed then tie them in strings and hang them up in the little store shed. Where the garlic has been taken out I have planted four lines of celery and two of celeriac. The rest of the bed will be sown with clover as a green manure. I am going to scrape off the woody shreddings mulch and put it to one side. The whole bed will have a top dressing of compost so that I can empty the Dalek bins for space for the new windrow compost heap. The clover seed will be sown into the compost. I will not dig the bed. I have hoed it and this will be sufficient cultivation to allow the clover to thrive.

Celery and celeriac.

Oca under the King of the Pippins apple tree.

Last year the oca spread itself right over the path so I expect that it will again this year. I have some apples on the tree but not that many.

A few hanging baskets round the shed. Fan trained red
currant on the concrete reinforcing wire cropped well.

I water the pots and the hanging baskets but nothing else except the greenhouses and cold frames. You can see the shallots drying on the roof of the shed.

The birds are throwing all the mulch onto the path.

The summer raspberries have gone over now and the autumn ones are just starting to fruit. I will cut out the old canes and tie in the new ones for next year. I will cut up the old canes and put them on the new windrow compost heap. I have cropped the comfrey about three times this year and it is growing back strongly again. The hedge is looking much better this year and a lot of the big holes are being filled with new hawthorn stems.

Not sure what variety of apple this is but it does not keep
so I will be eating this straight from the tree.

This tree has thrown up some water shoots from the trunk which are more vertical than the old trunk. However, if I cut the top off down to the water shoot, I will be cutting off all these fruiting spurs. The strawberries have fruited well this year. I will probably move the bed though or make it much bigger planting new plants where the sweet peas are now.

I have netted the strawberries this year and got more than
I usually do.

The water plants have taken over the pond and need to be
thinned out now. The excess plants will make

Still got a few more photographs to put onto the blog but I will do that tomorrow. Not feeling too good at the moment.

Lettuce in the aluminium cold frame.

Tomatoes in the big greenhouse.

Cucumbers and melons

Allotment photographs for July 2017 first post.

2017-07-16T19:49:00.002+01:00

July is the month for harvesting and reaping the benefits of all the hard work done earlier in the year. I have already filled the freezer with soft fruit and I will be making most of this into jam. The only disappointment this year were the raspberries. I still think that they are affected by the raspberry blight and will probably need to be replaced - but not in the same soil. Either I will have to dig out the soil and replace it with new from somewhere else on the allotment or not to plant them in this bed again.

Brussel Sprout plants under the netting.

The Brussel sprouts are growing quite large now showing that the broad bean green manure that was chopped and dropped under them has done some good. The broad bean plants have begun to regrow and are forming their own canopy under the Brussels. There is a little brassica white fly on some of the leaves but this is not serious and I have seen ladybird beetles crawling over the plants.

Dwarf kale, winter cauliflower and red cabbage under the
enviromesh.

Although I planted all the brassicas two feet apart both ways they have filled the space and formed a canopy which excludes the light from weed seeds under the plants and prevents them from germinating. These plants, together with the Brussels, will be in the soil for some time so I will leave them alone except for putting some shredding mulch around them. They had a feed of comfrey liquid in June and this should suffice them without any additional applications.

Summer cauliflowers that will flower later in July and
August.

The net wooden frames were given to me earlier in the year and I decided to put them over the cauliflowers. The net has a one inch mesh and this is obviously not small enough because I have seen several cabbage white butterflies flying inside the frames. How they get in I don't know but they can obviously get out as well because I don't see any in the photograph and I didn't take them out. I will have to check the plants for eggs and caterpillars because I have seen some characteristic leaf damage. Getting the frames off the plants and stored safely so I can weed and check for cabbage white caterpillars is a pain in the neck. I put one on top of the other but they are very heavy and awkward to maneuver. I will have to reconsider how to use these next year remembering that weeding, mulching and checking for caterpillars will have to be done.

Calabrese

I took the net off the calabrese to weed and mulch and did not cover them very well when I put the net back. However, the pigeons do not seem to have taken any notice. Either they don't like the taste of calabrese or the net is more effective than I thought it was going to be. The plants are a not two feet apart but I had this many transplants and only this amount of ground to put them into that I thought I would squeeze them in. They will be throwing up flowers fairly soon so I will keep checking because calabrese goes over very quickly.

Lollo rosso lettuce in the wooden frame.

Even though I have been harvesting the lollo rosso lettuces frequently, I still have quite a few left. The frame is on a bed of almost neat woody shreddings I used last year covered with compost. They have been watered once with comfrey liquid and I have scattered a few chicken manure pellets around them last month. All they have had this month is rain and tap water. I have not been cutting them and leaving the roots to come again. I think that I will start to do this now because these will come in for using during August. However the aluminium cold frame is full of lettuce too.

Rhubarb next to the cold frames.

I was going to pick some of the rhubarb last week but completely forgot about it even though it has grown very large and is something quite difficult to miss. I was just going to stew it with a little ginger and lemon juice and have it with some yoghurt. This is Champagne rhubarb and does taste quite good even at this time of the year. I am not going to eat too much of it though because it does have a little more oxalic acid in the stems this time of the year and I don't want kidney stones.

Bay trees alongside the greenhouse.

I find striking cuttings from bay trees very easy. They throw up suckers with roots on them too. So I have quite a few plants. I am pruning them to standard ball headed trees and I am nearly there with some of them. I find that the harder you cut them back the better they look so this is what I do. It is a bit late for cutting back hard now because they will produce a lot of new sappy growth that will not be able to ripen completely before the winter. This wood is very susceptible to frosty weather in the winter. I will just trim back the longest shoots but I will not compost them. I will put them in a pot with some gravelly potting compost and see if I can generate some more plants.

I have used up all the rainwater stored in the blue bin earlier in the month and the little rain we have had has not collected more than about ten centimeters at the bottom. This means that I have been forced to use tap water to water the greenhouse and the hanging baskets. I have not watered any of the other vegetables even through the very hot weather. It indicates that the water conservation scheme I have designed on the allotment seems to be working. This uses mini swales, planting fruit trees and bushes on the mounds, mulching carefully with both compost and woody shreddings and harvesting hard surface run off.

Blackcurrants under the netting.

These are the blackcurrants that I coppiced last year, cutting them down to about two or three inches from the soil surface. They have cropped quite well this year but I expect them to do even better next year. I am going to thin them out a little because they are too close together. I will take out every other one so they will be about a meter apart. The gooseberries had some berries on them but they are getting covered by the rhubarb. I will have to move these to give them more room. The raspberries in the background have not done very well at all this year.

The pear tree is not leaning any more.

The pear tree is one that I inherited with the allotment. Due to growing under the hedge, which was about 15 feet tall and as wide, it had a distinct leaning tower of Pisa syndrome. However, it threw up several vertical water shoots low on the trunk. I selected the best one of them and cut the top of the tree off just above it with a bow saw. The top of the tree was Hugelkultured with other woody material earlier in the year. The water shoot has certainly grown well this year and is throwing up a lot of wood. This will probably fruit next year. No fruit this year.

There is another empty blue bin here, even though it is collecting water from the store shed. I have taken up the spinach and good king Henry that had gone to seed and hung it up in the shed to dry. When it is crispy, I will put the seeds into brown envelopes with the name of the seeds written on the outside. I wrote the name of the seed on slips of paper and put them inside the envelopes with the seed. I forgot I did it and, when I took the seeds out, lost the names somehow. Why I did this, I don't know when it is so easy to write on the outside of the envelopes.

I put all my cuttings under the clematis.

The one thing I find about striking cuttings is to leave them well alone for at least a growing season. The only way I can do this without poking them about to see if they have produced any roots is to hide them away under the clematis. Then I forget about them until all the plants have died back. Then I am surprised by how many have survived when I eventually find them.

Sunflowers and cherry tree by the path

I doubt that the sunflowers will grow as big as they did last year and although they were good to show off about, it was quite a chore to compost them after they had gone over. I have taken the net off the cherry tree a little prematurely because the pigeons have started to eat the leaves again.

Cherry leaves eaten by the pigeons.

I am amazed by the things that pigeons will eat.

Loganberry at the back of the store shed.

Purple hazel next to the storeshed.

Espaliered pear and apple

I have done some summer pruning but still need to do a lot more. I was keeping as much wood as possible to fill in vacant spots throughout the tree. The pear and the apple have fruited this year and there are quite a few fruit on them.

Egremont Russet espalier not summer pruned completely

Espaliered Doyenne du Comice

The espaliers are not perfect but they are good enough for me.

Flowering runner beans.

I planted a range of different runner beans this year. I am going to try to increase the diversity of varieties so that if one of them does not do very well then maybe the others will be alright. No beans on the plants yet though.

Tall peas - mostly Alderman.

The tall peas have gone over now and I have picked quite a few and put them into the freezer. It looks a little untidy because I have taken the nets off to pick the peas. The nets are not only for the peas to climb up but also to keep the pigeons from eating the plants. There is a variety of tall peas here. Champion of England, Telephone, Rosakrone and Alderman plus are all growing here. I will leave the plants until they go yellow and dry off then collect any seed that I have not frozen. After the small peas have not cropped very well again this year, I think that I will only grow tall peas next year.

Onward peas.

These peas were sown straight into the soil and the germination was relatively good. They have not grown very tall probably because of the hot weather and the fact that I have not watered them except for putting some comfrey liquid on them in June. They have cropped quite well though and they are my best small peas. There are still some still to be picked on these plants.

Climbing French beans

The climbing French beans have not fruited yet. They have put out some good flowers now so I expect to see pods soon. These are all transplants from seeds sown in sectioned trays in the greenhouse.

I forget which of the modern small peas this is but it has
not fruited as well as the Onward

I probably planted these rows of peas too close together but they have not produced as many pods as the tall peas and the Onward.

More poor pea varieties.

However the broad beans have grown very tall.

As I have picked quite a few broad beans from the brassica bed, most of these seeds will be kept for sowing next year both for cropping and for green manure. These plants will be dug into the soil when I have taken off all the pods.

Gooseberries alongside the car park path.

Although it is not really very clear, there are four big gooseberry plants under the comfrey and mint. They were not netted in the spring and I have not got one gooseberry on the plants. Just shows you the importance of netting the soft fruit unless you like feeding the pigeons. I have cut back the comfrey to use on the compost heap but there is still a lot left.

New windrow compost.

I don't think that allotmenteers have the luxury of being able to carefully select the ingredients of their compost heaps. This was certainly true for my new windrow compost heap. I went on the course run at At Old Lands, Dingestow Court, Monmouthshire with the land gardeners Henrietta Courtauld and Bridget Elworthy. An excellent course but I wish that I could use hay and animal manures to make compost.

This compost was made with chopped up blackcurrant prunings, annual weeds from the allotment, loads of comfrey, clematis prunings, calendula plants that had gone over and about five barrow loads of strimmed weeds from an abandoned allotment. I found a dead rat in the comfrey liquid bin so buried this in the middle of the heap. Probably totally dangerous because of the germs associated with rats but I'm hoping that the heap will get hot enough to destroy anything that might cause a problem. The heap was very well watered with diluted comfrey liquid and some of the old compost was added just for good luck. The whole lot was covered with a horrible red tarpaulin that someone gave me and left for two days. It got very hot and was steaming when I turned it two days later. Really the first time that I have got compost this hot. I have turned it again after two days and I must admit it did not seem to be as hot. However, it is obvious that the material in the heap is decomposing. I will keep turning it whether it is hot or not every two days like I do with the Dalek bins. After pruning the raspberries I will probably have enough to make another windrow. I would like to empty the Dalek bins and store them away before I start a new windrow.

Dalek bins.

The Dalek bins are full of fairly well made compost. Some of it has been sieved and put onto the allotment between the runner beans and tall peas. Quite a lot of leachate has come out of the bins and the windrow but as the compost area is at the top of the allotment the leachate will soak into and flow down the slope and into the grow beds.

Sieved compost on the allotment.

I will continue to sieve the Dalek compost but put the sievings onto the new windrow rather than back into the Dalek.

Gooseberry fan trained onto the compost pallets.

Although this gooseberry was strictly pruned to a fan, it produced a lot of gooseberries. It was carefully covered with a net earlier in the year and this kept the birds off it. It has thrown up a lot of new wood most of which will be pruned out. I will use some of it to replace old wood and make it a better shaped fan.

Salix alba vitellina

I will take off these shoots from the Salix to add to my will sculpture hedge down the side of the carpark. Quite a few of last years cuttings have taken and are growing well. They will be transplanted later in the autumn. I will try to pleach them as well but all my efforts to pleach have not been successful. I have high hopes for the willow sculpture though.

More climbing and dwarf beans.

There are some of the heritage French and runner beans here but I cannot for the life of me remember which is which. I know that some of them are "Trail of Tears" and I will have to look at the seed to find out which. The Opal plum behind them has got some plumbs on it because I threw a net over the top of it. Other plums on the allotment have been completely denuded of leaves and fruit because of the pigeons.

French beans and mange tout peas

I have harvested all the mange tout peas now and I have to admit they stretched to two meals. I think that they were a little overshadowed by the broad beans. Having said this the dwarf French beans have thrived. The broad beans, mange tout and French beans are all on my home made compost. Seems to agree with the broad beans - but also with the sweet corn.

Perennial legumes planted along the track way.

Lupins and laburnum

The perennial legumes lupin and laburnum have been planted alongside the track way at the top of the allotment. The exudates and turn over of fine roots will add nitrogen to the soil and this will be washed down the slope into the grow beds.

The squash are growing over the lupins.

May queen apple graft which I thought I had
lost.

Difficult to show you how high the sweet corn
has grown.

I have grown the sweet corn with squash and climbing French beans again and the sweet corn is about five feet tall now. The Sorbus has got in the way a little bit.

This gives a bit better idea of how big they are.

Lots of people have said that the three sisters does not work but this must give the lie to that. The sweet corn is bigger than this now and has flowered. No squash fruit on the squashes but the French beans are up to the top of the sweet corn. They will be flowering soon. The bed had about five barrow loads of compost as a mulch and the sweet corn and squash transplants were planted into this. The French bean seeds were added to the sweet corn holes. The whole lot were mulched with a thin layer of woody shreddings.

I put the courgettes by the side of the squashes.

The three sisters have had no watering except when they were planted out. I did water the carrots though.

Carrots under the enviromesh.

I sowed the carrots under the mesh to keep carrot root fly away. All the edges of the mesh are covered with woody shreddings. The carrots had quite a bit of the compost too but I have not put woody shreddings between them.

Globe artichoke or is it a cardoon?

The potatoes have gone over mainly because of the very hot weather and me not watering them. This is where I did the Hugelkultur trenches during the winter. I don't think that I added enough green to the logs and brushwood. It is good to know that maybe this should be added next time. However, I did add lots of compost and top soil to this bed so I thought that I had it covered. The crop of potatoes is good if smaller than I usually get and I am already eating them.

Potatoes have gone over due to drought.

The allotment is far too big to water with watering cans so I don't do it. These potatoes have only been rain fed, although I know that they would still be green if I had watered. How many potatoes can I eat anyway? Well this is about a third of the allotment and I will try to post all the other photographs in a new post tomorrow.

Allotment photographs for June 2017

2017-06-15T16:11:00.003+01:00

The allotment from the car park.

After quite a difficult beginning of the year, I have eventually filled the allotment and am getting some good crops. The Victoria plum tree had canker in its trunk but under the canker it threw out a water shoot. I decided to take the top of the tree down to the water shoot and allow this to become the main shoot of the tree. The plum was quite large and over shadowed quite an area of ground which I have now recovered for vegetables. It meant that I could plant the runner beans where they would not have thrived otherwise. I have four good gooseberry bushes alongside the path but they do not have any fruit on them because the pigeons have stripped them completely. The gooseberries that I have netted all have a really good crop. The green netting around the runner beans was to protect them from the cold winds in May but I have left it on because it helps to direct the beans to the canes so that they can climb up, I put some seed in the ground but the germination was very poor because of the cold weather. I put some seed in pots in the greenhouse and they all came well. I have about six different varieties in this row. The more diverse the varieties the more likely you are to get one that will crop really well for you.

Runner beans and tall peas

The tall peas have done very well this year; much better than the garden peas. I will plant more of these next year. The blue butt was given to me with three others by my next door neighbour allotmenteer who is get older and finding the allotment too much for him. I got a lot of stuff given to me by people who were giving up their allotments. To get stuff like this you just need to be around at the right time.

Opal plum tree and climbing french beans.

The pigeons were having a right go at the Opal plum tree until I threw a net over it. The net stops them from flopping down on the branches. Otherwise they will take off all the leaves and the fruit.
I made some cane pyramid supports for four different french beans. I didn't want full rows of them although I do have full rows of another two varieties. All these seeds I saved from last year's plants together with some that were given to me. I have bought no bean seeds this year. There is a small row of dwarf french beans under the fleece. The fleece is primarily there to keep the pigeons off.

Fan trained red currant against the compost area pallets.

I have put nets over the red currants and have a really good crop this year. I want to make cordial from them as well as jam. They are a little tart for me to eat raw. The willow is sending up some good pole making shoots. I will let them grow on this year to get some poles for next year.
There is a good row of Onward peas in the background. These are the only row of bought seed that have done well. I sowed the seed in the ground this year but the germination was very poor. I will go back to sowing them in sectioned trays in the greenhouse next year. There is a clump of Alstromeria aurea on the corner of the compost pallet. This is getting in the way a bit and I will transplant it into another spot in the autumn, There is one of the bay trees that I grew from a cutting in the foreground. I thought that it might get cut back by the frost but it does not seem to have been affected even slightly.

View along the main trackway

I have planted quite a few lupins along the trackway as perennial nitrogen fixers. They are at the top of the slope so any root exudates will flow into the growing beds rather than into the path. There are several laburnum trees planted here too for the same reason. I have squeezed in three apple espaliers as well; a May Queen, a Claygate Pearmain and a Kidd's Orange. I nearly lost the May Queen but it has thrown up a good shoot from the graft. There is a fan trained gooseberry against the compost area pallet which has been netted and has given me a good crop of fruit this year.

Compost bins in the compost area.

The bins are full of new stuff because I sieved out the previous batch and put it on the grow beds before I planted out the seedlings from the greenhouse. I didn't think that I would have much waste this time of the year but they are all full and need to be turned. I am trying to stick to the every other day but to be honest I have not been able to keep strictly to this schedule. It has stretched to every three days some times. Still with this new batch I have turned them twice already. I did try the windrow method earlier in the year but I could not keep the pile damp enough even with a thick tarpaulin over it, so I have reverted to the bins again. This time of the year I can get them fairly hot and the compost is made in about four weeks.

Broad beans and mange tout peas.

The broad beans have grown about four feet tall and have produced a lot of flowers. These were from saved seeds from last year. I will do the same this year and leave on the pods that I do not use in the kitchen and allow them to develop for next year's seed. A very poor row of mange tout peas in the chicken netting. They did not seem to want to grow. The remaining plants are good enough so I will leave them to flower.

The grape

The grape got cut back very severely in April and lots of the shoots died back. It has recovered to some extent but I doubt if I will get any fruit off it this year. I am keeping the shoots to the top of the supports and not letting them grow any longer.

Three sisters

I have planted the three sisters together again this year. This is one of the grow beds where I put a lot of top soil sieved from the weeds someone gave me and compost. We shall see if it has improved the yield. I have planted maize, squash and climbing french beans together so that each will support the other. I doubt if I will be able to see any bare ground in a couple of weeks.

Carrots under the enviromesh.

The carrots have been sown under the enviomesh to keep the carrot root fly away from the plants. It is a bind when you need to weed them but the only way if you want a good crop of carrots.

Cardoon or globe artichoke?

I think that this is a cardoon and I am only growing it for the flowers which are spectacular and very attractive to bees. I think that it is not liking the position that I have planted it in because the ground is very dry here. I have been watering it but it is still shedding leaves.

Beetroot, chard, spinach, rocket, Florence fennel and good king Henry.

I have been cropping all of these leaves for salads. The pigeons have had a right go at the rocket but they have left everything else alone. I will be resowing the spinach, rocket, good king henry, radish and camomile in this bed next week. The spinach and the good king henry has gone to seed but I think that I will leave them and collect the seed for next year.

Sorrel, parsnips and carrots under the scaffold netting frame.

Someone gave me the scaffold netting frames and I decided to grow some carrots under them. They have a double layer of netting and this cuts out a lot of the light. Also, the frame is rotting and falling apart so I don't think that I will be keeping it for next year. It is doing a job now so it is safe for the moment. I have been taking the small leaves off the sorrel and mixing them with the other leaves for salad.

Dad's little pear tree.

Dad's pear tree is growing well this year. I thought that I had killed it when I transplanted it from the old allotment but it seems to be going from strength to strength. It is starting to throw out stems that I can espalier and eventually it will make a good specimen. The lavender that was here was taken out and composted because it had died back. I used the opportunity to put in some big boards to retain the soil. The boards have been given to me by another of my neighbouring allotmenteers.

Herbs along the path.

All the herbs alongside the main allotment path are growing well. I have allowed the sage to flower this year and the bees love it. Every time I walk down the path, I get the strong scent of sage and then the scent of mint.

Behind the sage and he lupins is a Christmas Pearmain and Court of Wick grafted apple.

I have planted the lupins around the apple to give it some nutrient support. Hopefully the lupin nitrogen rich exudates will be useful to the apple tree.

I have decided that this is a James Grieves apple.

Changing apple trees from bush to espalier doesn't really work. This James Grieves was a standard tree but to fit it into the allotment I had to espalier it. It produces lots of fruit but the shape is not very good because the stems are in the wrong place. I am waiting for it to throw out stems in the right place so that I can make a better balanced espalier. I should worry though; it produces a lot of apples.

Ribstone Pippin apple espalier.

This is the first graft that I did and it has always been trained as an espalier. Although it has a lot of woody growth it is throwing out stems at more or less the right places. I am going to let it get bigger and put up some more supports but at the moment the leader is shooting away much higher than I envisioned I would let it grow. The theory is that it will throw out stems more or less at the right places if you let the leader grow on like this. I am just worried that it will snap in the wind. It was windy today and that is why it is leaning over. I will make decisions about its height when I do the summer pruning and can see the stems that are in the most appropriate places to tie in. Then I think I will stop the main leader.

Another of Dad's pear trees. I don't really know the name of this one but I always call it a
Conference pear.

Pears are so much more easy to espalier than apples. This one has thrown up a lot of woody stems so these will be cut out when I summer prune. I will allow this one to get a little bigger too and put up some supports to train it to.

Potatoes have grown quite big. The compost that I put on the soil seems to have made
an impact.

The potatoes are Charlotte in the foreground and Kestrel in the background. There is a hugelkultur trench this side of the bed where I buried the Victoria plum and the pear tree branches together with the logs from the shreddings man. I also covered this grow bed with lots of sieved compost. It seems to have benefited the potatoes because they are growing more than four feet high. The Kestrel are not growing quite as high as the Charlotte.

Looking down the line of espaliers to the peach greenhouse.

Looking back at the fan trained white currant.

The white currant has been netted this year and has an enormous number of berries on it. I will have to pick them soon. They will probably be made into cordial or jam.

Peaches on the peach tree.

Kestrel potatoes on the grow bed on the other side of the path.

Poor old Mosses seedling not thriving.

The loganberries' and blackberries' new canes are tied up to stop them getting too untidy.

Onions and leeks under the netting to prevent infection by leek miner fly.

Onions, red onions and shallots under scaffold netting.

A good crop of blackcurrants.

The row of large blackcurrants.

Newton Wonder apple espalier.

Loganberries.

Blackberries

Sweet Peas

More sweet peas.

The fan trained red currant trained to the side of the shed.

Fan trained gooseberry on the shed.

Lots of berries on the bush.

Strawberries.

More blackcurrants

Lettuces in the cold frame.

Calabrese

Cauliflowers.

Sempervivum aracnoides

Garlic

Cucumber and melons on the slabs, cherry
tomatoes on the staging and celeriac underneath.

Tomatoes

That is the allotment at the moment. Now just the harvesting.

Second week in May

2017-05-11T15:41:00.002+01:00

I can't believe it is the middle of May. The cold east winds have kept me from sowing seed and planting out. I am quite grateful for this because there have been some significant frosts. The only things that has been cut back are the grapes. I am not too sure whether I will have any fruit this year because everything was flowering. The apples particularly.

The winter and early spring have been particularly dry and this has lead to me loosing four of my apple grafts and they are the ones that I didn't really want to loose. Two May Queens, a Queen Cox and a Orleans Reinette. There is always next year and more anticipation to look forward to.

Got most of my seed sown. The only seed that has not germinated are the carrots. I think that they need a good dose of water to get them started. So we have parsnips, beetroot, chard, spinach, dill, chamomile, tarragon, Florence fennel and Good King Henry. I am going to put some more carrots in just in case the others don't germinate. The sweetcorn has begun to grow in the greenhouse but with poorer germination than I wanted. I have used last year's seeds so I should not expect too much.

Lots of squashes have germinated and have been transplanted into three inch pots. Leeks are coming on well and will need to be transplanted soon. I already have some planted in the onion bed. Garlic and Elephant garlic are growing and not being eaten by the Phytomyza gymnostoma. The onions are fairly securely protected by the scaffold nettling stretched over the blue water pipes. I have buried the edges of the netting in the soil. Thankfully, I had just hoed up the potatoes before the worst of the frosts and they have survived unscathed until now.

I have planted all the early sweet peas and am starting to plant the later ones. They are being watered in with comfrey liquid but I am not giving them any other nutrients except what was in the soil from the green manure. I planted them as late as I could to avoid the flea beetle and I seemed to have missed most of it.

The tall peas and the ordinary ones have germinated and I have put up the mesh for the Alderman and Onward to grow up. I will wait until the others have got a little bigger before I put up the mesh for them. I dug down at least three feet to get out some old curbing that was concreted into the soil in the pea bed. Who buried it here is anybodies guess and I could have ignored it, however it was annoying me and I could use it for edging the path. So I dug down and hit it with the bull hammer. Remarkably, it came away without a fuss and now lives on the edge of the main allotment path. The bits of old scaffold boards that I had there originally had rotted away and were just good for slug homes.

Sowed some swedes in the brassica bed. I don't really think that I will sow any kohl rabi this year. It is good to put into stews, vegetable curries and soups but I had far too much last year. I don't have any seed left so I will have to buy some more if I do decide to sow some. The other things I have not sown this year are American land cress, Hamburg parsley, salsify and Scorzonera. Got a few herbs sown in the greenhouse to replace the ones that are getting a little moth eaten in the allotment. The thyme and sage are already germinated.

Being so late with everything this year, I have decided to buy tomato plants. I always did in the past and it is much more convenient unless you want to grow specific varieties. I have Alicante and a couple of others making twelve plants in all. They will easily fit into the two greenhouses. I am only going to have two tomato plants in the peach house. Mainly because I don't really need that many tomatoes but also because it shades the peach tree and that is the main plant in this greenhouse. The peach has quite a few fruitlets. This never usually converts into ripe peaches but you can always hope and that is what I do.

I need to transplant out all my brassicas into three inch pots - I told you that the I was behind - and plant out the beans. After I plant out all of these, the allotment will be full.

Finishing off the hugelkultur in the potato bed.

2017-03-05T00:29:00.002+00:00

Starting off a new Hugelkultur in the potato bed.

2017-02-18T22:24:00.000+00:00

Bloke came down with a lorry load of shredded woody material and had some logs on the back as well. He gave me the logs so I decided to make another trench Hugelkultur in the potato bed. I wanted to raise the soil at the north end of the bed in order to create a surface water calming bank alongside the espaliered fruit trees. The Hugelkultur trench will be a subsurface water calming structure until it decomposes.
I dug down one spit today and left the soil on the side of the trench.

I always use garden lines because I can't keep a straight line without them. There are lots of reasons for not digging but there is no other way of introducing large quantities of organic matter and deepening the top soil. I will take another spit out of the bottom of the trench and then fork over the bottom which will give me three spits of turned over soil. Loads of waste material from around the allotment will be used to put into the trench.

The old vegetables from last season. A few celery and celeriac together with carrots and beetroot.

Old bits of wood that I have collected from under the hedge and in the woody chippings piles. I will probably get some more before I fill in the trench. I will certainly clean the bottom of the hedge a little more.

The logs off the lorry. These will go at the bottom of the trench. I think they are mostly cherry laurel.

I will move the frames off the hot bed, which has not been that hot during the winter. The woody chippings have rotted down now and will go at the bottom of the trench. I will put the frames on top soil now and just rely on the glass to heat the soil.

If that is not enough shreddings, I will resort to the woody chippings pile to add more woody material.

Mostly X Cupressocyparis laylandii and holly but it is all grist to the mill. I will also be putting the cuttings from my daughter's garden in the trench too. It will all be two spits down and can moulder there for a year under the potatoes and whichever green manure I plant after them.

The top soil is deepening and now is more than a spit deep. The subsoil is darkening with organic matter too. Deeper topsoil means more organic matter, more nutrients, more microbes, more water and more air for vegetable roots to delve into.

Now I am going to try and explain why I think that it is a good idea to introduce organic matter into the subsoil as deep as I can. In normal conditions plants can get water and dissolved nutrients easily from the top soil. There is usually decomposition going on and nutrients being released. As drought conditions start to appear the roots start to forage for water lower and lower in the soil profile. The dry top soil means that they cannot obtain nutrients from here because there is no water to dissolve them in. Nutrients can only enter the root as dissolved ions. As the roots pass out of the dry topsoil they pass into the moist but infertile subsoil where nutrients are much more scarce. Little is dissolved in this water and although the plants have adequate water they begin to get nutrient shortages. Bottom old leaves start to yellow as nitrogen is transported away to the growing tips, although the plant is not wilting. If we can deepen the soil, adding lots of organic matter, it will make plants more able to withstand drought conditions and the shortage of nutrients that it might bring.

So that's what I have been doing today - that and turning one of the compost bins. I will use the compost to mix in with the top soil as I rake it back into the trench.

The possibilities of using slope to benefit the allotment.

2017-02-08T12:29:00.001+00:00

My allotment slopes to the south east. What advantages does that give to the allotment crops? The aspect of the allotment can give quite an advantage. Being south facing means that the sun's heat and light is a little more concentrated and will warm up the soil earlier in the year and allow crops to be grown later in the autumn.

Path alongside the allotments looking down the south facing slope.

Although I grow crops in north south rows, I have put in paths from east to west at right angles to the slope. The paths have been made as mini ditches and soil has been taken out and put onto the growing areas to raise them. The mini ditches are aligned more or less with the contours across the allotment. Water will flow at right angles to the contours soaking in as it does. Some surface water will flow into the ditches and spread out. I have filled the ditches with woody shreddings which will soak up some of the water and prevent it from evaporating creating a reservoir of stored water.

Espaliers planted on the top of the raised bank.

This allows surface rain water to be spread out evenly along the path, slowed down and soaked into the soil. Although irrigation is not a particular priority in the UK climate, we still have to consider the effects of leaching and soil erosion.

Raising the level of the soil, creating banks on the downside of the slope and planting espaliered fruit trees or soft fruit along the east west raised soil aids in the slowing down of water (mass flow) through the soil. As the water is slowed, it allows dissolved nutrients to be taken up by plants before it is lost though leaching.

As plant nutrients are soluble minerals they will be leached slowly as the water flows to the bottom of the slope. I have planted comfrey at the bottom of the slope to catch as much leached nutrient as I can. Their deep roots will absorb much of the available nitrogen and any potassium and phosphorus that is available. The leaves and stems of the comfrey can then be composted, made into comfrey liquid or put into the worm bin to recycle the nutrients.
It is all about slowing the mass flow of water through the soil. This will slow leaching, allow more time for uptake of soluble minerals; capture eroded soil particles, enhance water filtration and provide more opportunity for upward water capillary action for plant growth.

My compost heaps are at the top of the slope so that any leachate that they produce will flow down the slope and into the allotment soil. In a similar way, I have planted perennial nitrogen fixing legumes along the top of the slope so that any nitrogen they fix will flow naturally into the allotment top soil. I will be planting perennial legumes alongside the fruit trees and bushes on the banks alongside the paths so that nitrogen will flow with the water into the growing areas.

Compost bins at the top of the slope so that leachate will flow into the allotment.

Laburnum and lupins planted at the top of the slope so that nitrogen they fix will

flow into the allotment growing areas.

In the UK there is often too much water flowing through the allotment. It is necessary to put in some kind of drainage to prevent waterlogging. I have dug out a trench at the bottom of the allotment and filled it with stone sieved from the top soil. The stone was covered with paving slabs to make a path alongside the hedge.

Drainage ditch under the slabs. Path is at the bottom of the slope.

During the driest months in summer, the soil is covered by mulches to reduce evaporation and the trench Hugelkultur further slows the soil water and retains it as a reservoir that is accessible to plant crop roots.

So slopes can be very useful.

Is mulch made from conifer wood chip or bark acidic?

2017-01-18T23:14:00.001+00:00

I have seen it often suggested that organic mulches such as wood chip and bark from conifers are acidic. The pH is a measure of the amount (the negative log of the concentration)of hydrogen ions and this measurement must be done in a liquid. You cannot measure the pH of a solid unless you dissolve it in water. As most of the solid from wood chip and bark is insoluble in water, it is virtually impossible to measure the pH of these materials.

The woody chippings or bark could be giving off substances that acidify the soil solution as they decompose. However, neither pine bark nor pine chippings have been found to have any effect on soil pH. (Tahboub, Lendemann and Murray 2008) There is no significant change in soil pH for wood chip incorporated into soil measured over a three year period. Bare soil is more likely to have a low pH (be acidic) than organic mulches. Shredded bark and woodchip have been found to be the least acidifying of the organic mulches.

Regardless, wood chip could be shaken up in water and the resultant solution tested. This should be done with distilled water or deionised water to make sure that you are testing the pH of the dissolved substance not the pH of the water. Tap water contains a lot of substances although it usually has a neutral pH of around 7.

Now, I haven't tested the pH of woodchip solution, however I would conjecture that it would be fairly neutral or possibly slightly alkaline. There are some that suggest that the phenolic substances secreted by the above ground structures of a plant may be acidic. I don't know.

What I am going to do is test the soil beneath an estimated 2000 year old yew tree. The tree is in my local nature reserve. There is nothing growing under the tree within about a 50 food diameter.

I would suggest that the pH of the soil is no different from the rest of the wood so I will take samples from outside the yew trees influence as well as under its canopy. After 2000 years of falling litter surely it would have affected the soil underneath it.

My suggestion is that there will be no difference between the soil pH from beneath the canopy of the yew tree and the soil from outside the canopy.

The fact that there is no build up of litter under the tree would suggest to me that some invertebrates, such as worms, are feeding on the organic matter from the tree. Worm's preferred habitat is one with a neutral or alkaline pH.

Usually scientific consensus is pretty solid, however sometimes explanations that purport to be scientific are merely based on hearsay and anecdote and need to be challenged by experiment.

Too much mulch?

2017-01-15T16:31:00.001+00:00

It is self evident that if you cover a plant completely with mulch you will kill it through lack of light. This is one of the benefits of mulching - weed control. However, what is the correct amount of mulch to apply to crop plants?

There is a lot of advice to suggest that heaping relatively large amounts of compost around fruit tree trunks could cause the trees to die.
http://www.mortonarb.org/trees-plants/tree-and-plant-advice/horticulture-care/mulching-trees-and-shrubs.
There is a reduction of oxygen diffusing through to lenticels and reaching respiring cells below bark in the trunk.

Now I went along with this until I though, hang on a minute. When I put woody cuttings into soil or compost, there is a similar reduction of the free flow of oxygen to growing cells in the woody stem of the cutting. Lenticels are covered in the same way. So how do cuttings survive this treatment?

My rooted willow cuttings from stems just pushed into the soil. I put quite a bit of woody
mulch on these too.

I have just been turning the composts today and found some woody stems I threw in from the willow. They were right in the middle of the compost and merrily throwing out new growth.
Layering woody shrubs would not work if this were correct and we would never get Irishmen's cuttings.
For an explanation to have credibility it must be consistent with all the data collected. Inconsistencies must lead you to question sloppy explanations.

So here is another piece of data that does not really fit in to the " not too much mulch" hypothesis. I tend to heap compost, manure and woody chippings around my soft fruit bushes. They do not die throwing out lots of adventitious roots into the compost. A little irritating because this means that the roots need to be covered again when the mulch decomposes and they are exposed.

Blackcurrants and rhubarb with a thick woody shredding mulch.

Blackcurrants with a thick horse manure mulch.

I think that much more tree and shrub death occurs from poor planting practices than the addition of too much mulch.

Brussel sprouts with a thick woody mulch to stop them from falling over.

Mulching brassicas with compost or hoeing them up does not kill them. I do this to stop them from flopping over. The Brussel sprouts produce adventitious roots that root into the mulch or soil.

Having said all that, I have found that it is unnecessary to add more than a couple of centimeters of woody shreddings to get all the benefits associated with mulching. Adding more does risk substantial nitrogen drawdown. This immobilisation of nutrient does have an affect if excessive woody shredding material is used for mulching.

So, why do I still use mycorrhizal fungi?

2016-12-30T12:28:00.002+00:00

Still learning new things after 50+ years of gardening.

2016-12-26T13:24:00.001+00:00

Just read James Wong's article on
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/23/coffee-grounds-are-not-good-for-plants-its-a-myth.
So this seems to have come from an auto toxicity of coffee plants and a resultant degradation of the soil for coffee growing in places like Latin America. This has occurred due to tens of years of monoculture. It seems that some of the aromatic herbs like sage will help to ameliorate this problem.
I think that this is a classic example of why monoculture is a bad way of cultivating plants. Not only do we get depletion of specific nutrients and an increase in pests and diseases but also a build up of potentially growth retarding chemicals.

It is also an example of the danger of extrapolating scientific results without carefully considering whether this is appropriate.

In Coffea arabica growing regions of Brazil, coffee fruit peel is composted and used on vegetables, fruit trees and for coffee culture itself not only as an organic fertiliser but also as a weed suppressant. It seems to slow the growth of fine roots.

There are relatively high concentrations of phenols, flavonoids and caffeine found in extracts. It is amazing what we find good to drink! One or more of these compounds may have allelopathic properties. It has been found that coffee bean water extracts and dry powder decrease germination in certain plants. So needs to be pretty concentrated then? In other plants there is less germination but stronger seedlings than controls. This has been interpreted as coffee water extracts and lower dose dry powder have allelopathic effects on some seedlings. Higher doses of incorporated coffee powder has a depressing allelopathic effect on some plant's growth.

I would not really worry about putting coffee grounds on growing beds for at least two reasons. You have just put them through a procedure that removes lots of the chemicals from the bean when it has been percolated. The research papers that I have read use quite concentrated coffee extracts to get an effect. Secondly, you have not been putting coffee on growing areas for tens of years and finally you are not growing a monoculture of coffee.

I put my coffee grounds on the compost heap. They are relatively rich in nitrogen even after percolation and this means they will help to accelerate decomposition.

I have used comfrey in the same way as James Wong did coffee grounds in the newspaper article and got similar results. I think that his results could have something to do with too much nitrogen rather than the allelopathic effects of coffee grounds. I would not repeatedly put any chemical on growing areas like this because plants only need tiny amounts of nutrients from the soil.

Are celery plants perennial? There are lots of vegetable plants that are grown as annuals that are biennials or perennials. It seems that celery is one of them. It dies after it has flowered so if you can stop it from flowering, you can keep if for several years. I find it difficult to stop it flowering in the first year and am delighted when I can pick some for Christmas dinner as I did this year.

December photographs of the allotment.

2016-12-23T16:24:00.001+00:00

December and the weather is getting much colder. The allotment needed tidying and some woody material needed burying. There were some very rotten logs about 15cm in diameter under the chippings that no one would want so they could be used for a Hugelkultur. I wanted to take down the Victoria Plum and bury it somewhere too. The most appropriate place to dig some trenches was the new potato bed. The tops of the pumpkins, courgettes, sweet corn and French beans had been dug in after the first frosts and had already rotted away. Just a few of the French bean vines could be seen in the soil. A four foot trench was taken out three spits deep. The bottom spit was dug out and put into the wheel barrow so that the path concrete slabs could be levelled. The bottom of the trench was forked over, which means that I went down four spits. I have just been reading in "The Manual of Gardening" by L.H. Bailey (1910) that potatoes grow well if they have a deep root run and I tend to agree. Well they will certainly have an unrestricted root run here.

Filling the trench with organic matter.

I put the logs, branches and brash at the bottom of the trench and tried to mix it in with the subsoil. On top of the woody material went the organic matter from tidying up the allotment.

Soil taken out of the trench. The canes are indicating where the rhubarb is.

Once the rhubarb had lost its leaves in the second frost, I decided to move it a small distance. This will make the two beds either side of it a little more equal in area. I had to break a few of the larger roots but not too many. It is just like moving a herbaceous perennial in the flower garden. The roots can be divided like herbaceous perennials too. They got a good dose of sieved compost in the planting holes to give them a boost next spring.

I wanted to reduce the Victoria plum tree and cut out all the canker in its trunk. This meant virtually cutting it down completely. There was a water shoot growing low down and I thought that this might develop into a tree again given some time. The trunk and branches that were cut off could be put at the bottom of the trench.

Totally the wrong time of year to cut a plum but if the trunk and branches were to be

buried it would have to be done now. If I am lucky it wont get silver leaf disease.

I thought that, if I cut the trunk at quite a sharp angle, water would run off cleaning the surface of fungal spores. I don't really think that it works like that but there is no harm in trying it out. One of the gooseberries that I planted under the plum has grown into a thicket. It has thorns and small black, blackcurrant looking berries. It only produces one or two berries every year so it is not worth bothering with. However, it is good to have another interesting plant growing on the allotment and I think that this might be an American gooseberry.

The American gooseberries. One of the mints growing through the gooseberry.

Now that I have cut the plum hard back, I can use this ground for vegetables so the gooseberries are going to have to go somewhere else. I might put them in the border around the carpark just so they are not thrown away. I took off all the top growth and put it into the trench. This means that it is easier to take out the gooseberry roots. The soil here is very good but not very deep. It has a layer of hard core about 20cm down. I will have to break this up if I am going to grow runner beans here next season.

Subsoil dug from the bottom of the trench.

I didn't take all the third spit of subsoil out of the trench but I did take this. I have left the subsoil in the composting area and I will use it to mix into the compost. The soil will not add anything to the compost but the compost might add something to the subsoil while it is being turned every two days. The trench is deeper and can be filled with more organic matter from around the allotment and I get more top soil like material from the compost bins.
I am emptying the compost bins and putting the compost in the trenches. It wasn't rotting down very quickly even though I was turning it every two days. I want to empty the compost bins and tidy them away before I get some more farmyard manure from the farm.

I am putting this into the Hugelkultur trench on top of the
branches and trunk pieces.

Any other organic matter that I want cleared off the allotment is being put into the trench. The old chard, perpetual spinach, prunings from the fruit trees, and a few weeds are all grist to the mill. I am then capping this material with a layer of woody chippings from the pile on the car park and the old mulching from the peach greenhouse.

Taking out the woody chippings from the peach greenhouse means that any disease in the mulch is removed. I will be planting the tomatoes in the same place again next season and will need a base that has not had contact with tomatoes before. I am only going to put a couple of tomatoes here because the peach has got quite large and needs the space. The tomatoes shaded the peach quite a lot this year and I don't want that to happen again.

I am also taking out all the peach leaves and any disease on them. I removed and replaced about 20-30cm of chippings. It is a bit of a chore but much easier than changing top soil each year. The peach got its final winter pruning and I tried very hard to keep all the small side shoots that grew last year. These are the shoots that will have the fruit on them next season.

Fan trained peach in the small greenhouse. I don't know how long I will be able to keep it in

the greenhouse but I will probably have to move the greenhouse rather than the peach.

Some of the subsoil from the trench was used to straighten the path. I was trying to do it fairly quickly so it is not perfect but it is much better than it was. I don't think that I am going to do any more to the path unless I can find some more slabs to finish it off.

I ran out of slabs half way down the path so I finished it off with woody chippings.

My allotment on the left and Sue's on the right.

The leeks got rust on them so the outer leaves have died right back but they are fine underneath. There does not seem to be much damage from leek miner fly. I will be eating these during the rest of the winter. All the cuttings that I just stuck in have taken. About five redcurrants and four buddleias. As the Cox's Orange Pippin budding didn't grow, I took out the rootstock and potted it up. I replaced the Cox with a May Queen graft that I did this year. Hopefully that will be more successful.

Some willow herb weeds growing in the decayed woody chippings mulch.

The Phacelia tanacetifolia has not been killed off by the frost as I was expecting. So the ground will be covered throughout the winter with this and trefoil. I will dig the green manure in during February or the beginning of March when I start to plant the sweet peas.

Blackcurrant bushes.

The black currant bushes have been thinned out and the older wood removed. I have left as much new wood as I can to fruit next year. They have had a good mulch of woody chippings. If I have any farmyard manure left over, I will scrape off the chippings and put manure around the bottoms of these bushes replacing the chippings afterwards.

Daphnia in the pots are still surviving.

I have cut back the gooseberry fan trained on the shed so that there are no stems growing out.

I did the same with the red currant.

This is a white scented clematis grown from a cutting.

Red clover, crimson clover and broad beans

green manure.

The broad beans got cut back by the frosts but the crimson and red clover has thrived. This will overwinter and be dug in during March next year. It is where the onions, leeks, garlic and celery are going next season.

Path between my allotments

I cut the lavender, rosemary and mint hard back and put the tops in the trench. The oca has died right back now but I am leaving the tubers in the soil. I am gambling that the frost will not kill them and I can use them for soups and stews during the winter. King of the Pippins on the left and Royal Reinette apple on the right. Maybe I need to level this path off a little too. It shows that even in our climate there is significant erosion of top soil through surface run off. The eroded soil is collecting where the puddles have dried up.

More leeks and Phacelia tanacetifolia

Queen Cox apple.

I have started to plant this year's grafts. I have not put up the supports for them yet and I am very prone to treading on and breaking the grafts so I will have to put some protection around them soon. The green manure is just starting to germinate even at this time of the year. I have already dug in some clover. It was becoming very weedy so digging in seemed expedient. Reseeded with whatever I had at hand.

Roots bed before I tidied it up.

Still got carrots, beetroot and parsnips in the ground. I gave the espaliers one more going over to remove any stems growing out. They are fairly well pruned now. Hopefully I will get some pears this season. I only know the Ribstone Pippin espalier in the middle. The one on the left is a pear and the one on the right is probably a James Grieves apple. I've also planted a Orleans Reinette on the other side of this bed.

Pruned the loganberry and blackberries hard so that they could be trained to the supports.

Top bed with mostly red clover green manure

The grape has been cut hard back and will have to be kept much more in order this season. It has been allowed to run up long stems and these become very unkempt. So they will be pruned off straight away this season. I have planted May Queen, Claygate Pearman and Elis Bitter alongside the trackway. I have left the laburnums in to act as nursery trees and provide the apples with a little nutrient because they are nitrogen fixing legumes. Not all legumes are nitrogen fixing. Alongside the path on this side I have a Court of Wick and Christmas Pearman family tree. This was not planned and I grafted them together because I had run out of rootstock and didn't want to waste a sion. I have a Winter density and a Mosses seedling on the other side.

This espalier is a Newton Wonder - I think with Ben Sarek black currant this end and

Gooseberry 'Hinnonmaki Yellow' at the far end near the metal watering pots.

Top bed the other side covered with green manure.

Fan trained currant bushes behind the peach greenhouse.

Path up to the greenhouse.

I have planted the Norfolk Royal apple tree between the two supports and will espalier it like the other apples.

My not very successful attempt at making a hot bed using woody chippings. The chippings do heat up but the heat does not last very long.

The green manure didn't germinate very well on this bed so I have begun to cover it with sieved compost. It will have some farmyard manure dug into it during the winter.

I have got some good salad out of the frames but the heat came more because of the glass than the heap of woody chippings. The mound of woody chippings will be removed in the spring and either composted or put onto the paths.

Bay trees alongside the greenhouse for protection. I am pruning these to standard trees with

ball heads. The Egremont Russet espalier is in the background.

This is probably the best of the bays at the moment. The trunks look a little wobbly but

when they get a little bigger they straighten out.

Pond

I have started clearing out the pond. I like to empty the water out and replace it with rainwater from the butts. The pond water is full of nutrients and weed which makes a very good compost starter. The pond plants will be thinned down and replanted in their baskets and put back into the pond. A lot of the oxygenating plants will be kept because they are full of pond creatures. The lavender has died right back and I don't know whether it will regenerate next spring. If it doesn't, I will take it out and plant something a little more suitable there.

Not very good photograph of the brassica bed

I've put about four barrow loads of sieved compost onto the bed but it does not look like very much. It is pretty rich because I have been adding comfrey liquid to this compost so I probably don't need to put any more nutrients on this ground. If I don't dig it in, I could just rake the compost over the surface. So why do I keep thinking that I need to put more manure or compost on here. Particularly when I dug in lots of farmyard manure last year? Regardless, I probably will put more farmyard manure on it but it doesn't need any.
Cropping Brussel sprouts, kale, cabbage and kohl rabbi from this bed.

The Pear 'Doyenne du Comice' Espalier. .

I have had to expand the supports to accommodate the growth of the branches. I am going to allow them to grow to full length until they fill up the available space.

Greenhouse with the sweet peas and lupins. A few of the pumpkins have not been used yet.

One of the new apple grafts that I will prune to espalier.

The two previous grafts of Norfolk Royal I have stepped on and broken. This one I was treating very carefully and put the supports around it to protect it. Somehow or other I endeavoured to damage it by knocking off one of the grafts. I think that this graft will grow on now and it means that I do not have to decide which of the grafts is the strongest to grow on. This is a good photograph of the woody chippings mulch that I have used over the whole allotment this year. Most of the mulch has rotted away now but I replenished this when I planted the apple. There is a piece of charcoal I added last year in the chippings. I didn't break this up like I usually do. I might find it and hit it with a bull hammer so that the smaller pieces can be incorporated into the soil a little more efficiently than this big piece is doing.

So still getting a lot of vegetables from the allotment even at this time of the year and I have not mentioned the vegetables in the store shed.

Total compaction. Repairing the concrete slab path.

2016-12-13T00:03:00.000+00:00

The path between Sue's and my allotment was not laid very well and I promised both myself and Sue that I would take it up and do it again. As I was digging a deep trench across the new potato bed to bury some logs and hedge trimmings, I dug out some sub soil to put under the slabs to level them out.

The subsoil was pretty dire being a mixture of old red sandstone and boulder clay. However, it does make an effective levelling base for the concrete slabs. The clay is especially good at squishing itself level under the weight of the slabs.

I was putting off this job because I do not relish the opportunity to go one to one with three foot by two foot, two inch thick concrete slabs. They just ooze malevolence. I had begged these monoliths from people around the allotment and struggled them back to the path. I had promised myself that once they were down they would never ever be moved again - by me. As far as I was concerned they could stay there until the next ice age when the glaciers could take their turn.

So, of course, yesterday I decide to move them.

They were very old, pock marked, scarred and covered in immovable donuts of cement. I used the chisel and bull hammer on the cement and a few meagre scraps were knocked off. I then made the executive decision that the donuts had not really made a significant dent on our health and safety and promptly gave up.

I had to lift the slabs out of the way to level the soil underneath them. I do it with the fork and this faithful tool seems to rise to the challenge, raising each one of them with alacrity. That, however, is only the beginning. After the fork has levered the concrete high enough to get a grip on, I have to lift it up. And every time I hear my son saying in my head, if he is not physically standing behind me, "Use your legs". I always, always use my legs. I do not need to be told every time; especially by the little voice in my head.

But this time I didn't use my legs, I used my arms. Not sensible but if you can do it quite quickly and safely, balancing it on end at the finale then it is effective. Unless of course it decides to slide about and aim for you foot. Luckily this time all the slabs were very well behaved.

Then the slab has to be walked a safe distance away from the work area and laid down in such a way as to make it "easier" to lift up again to put back.

The ground underneath the slab was very consolidated probably because of the weight of the concrete slab but I expect that having lots of people and laden wheel barrows trundling across didn't help much either. So compaction was the order of the day.

If compaction is the evil that most books would have us believe, then why was there so much life under the slab? Woodlice, slugs, snails, centipedes, millipedes, spiders, ground beetles and various other scuttling creatures abounded under each of the slabs. Not to mention worms. They do it just to spite me. Oh no we aren't going to burrow in Tony's lovely friable growing beds we would rather burrow in the really difficult compacted subsoil under the slabs.

The compaction was no defence against horse tail and bind weed and in each crack between the slabs were the inevitable dock, couch grass and dandelion. All grist to the mill for the worm bin but not defeated by compaction.

Now I know that real compaction is totally destructive to soil fertility and health but it is a lot harder to achieve than just walking over the soil. You need a multi tonne dumper truck to get some really good soil destroying compaction. Do not misunderstand me. I am not encouraging you.

Walking on the lawn does not compact the soil to the extent that grass will no longer grow. It really irritates me that the worst treated lawns always seem to grow much better than molly coddled ones like mine.

I have always been taught that you should consolidate the ground by treading it before you sow or plant. A fine tilth can be made using the rake and the friable soil created will form close contact with the roots or the seeds, particularly if the ground is watered afterwards.

I do not needlessly walk on the growing beds but I will not submit to the gardening gestapo who say never walk on the growing beds. Life is far, far too short and I can't be doing with going all the way round each time.

You can't sterilise soil by digging.

2016-12-05T00:27:00.001+00:00

Soil cannot be sterilised by digging. If this was the case, the danger of such things as onion white rot, club root and parasitic nematodes could be removed by simply turning over the soil. Even after several years of digging and trenching, these diseases and pests remain in the soil and can only be diminished by strict rotation and removal of infected plants.

Unfortunately slugs cannot be discouraged merely by digging over the garden.

They couldn't decontaminate Gruinard Island from anthrax just by ploughing the soil.

What irritates me is that I was beginning to be convinced by the statements that digging killed life in the soil. I was also taken in when Geoff Lawton said that the heat of a compost heap came from dead organisms killed off by the turning process. Experience and thought experiments must at least give pause for thought.

The compost in the bins in the photograph below has been turned every other day for two weeks, following the Berkley method of composting. It could be suggested that the mixing of the compost is similar to digging and trenching allotment soil. The population of worms in the compost does not diminish, in fact there is evidence that it actually increases.

The species of worm, probably Eisenia fetida, may be adapted to living in a habitat that is constantly being disturbed by the compost turning process but that is unlikely. However, it is remarkable that Eisenia fetida seem to prosper in an environment of disturbance in a compost that is regularly turned whilst, it is often said, soil living worms, like Lumbricus terrestris, have their population drastically reduced by a similar activity when allotment beds are dug over. It is very hard to accept.

This is the rough compost sieved and returned to the bins. The black berry and black

currant stems prunings can still be identified but they are very easy to break apart now.
Oh, and lots of worms.

The evidence of the survey on earthwormwatch.org/science results, found that vegetable beds had the highest density of total earthworms. They suggest that this was against their expectations and probably due to the beds being regularly turned over and organic matter added. However, with the data that they have at the moment there is no significant correlation between the amount of organic matter and the number of worms.

Previously it was reported that there were far more worms in pasture than in cultivated land. For example Satchell in 1967 showed that at Rothamsted there were more worms in Park Grass, a permanent mowing meadow, than of Broadbalk which was under a continuous cultivation of wheat. I think that Darwin said something similar too. So it is a surprising result from the earthworm watch experiment. This may just be due to habitat preference or some other factor.

This says more about monocultures and soil degradation than it does about worms. If the suggestion that we get more worms with more organic matter is correct, then maybe the amount or quality of the organic matter in the Broadbalk field may have some bearing on the population of worms.

There is some support for the idea that compost made from a variety of plant and animal material is better than that made from one source. The hypothesis is that the types of organic matter, their associated ecology and how these are mixed within the compost heap will affect how beneficial it will be for vegetable crops.

Continuous secretion of the same exudates from a monoculture year after year will lead to a modification of the populations of soil organisms.

Apart from the concentration of organic matter, other factors may influence the quantity of worms in the soil. This is already quite evident that worms like Eisenia fetida prefer to live in habitats that are almost entirely decaying plants and animals, whilst others will live in soil which has a much lower percentage of organic matter.

There is some suggestion that putting lawn mowings into the compost will produce a thick mush of wet, smelly, anaerobic decomposition. Although turning the grass mowings and mixing them thoroughly with other ingredients usually prevents this from happening, the number of compost worms associated with matted compost is noticeably greater than the rest of the compost.

Turning the compost every two days makes it particularly friable. The low bulk density of this material must allow ease of movement into and through the compost. Also the introduction of copious amounts of air will allow access of many different invertebrates to populate the heap and this is what is found.

The comparison with turning the soil over cannot be ignored particularly if copious amounts of organic matter, that is well mixed and from a variety of sources, is added at the same time.

There are many reasons for not digging the soil but the often stated "It reduces the populations of invertebrates" is not necessarily a valid one.

I would suggest that the reduction in the population of all soil organisms in seriously degraded soil has little to do with cultivation by digging or ploughing but much more to do with the lack of compost, manure or other good quality organic matter being added.

Soil organisms need a source of carbon to consume. Without it they will starve and populations will fall. Digging adds air to the soil and this will increase the speed of decomposition of organic matter leading to its depletion unless it is constantly replenished.

The production of heat in a compost heap comes from the exothermic reactions of metabolism. Food (carbon) is burnt (in a very controlled way) to produce energy. One type of energy that is produced is heat. To get heat in the compost heap there must be life. So much life that the compost heats up quite a bit. The carbon used up to form this exothermic reaction produces energy and is lost as carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. The amount of carbon in the compost heap is reduced and the concentration of other nutrients is concentrated in what is left. The nutrients are already there they are not made by the composting process they are just concentrated.

If the life in the compost were to die, due to turning every two days, there would be no increase in temperature. The temperature increase is brought about by the life in the compost thriving and multiplying. If these organisms had been killed off by the turning/digging of the compost there would be no increase in temperature. It would remain cold.

The heat of a compost heap does not come from nowhere. Turning or digging the compost adds air to the compost heap and this enables more aerobic decomposition to occur. Now there are obligate anaerobic bacteria that are poisoned by oxygen and there are obligate aerobic bacteria that need oxygen but there are a significant number of facultative anaerobic bacteria that can live both anaerobically and aerobically. In fact there is a confusing number of different methods of metabolism in bacteria. Believe me bacteria are ubiquitous and, as we are now finding, they are quite difficult to kill off.  Bacteria are so minute turning/ digging the compost would be extremely unlikely to affect their populations significantly.

While I can accept that the heat generated by the compost heap will tend to kill off weed seeds, I find it difficult to accept that disease organisms will be overly affected. Best not to put diseased material on the compost heap.

Fungi are obligate aerobic heterotrophs. They are also throughout the compost.

To say that anaerobic bacteria are bad and aerobic bacteria are good is totally meaningless.   Both types of bacteria decompose dead material and mineralise forming plant available nutrients.

The thing about an aerobic metabolism is that it produces much more energy, due to the citric acid cycle and electron transfer chain, decomposing and assimilating much more quickly. This means that mineralisation, producing plant available nutrients, occurs much more speedily.

So you don't sterilise compost heaps when they are turned and you don't sterilise soil when you dig it. Use better reasons for not digging.

Flagstone or soil based greenhouse?

2016-11-05T22:24:00.001+00:00

I have both a flagstone and a soil based greenhouse.

The interesting thing about the flagstone greenhouse is that it retains heat for much longer than the soil based greenhouse. The flagstones seem to act as storage heaters cooling down slowly during the night.

Soil based greenhouse with mulch of chippings

Slab based greenhouse

If your greenhouse is in full sun all day, allowing the slabs to heat up, then this is an advantage. My cold greenhouse (i.e. one without artificial heating) remains above freezing for most of the year. I know that we have had mild winters recently and this might not continue but it indicates to me that there is an advantage, particularly when you don't use any other heating. The slabs are on stone that was sieved from the rest of the allotment and this will add to the thermal mass of the slabs.

Design behind the greenhouse.

There also might be an advantage due to reflected light from the slabs particularly as they are grey/white. I think that this is a neglected feature that could benefit plants a lot. I keep the slabs as clean as I can to increase the light reflected and to reduce the possibility of disease. However, washing the glass and the poly carbonate sheets regularly, allowing for maximum light to pass through them, is also very advantageous.

Keeping the slabs clean with water has an additional benefit in the summer when the greenhouse needs cooling. Putting water on the slabs will cool the greenhouse through evaporation.

Further, my soil based greenhouse is slowly sinking even though it is on an aluminium foundation. I will have to remove the glass and polycarbonate from the greenhouse to straighten the foundations soon. Maybe during the winter. The slab one is not sinking.

Making holes in the slabs to screw the greenhouse down was very difficult, leading me to give up in the end. I am relying on the weight of the glass to stop it from toppling over in the wind. I have had it on slabs for over 30 years now (but not in the same place) and it has not even had a glass pane cracked by the wind. However, neither has the soil based one.

In the soil based greenhouse I plant in pots or ring culture pots (with no bottoms) as I do in the slab based one. So no difference there. However, I have a peach tree growing in the soil based greenhouse and I would not be able to do this in a slab based greenhouse, although you could have a vine planted outside the greenhouse and growing through a hole in the glass. The peach is in a greenhouse to prevent it getting peach leaf curl, protect the blossom which comes early in the year and to accelerate ripening of the fruit. If the greenhouse was bigger, I would plant an apricot and a nectarine in a greenhouse too and for the same reasons.

I have a lot fewer weeds in the slab based greenhouse, although they find their way into the cracks between the slabs. I have just cleaned the slab based greenhouse and only found one weed which was easily dealt with using a slab weeding tool.

Although this is a bit of a chore, I replace the topsoil and the woody chippings in the soil based greenhouse every year,especially if I have been growing tomatoes. It mitigates against disease and I find that it is well worth doing.

So I think it depends on what you want from your greenhouse.

Top Soil

2016-10-21T23:41:00.001+01:00

An allotmenteer was struggling to his car with two large plastic bags of weeds so I offered to take them off his hands and compost them. The bags were full of bind weed and couch grass so he was reluctant to hand them over thinking that he would do me a disservice.

I assured him that he would be doing me a favour. All I saw were bags of nutrients and top soil. They would have to be processed and composted before I could use them on the allotment but they were still a good potential source of soil conditioners.

They were clearing a new allotment which was covered in weeds. Now, I had to consider whether the top soil would have any diseases like club root or onion white rot because I might introduce them into my allotment. I thought that I might as well take a chance because I am regularly putting imported material into the soil . I have composted the weeds around the car park, which used to be an allotment as well as other weeds from vacant spaces.

My rational was that overgrown allotments usually produced very good crops once they have been cleared. They have been left fallow for a number of years and the fertility has been built up. Nutrients have been concentrated in the living things at the soil surface and these have been recycled as the plants and animals have died and returned them to the soil.

If I was correct then this top soil, associated with the weeds, would be very fertile. However, there did not seem to be very much top soil left on the roots.

Usually, before composting weeds like this, I like to dry them and, to make this easier, I sieved the soil off the roots using the bread tray sieve. I have put a square centimeter metal grid in the bread tray to protect the plastic mesh. It is getting a little old now.

Sieving the weeds

It is remarkable how much top soil came off the weeds. The sieved weeds are next to the barrow and the unsieved ones are next to the pallets. I got another barrow load of topsoil from these unsieved ones. So sieving the weeds gave me two barrows of topsoil, weeds that could be dried and lots of material for a new compost bin.

The top soil was dug in with the fenugreek where I am going to put in a winter cover crop of grazing rye and tares. This will be next season's roots bed.

August is a harvesting month. August photographs.

2016-08-27T23:00:00.000+01:00

Hi to all the Shugborough volunteer gardeners.

Not only have I been harvesting, I have also been seed collecting and sowing green manure and cover crops where I have cleared the ground. I warn you now that the vegetables and fruit have been growing very luxuriant in the last few weeks and making out what is growing can be quite difficult from the photographs. It is what happens when plants are happy. I don't mind them becoming slightly over crowded because they shade out weeds. Apart from pot marigold Calendula officinalis growing where I don't necessarily want it to there is little weed on the allotment. This is in part due to the thick mulch of woody chippings that I put down earlier in the summer. I now find its called the Eden method because of the bloke on You Tube but there are many of us that were using chippings as mulch for years. Watch the video carefully because he puts chicken manure on the garden before the chippings and this is not at all clear from the videos that I have seen. I think that some kind of manure should be used on the soil before chippings are laid down. Also, water in some anti slug nematode worms before using chippings because they can encourage slugs.

This is a purple hazel grafted onto the ordinary

hazel. And I did it myself!

I put the purple hazel by the shed to mask it a little. It hasn't really grown thick enough to do any masking but, seeing as I grafted it, I am not going to take it out or move it now. There are three cheap clematis plants growing over the shed too. They will be encouraged to grow through the hazel. There are several roots of rhubarb behind the hazel but these have not cropped very well.

I have had all the beans that I wanted off the runners and I am leaving the rest to go

to seed. I have started collecting and dryingrunner seeds.

The beans have had a two inch mulch of woody chippings put on in April. Most of it has decomposed into a compost like material now. I will probably dig it into the soil. Next time I use the chippings for mulch I will hoe in some chicken manure before spreading it. There is a little nitrogen draw down - but not enough to stop the beans from producing a great quantity of pods. I am taking these pods off now as they dry and collecting the seed. The seed will further dry either in the sun or in the shed depending on the weather.

The cherry tree is masked by the raspberries, These are autumn fruiting bushes.

These raspberries were given to me and I just healed them into the ground alongside the path. They didn't do anything for most of the summer and then they decided to grow large and produce a significant amount of fruit.
I am growing the cherry as a fan but one of the stems is much stronger than the other. I have lowered the strong stem down almost to the horizontal while leaving the other weaker stem vertical. According to Abercrombe, this should make the weaker stem grow much stronger and catch up the stronger branch. I have yet to see any evidence of this.

The stronger branch is more or less horizontal while the weaker one is more vertical.

The label reminds me it is a Lapins Cherry and I need to rewrite the label because the name is washing off. I didn't plant the Calendula officinalis. It's seeds were in the compost that I put along the runner beans. It seems that I did not get the compost hot enough to kill these seeds. I could have weeded them out but they formed a good cover crop beneath the beans and they might have given some aid to the beans as a companion plant. Certainly, there were no aphids on the beans this year.

Willow cuttings.

I pushed these willow cuttings into the ground next to the car park and they have rooted. I want to make a live willow wicker fence alongside the carpark to keep car fumes from wafting over the allotment. These ones are growing very well but others I planted died off. I will not really have enough cuttings at the moment and will have to put some more in. The willow on the allotment is throwing out a lot of new growth because I cut it back very hard.

Willow tree next to the compost. Salix alba vitellina

I will cut it back hard again this autumn and push the cuttings into the soil to root. If they root by next spring, I will put them in a row with the others and start weaving them together. I will also pleach them every time they touch another stem by cutting away some of the bark on both stems so that the cambium is exposed then wrapping them tightly together with grafting tape.

My poor attempt at forming a glade under the plum tree.

Under the plum tree, I have planted an American gooseberry, comfrey and nasturtiums and, while they are all growing together very well, it looks a bit like a mess. My poor attempt at developing a glade. There is a thick layer of woody chipping mulch over the soil and no weeds have been seen all summer.

Winter brassicas getting squashed under the netting.

These are mainly late sprouting winter broccoli with a few kale plants mixed in. I have taken the netting off now because the pigeons do not seem to be interested in the plants when they get to this size. If they do show renewed interest then I will put the nets on again but only loosely to deter them. The plants are continuing to grow quite large and healthily and have avoided too much damage from cabbage white butterflies and slugs. All the brassicas were given a two inch mulch of woody chippings when they had reached one foot or eighteen inches tall. I left until they were this height because they would not be so susceptible to slug and snail damage. Mulches do attract molluscs.

Winter cauliflowers and kale.

Brassica bed

Brussel Sprout "Darkmar"

The kale and the Brussel sprouts are doing well and there is no sign of white fly at the moment. I still have to take the water pipe hoops off the bed and store them away but they are holding up the plants at the moment. The Brussel sprouts need the support although they should stand up on their own.

Both of the grapes threw up a lot of new growth that was shading and diverting food away

from the fruit.

I have pruned both the grapes hard back to the original stems now so that the fruit can get some light and air. It looks a lot more tidy than in the photograph. There is a lot of fruit on the bushes but they are only small. All that new growth is taking a lot of food to develop. It is a carbon sink and will divert sugars from the fruit to the ends of the stems. Cutting the new growth off will means that the big old leaves will be left and are producing much more food than they are consuming.

Espaliered 'Egremont Russet, apple and 'Doyenne du Comice' pear

Both of these espaliers had been summer pruned but they have made still more growth. I have taken out most of the unnecessary woody growth. Both trees seem to be very vigorous but they are not producing very much fruit. I'm not that worried because the other apples and pears are producing a lot more fruit than I will need; I will not get the variety though. Both trees have reached the top of the framework that I made for them and I will either have to build something taller or begin to train the leaders horizontally. I will take them a little higher just to impress everyone but will make sure that I can reach the tops to harvest. As I usually do, I have planted these trees too close to each other and they are now beginning to overlap each other. Abercrombe says to just cut the leaders off but this will give me lots of new grow every year that not only will have to be pruned off but will divert food from going to the fruit. So, I plan to turn the horizontal lateral braches leaders up until they meet the branch above and then pleach them together. I have done this with the laburnums and with the James Grieves and the Ribstone Pippin. Not sure whether this is good practice but it means that I am not pruning out new growth from the ends of the laterals every season.

Bay trees

Sandwiched between the sweet peas and the greenhouse are some bay trees that I am training to have spherical heads. These bay trees were cuttings I made about three years ago. Pruning them to globe heads is fairly easy to do but does need patients.

Apple grafts

Although it doesn't look like it there are seventeen different apple grafts growing in pots here. The oca volunteers have grown up and covered the pots. I have tucked them away behind the green house so that I don't tread on them. I have destroyed at least two Norfolk Royal grafts with my clumsy feet and I would be really annoyed if I trod on another one. They are somewhat protected here but I can still get to them to water if necessary. The asparagus to the left of the photograph are protecting them a little and this is the awing of the cage of asparagus.

Compost bins after the compost has just been

turned.

Although I am trying to turn the compost every two days as the Berkley method suggests, it has been quite difficult to do when there is harvesting and sowing to contend with. Having said this, I have started this batch of compost with good intent. I have turned it twice which means that the compost is ten days old and looks like this. Four days at the beginning left to moulder then turned every two days i.e. on what I call the third day.

Ten day old compost.

It has changed colour and you can't really tell what the compost was made from. This has a lot of summer raspberry, loganberry and blackberry canes and woody chippings mixed in with it. I have use a lot of diluted comfrey and comfrey leaves to further the process and this time I have quite hot compost which was steaming when I turned it. It is the same in all the bins. I am fascinated when the plastic, metal and stones 'fall' out of the compost. Even tiny bits seem to separate themselves and are easily taken out of the compost. I have no idea where they come from but they could be wrapped tightly in the roots of plants added to the bins.

A lot more woody stuff in this one.

I compost almost all the allotment waste now. Only the diseased material is removed from the allotment. Any woody material gets cut up into small 5 cm pieces and added to the mix. It does eventually break down and forms a very friable compost. The compost still need sieving to remove the largest undecomposed items but these can be returned to the bins and given a little more time to decompose. Which they will.
I spread the last batch of compost over several of the growing beds.

Last batch of compost spread under the sunflowers.

Now I am not showing off my sunflowers particularly and the compost was put on the soil long after they had got to this size so I cannot blame the compost. I don't know why the sunflowers decided to grow this big. I was not expecting it. I am going to sow phalacelia seed into the compost to cover the ground until October and when the phalacelia dies off it will be replaced with a winter cover crop of tares and rye.

Red cabbage

There are some stonehead cabbage behind the red cabbage and some early sprouting broccoli and they are all doing well if a little moth eaten. The damage is probably due to slugs which have been a particularly irritating problem this year. All of the summer cauliflowers were composted because they all bolted due to the very warm spell. If I had had my wits about me, I probably could have caught them when they were just at their best - if a little small, however I was leaving them to get a little bigger.

Swede and kohl rabi

Even though they are right under the grape vine the swede and kohl rabi have done quite well. I have already had some for cooking and the others are swelling up.

Empty cauliflower bed.

The cauliflowers had a two inch mulch of woody chippings just after they were transplanted into the ground. None of the mulch was removed and looking at it now shows that most of it has decomposed. The area will be raked over with the three pronged cultivator and then hoed and raked before sowing. I will water this area with anti slug nematodes and then sow a cover crop of phalacelia without digging. The seed will be sown broadcast and raked into the surface.

Although they are not very big, there are bunches of grapes on the vines. I have not thinned them out and I am not going to. This means that they are unlikely to get much bigger but they taste good whatever their size.

Grapes on the vine.

Fenugreek green manure.

The peas have been picked and cleared away and followed with a sowing of fenugreek. The metal mesh was used to old up the chicken wire pea supports. I have cleared away and stored the metal mesh and the nets, now that the fenugreek has germinated and has grown relatively high. Fenugreek is a legume and with any luck will associate with rhizobium bacteria and fix some nitrogen for me. It is not very hardy and will die off in the winter. I will probably replace it with tares and rye.

White clover green manure.

On the other half of the pea bed I have sown white clover which is another nitrogen fixer. This plant is a little hardier than the fenugreek and will be left until the spring before I dig it in. I might transplant some of the clover around the edges of the beds to give a perennial legume nitrogen fixer for all the year. Root exudates will add nitrogen to the soil and this will be taken into the beds by water flowing slowly through the soil down the slope.

Plants alongside the trackway

The globe artichoke has produced some flowers but has not done very well otherwise loosing most of its leaves. I am hoping it will do much better next year. I have planted lupins and laburnum alongside the track as perennial legume nitrogen fixers. The lupins have produced a lot of seed and this has been collected, dried and stored away in the shed to be sown next spring. They are at the top of the south facing slope so exudates from their roots will naturally flow down the slope with the soil solution fertilising the growing beds. I have taken a lot of seed from the Calendula officinalis plants and then put them on the compost. It means that I will have lots of these plants again next year wherever I spread the compost but they make a colourful addition to the allotment. Beneath the Calendula are three crab apples I grew from pips. I doubt that they will breed true but they can be grafted over to a more productive apple or even to a decorative crab apple. There are three Sorbus vilmorinii trees grown from seed planted here as a wind break.

Looking down the main allotment path.

Sage and mint are the main edging plants along the path on the right hand side. Lemon balm and rosemary on the left. The peach greenhouse is also on the left. I have been shifting compost and woody chippings along the path so its a little untidy at the moment. I will sweep it when I have finished with the mulches and put the sweepings on the compost.

Climbing French beans.

The French beans have gone over now and have been left to go to seed. I have started to take seed off them and dry the beans out in the shed. There are still quite a few pods left on the plants and I will leave them until they dry out on the plants. The little pear tree on the espalier has almost doubled in size, which I am pleased about. I thought that I would not be able to save the tree but it seems to have struggled on this year and will probably improve next year.

Lavender and white buddleia edging

The lavender edging has couch grass growing through it and will need to be dug up and the roots washed. I am going to dig a trench alongside the trackway to catch water running off it so I will be able to take out the couch grass as well.

Old tall pea and broad bean bed.

The tall peas and broad beans have been harvested and some kept as seed for next year. I dug the tops into the soil and levelled it off to make a seed bed. Phalacelia was sown in drills taken out going north to south. The drills were watered with dilute comfrey solution before the seed were sown. I mixed a little lupin seed in with the phalacelia seed to see if it would germinate. I will transplant any lupins that germinate into beds of their own.

Year old Pitmaston Pineapple graft.

The Pitmaston Pineapple graft has produced two convenient laterals and a vertical shoot. These have been carefully tied in along the canes which are more than adequate to train the shoots. I will mulch this apple tree when I have some farmyard manure.

Three sisters looking over the fan trained red and white currant.

The three sisters are maize, climbing French bean and pumpkin. These are all grown together as companions. The maize was set out as a diamond shaped rectangle and bean seeds were sown next to each maize plant stem. The pumpkins were interspersed in the spaces between the grid of maize plants.

Three sisters.

The beans are to give the maize and pumpkins nitrogen, The pumpkin gives both the beans and the maize a cool damp living mulch while the maize gives the beans something to grow up. I must admit that I have put some squashes, courgettes, tomatoes and cucumbers in this bed as well.

Victoria rhubarb.

The Victoria rhubarb still has not achieved the size it had on my old allotment. It has a very deep root run here because I went down three spits and added a lot of organic matter. It has had over a year to settle in and next year I will expect to see some really big stems and leaves.

Old potato bed.

All the potatoes have been harvested now. I have filled seven half hundred weight paper bags which will probably see me through the winter and more. The ground was levelled with the rake and drills taken out. The drills were watered with dilute comfrey liquid and red and white clover was sown into them. I have covered the green manure with nets primarily against the pigeons, however the additional slight protection the nets give the seedlings means that they are growing quite fast. They will soon form a canopy across the ground. The nets will not stay for much longer. I will take them off in the next couple of days.

Another Pitmaston Pineapple graft.

This Pitmaston Pineapple has thrown out two laterals which have been tied onto the canes. The vertical stem has been tied onto the upper canes. It will throw out laterals quite naturally now and will not need to be headed back.

Bread tray sieve.

I have modified the bread tray sieve with some wire I found on the allotment. The mesh is 1 cm. When I had raked the potato bed level, I had a lot of stone and rough material in a pile that needed to be disposed of. I put the material through the sieve to recover the soil mixed with it. The stones were put under the hedge in the car park area. I don't want to get rid of all the stone in the soil but some of the larger pieces get in the way when you are sowing seed.
I will use the smaller mesh when I sieve out the compost. It will ensure that only the best well rotted compost will be put onto the growing areas. The material that does not go through the sieve will be put back in the composters.

Large black currant bushes.

The large black currant bushes fruited well and I harvested the berries earlier in the year. They have made a lot of new growth but I will not prune them again this year. Next year I might coppice them again.

Main crop leeks.

I took the nets off the leeks in July to give them some air. However, I have put the net back on now to protect the leeks from the second generation leek miner fly. I forgot to water in some anti slug nematodes before netting the leeks so I will have to take the nets off again for a short while. Some of the plants have gone to seed but that will not mean that they can't be harvested. There is some borage on the left of the photograph and the bees are having a field day with them.

Onions left to ripen in the sun.

I arranged the onion foliage so that it would not shade the bulbs from the sunlight. The bulbs were also pulled out of the ground to expose their roots. I have left them to ripen for a few days now. Once they are fully ripened I will string them and store them in the little shed. The woody mulch was a great success keeping the weeds down and moisture in the soil. I have forgotten one of the hoops! I will take out the one or two weeds - there is some horse tail, and sow some phalacelia to cover the ground. This bed will have sweet peas on it next year and I want the ground to be as fertile as possible. Some people would suggest that putting a legume green manure here would not be good practice because it was going to be followed by another legume in the rotation. I don't think that it matters at all. In fact using something like clover or lucerne may increase the number of rhizobium bacteria in the soil that form nitrogen fixing nodules on the roots of legumes. Some of these species of bacterial will be generalists and form symbiotic relationships with several or all of the legumes. So, I will be increasing my chances of getting nodulation quickly and improving the fertility of the soil. Having said all this, I will still be using phalacelia just because I have an open packet of seed and want to use it up. The phalacelia will die off in the late autumn and will be replaced with a rye and tares overwintering green manure.

Saving seed and drying them on the shed shelf.

Apart from drying the shallots and the pickling onions, I am also drying off the seed that I have collected. At the moment I am drying tall pea seeds, broad bean seeds, dwarf and climbing French bean seeds, runner bean seeds, lupin seeds, poppy seeds, pansy seeds, asparagus pea seeds, sweet pea seeds and pot marigold seeds. Saving seed is not very difficult to do and it saves a lot of money when you don't have to buy them every year. As it gets very hot on the roof of the shed, I thought that this would be a good place to dry the seeds and the onions. The shelf was made from an old greenhouse shelf. It would not fit in either of my greenhouses so I decided to screw it to the back of the shed and it has proved very useful for hardening off seedlings and drying the seed.

Worm bin and comfrey butt.

Both the worm bin and comfrey butt are providing lots of liquid manure for the allotment. I have topped up the comfrey with some of the comfrey leaves from under the Victoria plum tree. Both of the bins are at a very precarious angle now and may topple over at any time. This is because the woody chippings under their plinths have decayed. I will have to take the bins off their pedestals and try to mount them on firmer ground.

Small sunflower.

Not all the sunflowers have grown to prodigious heights. I planted this one later than the rest and it has not achieved the heady heights of the other sunflowers.

Oca, rosemary and lavender

The oca has grown well again and is starting to crowd the lavender and the rosemary. However, they are well able to look after themselves.

Another row of leeks and a row of red onion.

These are a second sowing of leeks and should be a succession but they seem to have caught up with the main crop of leeks. I will attempt to cover these with a net so that they are not affected by the leek miner fly.

Cleared ground.

The garlic, elephant garlic and pickling onions have been harvested and put to dry in the sheds. I will clear the ground, rake it over and sow a cover crop after taking off the plastic hoops. Again the woody mulch was a great success and has rotted away leaving only a thin layer of scuffings on the surface.

Little leaning apple tree.

I am eating the apples from this tree. I have reconsidered what apple this is and, rather than a cox's orange pippin, I think that this is a James Grieves. However, it tastes good straight from the tree and that is all that counts. The apples will not store for very long before rotting.

Strawberries.

As the strawberries did not fruit very well this year, I am going to take out and replace three of the rows. They had a lot of compost from last year and this meant that they made a lot of leafy growth and little fruit. The Calendula officinalis seed was in the compost! I have taken three rows out and replaced them with four rows of this year's plants. This gave me a big pile of old strawberry plants and nowhere to put them. All the compost bins are full to overflowing. So I decided to dig a big hole and bury them where the garlic bed was. This is the only area that has not got something growing on it and it will soon be covered in phalacelia.

Raspberries.

All the old canes of the summer fruiting raspberries have been pruned out and put onto the compost heap. These new canes have been carefully tied in and given a comfrey liquid boost.

Black currant bushes.

These black currant bushes were coppiced back to ground level last winter. Now they have grown back nearly to their former size. They did not fruit this year but with all this new wood, I would expect lots of fruit next year.

Cold frame.

The cold frame is full of salad seedlings, lettuce, radish, spring onion, spinach and rocket. The frame is on top of a big pile of woody chippings which have decayed. This has made the frame distort a little. If this continues I will have to do something or the glass will split.
The lettuce had to be resown because of slugs but I have watered the soil with anti slug nematodes and this has allowed the seedlings to survive up to now. There were also two frogs in here so I am expecting them to clear out the slugs too.

Little pond.

The little pond has got a little overgrown and will have to be sorted out soon. I think that the Menyanthes trifoliate (Bog bean) has taken over a little. It did not flower and that is a shame because it has a beautiful white flower. The solar pump is still making a fountain when the sun shines. Working hard like this it puts a reasonable amount of oxygen into the water. The pond has only had rain water in it since it was made so there are no contaminants. This means that there is quite a lot of wildlife in it. There are newts in it as well as frogs and the usual creepy crawlies.

Not my best year for sweet peas.

Although the sweet peas were devastated by flea beetle and slugs at the beginning of the year they have recovered and made a good display. Not anywhere near my normal standard though. However, as I let them grow whichever way they wanted, they produced a lot of flowers and consequently a lot of seed. The pods are just beginning to turn brown now and as they do I am removing and taking the seed out of them. I will be using these seeds on one half of next years sweet pea bed and bought ones on the other half. I am not separating out the colours because this would be a little time consuming. I could do because the seeds are likely to breed true as the flowers are self pollenating. Next year, I intend to make sure the seedlings are well protected and will be using anti slug nematodes right from the start. The calendula growing here shows that I used compost on the sweet peas too...

The old potato bed by the greenhouse.

The potato bed was cleared, hoed and raked level and then white clover sown in rows. The seed of the green manure goes a lot further if you sow it in drills. The seed was watered in with dilute comfrey liquid. The sundial says that I am taking this photograph at twelve a clock.

Tomatoes in the big greenhouse.

Although these Alicante tomatoes are getting a bit rank they are producing a lot of tomatoes. I must have had about ten pounds from just this greenhouse. This is not including the tomatoes from the small green house. I have been giving them dilute comfrey liquid once a week. The tomatoes by the door look as though they have blight but this is not affecting the fruit.

Melons

Although a lot of the foliage has yellowed and died the melon plants have produced a couple of melon fruit. I don't think that the melons like to be in direct light from the Sun. Next year I will put some shading up on the glass. I had the melons in the cold frame on the large pile of woody chippings. I had sunk their pots into the chipping and this was keeping them warm in April. I should have left them there because the cucumbers that replaced them are growing remarkably well. Next year melons in the wooded cold frame? Regardless, I am very happy to have helped to produce these. I must admit that the plants do most of the work though.

Melon 2

Getting these melons to fruit in a cold greenhouse and with our climate is quite a challenge.

Loganberry and blackberry.

I cut out all this years fruiting canes from the loganberry and blackberry plants and tied in this years new growth. These are the canes that will be fruiting next year. They don't look too pretty at the moment but they will grow back next year. The Logan berry at the end of the path has not been done yet but it is stopping me from treading on the apple grafts.

The roots bed.

This year I sowed parsnips, beetroot, carrots and chard directly into the ground. The rows were about eleven inches apart and this made it possible for the plants to form a canopy of foliage before weed seeds could get established. The netting over the carrots has been taken off now and the ground between the carrot plats has been cleared of any weeds.

Black Russian tomatoes.

Hope you are having as much fun gardening as I am...