Early November

Its early November and we have just had the first frost.  It hasn't really cut anything back yet but the foliage on the pumpkin plants have gone black.  Although this time of year I imagine that I am shutting the allotment down, I doubt if there is a day that passes in winter that I don't have something to do and this year it will be to clear allotment 3A.
The new onion bed has been dug over ready for planting.  The garlic will be planted as soon as the bulbs come.   Mammoth onions have been sown in the hot bed and they have germinated already.  They will be pricked out in the next few days into 3 inch pots using a multipurpose compost and left to grow on in the greenhouse.  Sometimes the shallots do well if they are planted in 3 inch pots during the winter.  This will bring them on slightly but is not really necessary because they will survive even if put out now.

Field beans on the old potato bed in October
(And rainbow going into my greenhouse)

The greenhouse has been erected on concrete slabs with the door facing slightly south west.  An automatic window opener has been put on one of the roof windows and another will probably put on the other window too.  The greenhouse needs a good clean because some of the glass was stored on the ground and has been muddied.  The glass will be washed with dilute washing up liquid and the floor will be scrubbed with Jeyes' fluid .  The field beans have been eaten by either mice or rats and there are a lot of gaps, which I am slowly filling up with transplants. Field beans are nitrogen fixers so they will be dug in to increase the nitrogen level in the soil.

Field beans growing in November

This bed has been triple dug and sieved through a 1 inch mesh.  The French and runner beans have been dug into the top soil to add nitrogen .  The subsoil has had shredded woody material mixed into it.  This, in theory, will increase its porosity and water retention.  Chicken manure has been added to the top soil and then a green manure of field beans planted on top.

Green manure on the new sweet pea bed.

The small area where the outdoor tomatoes were has been single dug and sown with tares, clover and rye green manure. Field beans were also planted but the mice have had a field day eating most of them.   I will probably dig some farmyard manure into this area when I have harvested the leeks.  The comfrey is going to die off in the next few weeks so the leaves will be taken off now and added to the comfrey butt by the little shed.  They will rot down and provide comfrey liquid for next spring.  Comfrey is a nutrient accumulator, which means that the leaves will rot down to produce a rich fertiliser.  

Comfrey

The comfrey has been harvested quite hard this year because there is so little of it.  A larger bed will have to be made on allotment 3A when it is cleared.

In order to get a load of farmyard manure, the compost in the bins was emptied, sieved and dug into the top soil on the new allotment.  The material that was sieved out was put into the composting dalek and the large bag.  These sievings will need to be composted for another few months before they are ready to be used on the allotment. The metal drum was being kept to make biochar but  there is a gaping hole rusted in the side, which will make it useless for this job.  It has some nets stored in it at the moment so it is of some use. I may put it in the greenhouse and fill it with woody shreddings as a kind of heater.   Another allotmenteer has offered their biochar burning bins so I will use them instead.  The compost bin pallets were taken apart so that the manure could be stored but the compost bins will be remade when all the manure has been dug in.  

Farmyard manure

I have had two loads of farmyard manure and one load of woody shreddings delivered to the allotment and these are slowly being dug into the soil to add organic matter.  The manure is being dug into the top soil and the shredded woody material is being dug into the subsoil.  I have just listened to, "Gardener's Question Time" where the panelists suggested that woody chippings should not be added to top soil.  They seem to focus especially on it changing the pH of the soil.  The largest factor that influences soil pH is the underlying rock that the soil is made from.  You would have to put a lot of woody shreddings on to change the pH of most soils.  Woody shreddings are high in cellulose and lignin (carbon rich) and low in nitrogen, which means when bacteria and fungi decompose it, it is suggested they rob nitrogen from the soil.  However, this is a slow process and the amount of nitrogen that these organisms need is relatively small and can be easily replaced .  Regardless of this, burying the woody shreddings in the subsoil means that any nitrogen found to help decompose them  will have been leached from the surface and captured by soil decomposers.  Isn't this what we want to happen because this means that the nitrogen can be eventually recycled into the topsoil rather than being lost in ground water.  Finally, lots of people are finding that burying logs in Hugelkultur does not lead to nitrogen robbing of top soil and a change in pH and annual nitrogen hungry crops can be grown in topsoil heaped over the woody material.
The scientific evidence of nitrogen robbing and pH change is very scant and the meager evidence needs careful analysis.  Don't just take my word for it.

http://puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20ChalkerScott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/Wood%20chips%202007.pdf

All I can say is that it grows big pumpkins...

New sweet pea bed

The pumpkin plants have gone over now and have been dug in.  These two pumpkins are the largest I grew this year and I would expect them to weigh around the 70kg mark.  I needed the barrow to move them. This bed has now been single dug with the addition of farmyard and chicken manure.  A green manure of tares, rye and clover will be sown as soon as possible.  The horse radish in the foreground has been taken out as deep as possible but it will probably return next year.  Most of it is in the trackway path but some has spread into the allotment.  Armoracia rusticana can be very invasive if you do not keep it under control.  There was a little field bindweed Convolvulus arvensis and, although it is not a troublesome weed, the bay and Pyracantha rogersiana were taken out and the roots were inspected before replanting with a little chicken manure.  The Opal plum was summer pruned to a wineglass form and to outward facing buds.  It should form a very good free fruiting tree.    The fruit trees by the big greenhouse have been espaliered to form a barrier between this bed and the new onion bed.  The trees are probably too close together but this will be sorted out when the trees get a little bigger

Grapes

The grape supports have been remade a little better.  The vines are being trained by the Guyot system - hopefully.  There are three grapes, two reds and one white.  They did fruit this year but the grapes were very small.  I think that the red grape is a wine making one so I do not expect the fruit to be very big.
I have nailed bracers on the top of the uprights.  These prevent the uprights leaning in as the wires are tightened.  It means that the wires are quite taught and not sagging.  

New brassica bed.

The new brassica bed has been single dug with the old sweet pea plants buried in the top soil.  Sweet peas are a legume with nitrogen fixing bacteria in root nodules.  This means that digging in the whole plant will add organic nitrogen to the top soil.   A little chicken manure was added and then the area was sown with green manure.  Some of the farmyard manure will probably be dug in later in the year or January or February next year. I am toying with the idea of adding lime to the brassica bed not particularly to alter the pH but to add the nutrient calcium to the soil.

All the bay and the box, Buxus sempervirens, are growing well.  There were no weeds in this area so they have not been replanted.  I have pruned many of the bays to produce standard trees rather than bushes, however their stems are not particularly upright and need staking so they will grow straight.  My main bay tree with the ball head died back during last winter, however it has regenerated from the roots producing several suckers.  I will select the strongest growing one to train to a standard tree.  This is why I never take any plant out for at least a year.  They may well regenerate when you least expect it.  The sage edging has been cut back fairly severely to promote bushiness but they will be allowed to flower next year because they produce a very herby sent which I like.  

More of the pumpkins

  

I think that I may have overdone the pumpkins this year.  I am fairly sure that I will not be able to process all of these even with the best of wills.  Still, they are good to show off and people from all over the allotment site have come to look at them.  A bit of a tourist attraction.

Sieve digging the soil on 3A

The bread tray sieve is beginning to suffer from wear and tear so I have had to strengthen it with the concrete reinforcing wire and additional mesh.  The pumpkins are doing a good job holding the soil back from the path.

As the water has been turned off and I have so many plants in green houses and frames, I need to collect as much rain water as possible  So the little greenhouse has both the blue and the green water butts although they will probably be used on the big shed and big greenhouse when I eventually get around to setting these up.

This area of the new allotment had a great deal of mare's tail and bind weed so had to be triple dug.  Even though I had sieved dug earlier in the year, I am still finding mare's tail rhizomes deep in the subsoil.  

First spit being taken out.  

As the top soil is being sieved, chicken manure is added and mixed in.  The subsoil will then be taken out and the bottom of the trench will be well forked over.  About six inches of woody shredded material will be added to the bottom of the trench together with hedge prunings and covered with subsoil.  Farmyard manure will be spread on top of the subsoil before the top soil will be raked back into the trench.  

Sieving is the best way to remove perennial weed rhizomes and add lots of organic matter to the soil. Although this soil had not been cropped for about two or three years, it was very thin and poor.  I don't think that any organic matter had been added for a number of years.  As so much weed had to be composted because it was invasive perennial, this could not be dug into the soil for additional organic matter.   Additional top soil from the paths is also being added after sieving to increase the depth of top soil.  

If this does not produce some good crops, I  will be very disappointed.  

Concrete reinforcing wire

The next area to be dug over is covered in an old shed and concrete reinforcing wire.  The shed is not really worth keeping so will be used to make biochar later in the winter.  There is a lot of rotten wood which would normally be buried in the digging trenches, however this will be kept for biochar too.  

   The reinforcing wire will be buried in the paths when I remove the top soil to put on the allotment beds.  It will be covered by the sieved stones and topped with subsoil from the bottom of the digging trenches.  (The subsoil is easily replaced by the shredded woody material and top soil from the paths.)  I bury any rubbish I find on the allotment under the paths so that I don't need quite so much subsoil to fill the holes left by removing topsoil.  Subsoil is heavy particularly when wet.  

The reinforcing wire was used to dry out the mare's tail, couch grass and bindweed earlier in the year.  These weeds were also covered with a tarpaulin.  This material will be sieved and any rhizomes that look like they are still alive will be further composted and the rest will be buried deep in the digging trenches.   

More area to be triple dug

I will work backwards across the allotment until I reach the pathway.  The topsoil on the path will be put onto the allotment and the hole filled with subsoil and stones - some of which you can see under the blue stone tub.  There are three tubs being used while I am digging.  One for stones, one for perennial rhizomes and one for rubbish.  I always have a tub with me whatever I am doing on the allotment.

Hot beds in the little greenhouse.

I have noticed that the piles of shredded woody material we have on the allotment get very hot due to decomposition.  In the past oak bark, a waste material of the tanning industry, was used to make hot beds. The Victorians called it tan.   I thought that maybe I could use the woody shredded material to make hot beds in the little greenhouse. The beds go down about two feet and should really be built up about another foot.  However, they seem to be working and warming up the greenhouse.  I have put a hot bed on both sides of the greenhouse.  

Various cuttings and potted up plants.  

The middle of the greenhouse has about two foot of really good sieved top soil and will be planted with a peach later in the winter.  

Unfortunately, with all this excavation and the decomposition of the shredded material, the back of the greenhouse has subsided a little and I will have to do a little remedial work before the peach can be planted permanently.

Brassicas 

I still have winter cauliflowers, Brussel sprouts, kohlrabi and swedes on the old brassica bed, and these will be used during the winter.  The other half of this bed has been single dug with added chicken manure and covered broadcast with winter green manure.  The whole bed will probably be manured later in the year when the brassicas have been harvested.  Next season this will be planted with peas and beans.

Dug over part of the brassica bed.

In september the pea and bean bed was dug over and a green manure sown.  The pumpkin decided to grow over it and weeds grew between the rows of green manure.

A little overgrown

Added to this both the peas and the broad beans began to grow from seed fallen when being harvested. So it looks a bit of a mess.  However, this is all good organic matter that will be easy to dig in particularly as the pumpkin has died off now.  This is not the mess...

Mess

This is the mess.  It is allotment 3A and to my knowledge it has not been cultivated for over two years. Under the carpet is a mat of mare's tail and bindweed.  I want to keep the red currants, black currants, raspberries and gooseberries, however I will have to take them out and wash their roots before I can be sure they are free of perennial weeds.  All this soil will have to be sieved and triple dug to get rid of the perennial weeds. It is my winter project and potatoes will be planted here next spring.

Needless to say, the carpet and the blue plastic will be buried in the path by the big shed.  I will reiterate; blue plastic is translucent and allows light to pass through it.  It will not kill off plants; it will probably protect them a little.

Roots

I still have a lot of roots left for the winter.  Salsify, carrots, parsnips, beetroot and Hamburg parsley will all survive in the ground for some of the winter.  There is also some celery in the background which will be used in soups during the winter.  This will be where the potatoes are going next year so the bed will be triple sieve dug with woody shreddings added to the subsoil, and farmyard and chicken manure added to the top soil.

The raspberries on this side of the path have not done very well so I will take them out and change the soil and replant them after manuring the ground.  The raspberries from allotment 3A will be planted here as well. I should then get raspberries from about the middle of June to the end of October if I am lucky.  I don't know what name the raspberries are on allotment 3A go by but they are autumn ones.  I have Glen Ample and Malin's Admiral already planted and growing well on the other side of the path.  These crop in the summer.

Blackcurrants.

I have dug over the soft fruit bed and mulched all the plants with a good dose of manure. This time of the year they get quite shaded in the afternoon but they are in full sun most of the summer.

Cold frame.  

Plants in the cold frame

I have redone the cold frame because it was slowly subsiding into the hot bed.  I had dug out a deep hole and filled it with woody shreddings to make a hot bed.  This was working really well but as the woody material was decomposing and making heat, the surface was sinking.  I have boarded round the frame, then filled the boards with shreddings and put the frame on top.  This has raised the frame about a foot higher than the photograph.  This just gave more shreddings to heat up.  There is a constant air temperature of about 20 degrees celsius and the shreddings themselves warm up a lot more than this.  I have to keep the lights raised when it is sunny because it gets too hot in there.

The large greenhouse.

I have washed the majority of the pots although I am still finding ones that I have missed.  The small shed is full of trays and large pots so this is the only place I can store the small ones.  Really, I need to empty this plastic greenhouse and use it to protect the delicate plants.  This will be done later.

M9 rootstock potted up for grafting.

I have two M9 and 10 M26 rootstocks to graft this year.  I just need to go around the allotment site cadging sions from everybody.  I can get some from the Egremont Russet but I want to get some different ones.  I will use these apples to train to espalier or stepovers around the edges of the allotment.

Daphne

I have planted some daphne in large pots to propagate from.  When they are big enough, I will take cuttings or layer them.

Pond

The pond has done very well this year and produced quite a few frogs.  It needs a clean out and a fountain put in.  I will get the water to come out of the watering can rose.

So the winter project is to get allotment 3A into shape before the spring and to graft 12 new apple trees. Not impossible with a little clement weather.  

Liming the brassica bed

Following the instructions very carefully, I have found that the new brassica bed has a pH of about 7 and the new onion bed has a pH of 6.5.  This surprised me because of the amount of organic matter I have been adding to the soil.  Also I have been using the X Cupressocyparis leylandii shredded leaves and branches to add to the subsoil. There seems to be some thought that this would make the soil particularly acidic.  It does not seem to be having any effect on  the pH of my top soil.   I purposely took samples from the beds with the largest amount of leylandii on them.  So, is this another myth busted?

Using the leylandii and other woody material when triple or "bastard" digging 600mm in depth seems to have some good effects.  Some due to the addition of woody material and others because of the digging.

• It improves the drainage whilst allowing some water retention.  Thus plants with deep roots can access a reservoir of damp decomposing vegetation during the driest months of the year.  
• The woody material does not decompose very quickly making it a long lasting method of water retention in the soil. Some of which can reach medium rooted plants by capillary action.  
• There is a large amount of vegetation slowly decomposing and giving off a certain amount of heat.  This forms a hot bed warming the soil and encouraging root growth.   
• Triple digging breaks up the subsoil and any iron pan that restricts plant roots.  This will also improve the drainage of the allotment.  
• The addition of organic matter to the subsoil slowly changes the subsoil to a more top soil consistency.  
• With the addition of other organic matter such as leaves, weed turf and lawn turf, nutrients from their decomposition can be worked into the sub and top soil after a year or two.
• Any nitrogen depletion brought about by decomposition of the woody material may be using that leached from the top soil.  This nitrogen will be captured by micro organisms and fixed until they themselves die and add them to the soil through their cells being decomposed.
• It prevents the woody material being burnt and releasing the locked up nutrients into the air as gaseous oxides.  
• It helps to sequester a small amount of carbon in the soil. A long journey starts with a small step.   

 The only disadvantage is that you have to dig deep trenches.  However, Hugelkultur suggest that you do not have to bury the woody material.  Hugelkultur involves laying woody material on the surface and covering with topsoil.  I would rather use the trench method.  This is what the indigenous Central and South American  civilizations did in the past  and I have a great admiration for the great horticultural knowledge of these ancient peoples.

Do I lime the brassica bed or not?  I had already bought the lime so I thought that I would still add some lime to maintain the high pH and ward off the dreaded club root Plasmodiophora brassicae.  Also do I lime before or after watering on anti slug nematodes?

Before making these decisions the green manure and weeds needed to be dug into the topsoil.  The soil on this top allotment is very friable because it has been worked for a great number of years.  It did not take me long to dig over all the green manure areas.

The strawberry bed was weeded.  The only weed was the poached egg plant that had seeded two years ago when I used it as a companion plant for the sweet peas.  I would have kept some of the plants but they are more yellow than poached.  They went into the worm bin.

As I needed the ground to be moist and it was a fairly warm day drying out the soil, I watered the ground with very dilute comfrey liquid manure before watering on the nematodes Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita.  This was a process made much easier by the water being turned on again.  I am hoping that the liquid manure will act as a base dressing and not be leached out before the plants can make use of it.

I limed both the brassica and the onion bed.

The Rheum raponticum var. "Timperley Early" was planted next to the var. "Champagne" in the rhubarb bed.  I thought that I had lost it but it was throwing up some small leaves.  I planted it with a little mychorrhizal fungi and watered it in with dilute comfrey liquid .

The scraps of manure that were left were put around the rhubarb and along the raspberry canes as a mulch.

Things to do tomorrow.

1. Remember to take an AA battery for the clock.
2. Get some more straw for the strawberry bed.  I doubt if it will make a bit of difference to the crop but it does look good.  
3. Put in the posts to support the sweet pea canes and then put up the canes.
4. Plant the sweet peas, parsnips, carrots and hamburg parsley.  Cover the carrots with a fine mesh barrier to combat Psila rosea. 
5. Cover the garlic and the shallots with a fine mesh barrier.  By all accounts the Phytomyza gymnostoma begins to hatch out around the 15th to the 18th of March.  The barrier will go over the onions too.  
6. Cut supports for the fine mesh from the blue, plastic water pipe.  
7. Crop the purple sprouting broccoli.
8. Put new roofing felt on the two sheds then paint with preservative.   

Late winter jobs.

I have sown some more celery and celeriac.  The celeriac did not germinate very well  and I have only a few from the first sowing.  I hope that these ones come because I do not have any more.

I have transplanted all the tomatoes, leeks, onions, cauliflowers, cabbages and celery into pots of their own now.  This will enable them to grow on in the pots and I will not have to plant them out until the weather becomes more clement.  I have sown some first early peas in sectioned trays using a pinch of mychorrhizal fungi in each of the planting holes.  These peas will start the succession of peas throughout the spring and summer.  I usually plant four rows of peas more or less at the same time because they all come at the same time no matter when I plant them.  I have never planted peas this early though so I may well get a difference in cropping time especially as I am using four different varieties this year.  I transplanted another tray of lettuce and used mychorrhizal fungi in the planting holes again.

I have finished the Hugelkultur trench for the climbing French beans.  This time I layered weed turfs, holly branches and brushwood, leaves and turfs, putting sieved soil and manure mix on top.  It made very friable soil.  I used the rake to level off the ground as much as I could but their will be a mound there for the rest of the season. It will slowly go down as the organic matter decomposes.  The ground around the winter cauliflowers was tidied a little because there were a lot of dead leaves on the ground.  The old red Brussel sprouts were harvested and taken out.  I put them into a plastic bag so that I could bring them home and put them into the green bin.  There was no disease on them at all but it is best to be safe especially as they could be harboring club root.

I thought that I had club root in the ground again last year but, looking at the roots, I think that  they were probably damaged by cabbage root fly.  I don't usually have any trouble with cabbage root fly Delia radicum brassicae.

I am still cropping the allotment and took some purple sprouting broccoli home today.  I still have some parsnips, carrots, leeks and celeriac to crop.  Later on in April I will have the winter cauliflowers developing.

Six of the sweet pea support posts were put up today.  I have put cross pieces at the top of the poles to enable me to keep the canes horizontal.  I may have to change their position because they may be too close together and I can use the trackway to get to the plants so I don't really need to leave a path on the allotment as well.

Once all the posts for the sweet peas are in, I will need to get on with putting the roofing felt onto the sheds.  The store shed is the worst; letting in a lot of rain.

Doing some more Hugelkultur

I wanted to bury the old blackcurrant bushes and the cuttings with big bud on them.  There were some other things that needed burying so I decided to do some trenching.

One spit down.

I am going to put the climbing French beans here so a good deep root run will be good for them.  The top soil is left on the right of the picture.
Now we go down another spit.

The old huglekulture wood can be seen.

When I dug out the second spit, I found last years hugelkultur wood.  It had rotted away to a fibrous peaty mass. I am going to mix this with the subsoil when I put the soil back in the trench.

Having a layer of woody material under the Brussel sprouts does not seem to have affected them detrimentally.  In fact I think that it might have encouraged them to grow larger.

I used the fork to turn over the bottom of the trench.  You can see the sandy clay that is the subsoil on the allotment.  I don't usually turn this up because the top soil is so deep on the allotment.  This area used to be where my old greenhouse was and I never double dug here while the green house was up.  This means that the top soil is not very deep.

I put the old blackcurrant bushes at the bottom and then got some more brush wood.  These are twigs and branches from a laburnum tree overhanging the fence.  Laburnum is a legume nitrogen fixing plant. Does this mean that I am adding extra nitrogen to the soil?

I then added a good layer of weeds that included couch grass and docks.  They may grow but I don't think so. On top of them I put a thick layer of leaves.  I'm not too sure about these leaves.  They have been rotting away in the bins by the gate for a while but they still look a little ropey.

Still needs must... Finally I put a layer of upturned turfs on the top.

If the weeds can grow through that lot then they deserve to be given a chance.  They wont be though.  Now I put the subsoil back but I am going to sieve it and add horse and pigeon muck.

The subsoil looks much better when it is sieved and mixed with manure. I am sieving through an old bread tray.  The holes in the bottom of the tray are about 1 inch square.  I just push the soil backwards and forwards in the tray until it falls through the holes.   I will sieve the top soil on top of the  subsoil mixing in more horse and pigeon muck.

And that is how I do hugelkultur.  I am hoping that this will heat up a bit and allow me to get an early crop of lettuce off it.

Thoughts on digging or no digging strategies.

I have mixed feelings about this debate.

The modern fashion for using raised beds to grow vegetables can be seen as a method of avoiding digging.  The no dig system seems to have been developed, like so many other gardening techniques, by trial and error.  Then the amateurs that developed it become evangelical and the gullible see it as a some magical method; following the method's disciples' recipes and instructions as if there were no other ways of cultivation.

It is just multiple layers of this and that built up within  planked containers to make  higher than ground level growing areas.  And lots and lots of paths.

I do not think that there is anything magical in the materials that are used to develop these beds.  Indeed filling a raised bed with commercial multi purpose compost or ordinary garden soil seems to get good results.  However, there seems to be a consensus that you start off with a layer of newspaper to suppress weeds and then cover  with compost or other organic material such as straw or hay in layers with some addition of chicken manure.  The layers are built up until the correct height is obtained and a surface layer of compost or soil tops it off.  Certainly it is a very  intensive organic matter form of gardening.  I should be really enthusiastic about this system of growing.

It is a quick and relatively easy way of cultivating an area of weed infested ground because weeds are suppressed by the newspaper in the raised bed and paths are covered in weed suppressing membranes.

It also emphasises the importance of creating and maintaining a high level of soil organisms such as nitrogen fixing bacteria and mychorrhizal fungi.  Again this is something that I agree with and would like to promote on my allotment.

The use of mulches and green manures should enable the beds to reach a high level of fertility and this might be maintained over many years. That is; leaching is reduced and chelating humin, fulvic and humic acids will form complexes that will trap minerals in the soil structure.

Thirdly you do not have to step onto the bed to cultivate it having access from paths constructed around the beds.  This means that the soil is never compacted and is always aerated and well drained.

There is some debate that says that the soil is rarely disturbed in nature and has not evolved to cope with being cultivated to the extent it is on an allotment.

So why am I apprehensive about following the fashion?

I have raised my whole allotment about 600 mm above the original ground level and this does indeed seem to improve the drainage.  However, I have dug down quite deeply too and broken up the subsoil to quite a depth and this might be the main factor in improving the drainage.  Also, I have added a lot of organic matter in the form of logs, branches, leaves and branch shreddings to the subsoil in a kind of Huglekulture and that too might have improved the drainage of the allotment. (Oh yes, and Huglekulture does not have to be constructed on the surface of the soil.)

Adding large amounts of organic matter does seem, anecdotally, to improve the fertility of the soil.  I would conjecture that this is some part due to the provision of carbon for free living nitrogen fixing bacteria such as Azotobacteraceae.  These bacteria are fairly ubiquitous and once they have a carbon source will multiply rapidly whether the organic matter is on the surface or mixed into the top soil.  I doubt very much if digging would severely deplete the numbers of bacteria in the soil especially if it is combined with the addition of organic matter.

I can see that the repeated addition of inorganic fertilizers in place of organic amendments would indeed reduce the number of soil organisms by reducing the amount of carbon available to the heterotrophic soil fauna and flora. However, there are few gardeners now that will use inorganic fertilizer to the extent they were used in the past.  

I would also suggest that a sizeable proportion of soil organisms can survive digging because of their relative size. It is the macro organisms such as worms, soil centipedes, etc. that would indeed be affected by digging. Yet some of these macro organisms may be pathogens and we might want them to be removed from the soil.  Such animals as slugs, snails and pathogenic fungi would fall into this category.  It is noticeable the difference in the number of worms in an undisturbed soil compared with cultivated soil. This is a major disadvantage of digging.  I would suggest though that any cultivated soil would have a reduced number of worms.

In one text book I read recently, there was a chapter on raised bed, no dig growing system giving chapter and verse about how good it was to grow in this way and went on to say that after making a raised bed why not plant green manure to start with...

Now, on several gardening, forums people are going to extraordinary lengths to grow green manure while not digging it into the top soil.  Some suggest strimming and leaving the tops on the surface to rot down or putting a membrane or cardboard over the surface to kill off the green manure.  Others are suggesting that the green manure is hoed off and the tops put onto the compost heap.

I find this incredibly unpractical and self defeating.   The green manure is there to add carbon to the soil in a form that is readily available to microorganisms.  Any nitrogen fixed by legumes will be removed by hoeing off and putting on the compost heap.  Covering or strimming are just adding slug and snail encouraging complexities unnecessarily.

Single digging, slicing off the green manure to put at the bottom of a shallow trench seems to me to be the simplest  and most practical option of mixing the green manure into the soil.

This introduces another important part of using digging as a strategy in the vegetable garden.  Digging done well will mix the soil.  Rotavators do this particularly well.  Any organic matter will be mixed relatively evenly throughout the top soil making it available to organisms throughout the profile.  When it has finally broken down into humus, this will enable chelation and possibly enable plant roots to access the nutrients trapped in it.    There is a great deal of evidence that top soil with large amounts of the black, oily liquid we call humus coating  soil particles is particularly fertile.

Apart from nutrients obtained from decayed organic matter there is also a source of minerals that can be obtained from the break up of stones within the soil by weathering.  I am not sure whether digging can be classified as a weathering factor but other factors such as wind and water seem to have an effect through friction.  I would suggest that digging also breaks up soil minerals by the action of friction releasing nutrients from stones and possibly rocks in the soil.  Digging also exposes the soil to the action of frost and freezing and thawing effects not only breaking up compacted soil but also releasing nutrients from stones in the soil.

There are some times that cropping means that effectively you are digging over the soil.  For example, taking out potatoes.  How on Earth do you do that without digging quite deeply down into the soil?  And then how do you ensure that you have removed all the little potatoes that will undoubtedly survive the winter and begin to grow again right in the middle of another crop and possibly harbour pests and diseases to infect the new years potatoes?  The only way I know is to dig over the potato bed very carefully. The same argument could be put forward for carrots, parsnips and other root vegetables.

There are some that grow potatoes under straw or membranes and harvest from under these.  Well I cannot justify covering the area of potatoes that I grow with membrane or straw for that matter.  Small crops on little beds may make it a little more practical but why add these complexities unnecessarily just so you can say that you don't dig?

The argument that the soil is rarely disturbed in nature is an uniformed view of how nature works.  If you had seem the damage that badgers do to a lawn you would never subscribe to this notion.  Foxes looking for worms on my allotment are continuously digging holes as are cats when they do whopsies.  Take that up to larger animals such as wild boars and deer and we can begin to see that the soil has been continuously turned over and this has happened from the earliest times.  Indeed dinosaurs could make a serious mess of soil structure.  That is why plants called ephemerals evolved; to exploit disturbed ground.  These are plants that we commonly call weeds.

I am really confused about why walking on the soil is such an anathema to no diggers especially as most of the ground in a raised bed system is covered in very compacted, membrane covered, soil paths.

Compaction of the soil is not to be encouraged but I made temporary paths along the sweet pea rows this year compacting the soil quite a lot.  This did not stop the weeds from growing - unfortunately.  Alongside my allotment is the trackway along which cars are continuously being driven up and down.  I mow the trackway regularly to make sure that the weeds do not take over.  Compaction does not seem to have affected the growth of these plants.  There is obviously some relationship between the optimum amount of water and air that should be in the soil and this might be affected by compaction, however to actually squeeze out all the air and water from soil is incredibly difficult - unless you are growing on a clay soil.

I have seen videos on YouTube - old gardening videos where the soil is consolidated by treading along the sowing lines before raking and the drill taken out.    This is what my grandfather and father used to do and I copy them even now when preparing a seed bed.  My seeds still germinate as did my grandfather's and father's.

I do have paths on the allotment; one I made myself and three that were inherited.  After having thought a great deal about them, I dug out the top soil and replaced it with stones covering them with subsoil and putting concrete slabs on top.  This meant that the top soil from under the paths could be added to the growing beds and I would have drainage channels across the allotment under the paths. There is no way I can reach the whole of the beds from the pathways though and I have to tread on the soil to reach their centres.  Does not seem to affect how the plants grow.  If you doubt look at the allotment photographs for April, May, June and July.  I do try to keep off the soil if I possibly can because it makes it easier to work the soil when it is necessary.  I would not like to hoe up the potatoes using compacted soil. But this is all I will concede -  keeping off the soil makes it easier to work

Digging does not prevent you from using green manures and mulches.

I am not rejecting a no dig raised bed system for growing, however I would not advocate that it is the panacea for all growing problems.  There are benefits to digging and sometimes it is the only effective procedure for preparing the soil for crops.  Sometimes, when the soil is clean from the previous crop, the ground will only need hoeing and raking over to make it suitable for the next crop.  I think that this is what I will do after all the brassicas are taken out next spring and I will plant peas and beans in the ground.

So I might be a grumpy old man stuck in my ways and clinging to the past but I see no advantage in making things too complex and creating work for myself.  With the large areas of crops that I grow, I will use the best method of preparing the soil and sometimes that will mean digging.

Coming to an end of the triple digging.

I've got to the last trench of the triple digging and I am filling the bottom with oak branches, compost and old turfs.  This is a kind of huglekulture, however they delivered some pigeon muck today and I used some on top of the branches.

Now here is the theory.  Bacteria and fungi that will break down the oak branches need nitrogen to do this.  The bacteria and fungi's carbon source will be the branches, compost and turfs.  The nitrogen source will be the pigeon manure.  This should mean that the branches will decompose quickly into friable organic matter that is easy to incorporate into the soil next year.  Adding the pigeon manure may prevent the fungi decomposing the buried organic matter from depleting the soil of nitrogen.  This often happens when woody material is added to top soil.

Here we need a note of caution.  Pigeon manure is very powerful stuff.  It has a NPK of 5:2:1 but I think that the nitrogen ratio may be higher from the smell of ammonia coming off it today.  I have put most of the pigeon muck in one of the compost bays that I have just emptied.  I got about 18 bags of it all told.  I will be using it but in the same way as I would use chicken pellets.  I will put a top dressing on the surface of the soil when I begin planting and then hoe it in.  I will not be using great shovels full of the stuff.  It is serious manure.

I once dug in neat, new pigeon muck into one of the beds and then planted beetroot on top.  Nothing grew where the pigeon muck was dug in but I had big beetroot where there was no pigeon manure.

There were a few potatoes that I had missed in the potato bed but not too many.  I doubt if I have found all the tubers but I can live with just a few coming up in the onion bed next year.

I have been giving the top soil and the subsoil a good mixing separately to make sure that last years compost is distributed throughout the soil profile.  The soil was very dry so it was quite easy to do.  I like to make conical mounds of soil and put spade fulls on the point at the top.  This means that each of the spade fulls falls down the sides of the cone and you get a thorough mixing.  I have been careful to keep the top and subsoil apart so that there will be little mixing between the two.  I don't think that a little mixing is harmful but it is best to keep them apart.  The subsoil does not contain the amount of organic matter as the top soil although I am attempting to remedy this.  Also the subsoil is much lighter in colour than the top soil because it has not been dyed black by the humin together with the fulvic and humic acids derived from decomposed organic matter.

There are many reasons for digging but the one that has interested me recently is the suggestion that digging enhances weathering of the mineral part of the soil.  The mineral part of the soil is a primary source of soil potassium and phosphorus.  The idea is to increase the breaking up of particles so that these major nutrients can be released in a form that can be taken up either by mychorrhizal fungi or the roots of plants.  Mixing the soil with compost, which is breaking down into humic and fulvic acids and humin, also aids in this process because these compounds react with (chelate) mineral elements of the soil.  What we are doing is making previously inaccessible minerals locked up in stones or mineral fragments relatively soluble and available to plant roots.

This is why digging whether single, double or triple is a good way of improving the fertility of the soil.  So with the additional benefits of improving drainage; adding carbon; adding nutrients ( in the form of manures, fertilisers and green manures); removing weeds; producing a good crumb and friable  structure to the soil; adding air to lower layers of the soil profile; deepening the depth of the A horizon (top soil) to improve the root environment; increasing the solubility of minerals by ion exchange; there seems to be very good advantages to digging.  I can understand the reasoning behind the no dig method of cultivation but there does not seem to be as many advantages as digging.

I will have a major job in levelling the potato bed because of all the triple digging and mixing I have done but I want to plant some seed so I will have to do it well.  In order to consolidate the soil, I will be treading on it systematically before raking.  Most seeds seem to like a firm soil to germinate in.  I will be taking short side steps along the planting line and then going over with the rake.  This will also break down any large lumps of soil so that the raking will be easier.  It may seem silly to spend so much time putting air into the soil only to squeeze it out by treading on it.  There is a need for a good equilibrium between the amount of air within the soil and the amount of water.  Too much air will restrict the amount of water that roots can obtain and this might lead to water stress.  Too much water will restrict oxygen necessary for root respiration.  Much less oxygen is available dissolved in water than there is in air.  The trick is to make sure there is enough of both.

I will be sowing rocket, lambs lettuce, spinach ( under cloches) chard, and a variety of green manures on the triple dug bed.  I also have four pots of broad beans to plant here as well.

Still cropping big time.  Some large carrots - shows you how effective the enviromesh is; big beetroot - I hope that they are not getting woody now; Hamburg parsley, salsify and scorzonera giving remarkably large roots and parsnips are growing well.  I like to leave the parsnips until the first frosts and with all the other vegetables that are cropping now I do not need to use them.  Pumpkins are coming well except that they are not very large.  Got some big swedes and they still taste really good.  Kohl rabbi is still growing well.  The peas have not grown very well.  I doubt if I will have any off them at all.  Still they will make good green manure.  This is the last time I plant late peas in the same area as the earlies.  The Borlotti beans have done well but they really need to be harvested and podded.  Too many runner beans again.

And too many blooming tomatoes this year.  There has been no blight and all the plants I put outside have fruited really well.  I have tomatoes coming out of my ears now I have eaten so many.   Everyone is trying to give me apples too.  There are just so many apples you can eat.  The Bramleys can be kept for a while so I might put them into the store shed.

I am attempting to clear out the store shed so that I can put the canes in.  I am not succeeding very well because for everything I take out and home there are about seven or eight things I need to store in there.

I took out the broad beans so that I had room to plant some more leeks.  I podded the beans and have left them in the store shed to dry so I have seed for next year.  They are drying on one of the shelves.

I will have enough room on the shelves for apples because all the onions had white rot and had to be thrown away otherwise I would be squeezing things in.  I have room for the squashes, pumpkins and apples but I will have to move the potatoes around.  It would be much better if I could store the canes outside somewhere.  That might be the solution.

I am cropping the comfrey and digging the fresh leaves in along the raspberry row.  The raspberries seem to benefit from a good dose of comfrey.  I will do this with the strawberries too.  I am moving them up to the brassicae bed and will water them in with a little comfrey liquid too.

Then it is mostly clearing for the winter.

Early digging.

I am digging quite seriously at the moment.  I am going down about four spits and burying a mixture of not very decomposed compost; lawn mowings; laurel Prunus laurocerasus shreddings; damson and oak tree branches and weeds.  I am not putting this mixture into the soil to increase the fertility but to improve the drainage while giving the ground a sponge to soak up excess water. In the summer when the ground gets a little dry it may release water into the soil by diffusion allowing plants to access it.    

Since the allotment has now got onion white rot and club root where I put the compost from the giant compost heap, I am more than reluctant to have any weeds or compost except my own.  However, Beryl's allotment had a lot of weeds that needed dealing with so I decided to bury them on my own allotment.  I buried them deep though.

There is a lot of hearsay evidence on the internet that Hugelkultur produces good results when brushwood is added to the soil.  I like to bury high carbon organic matter quite deep in the soil.

About two years ago, I buried big x Cupressocyparis leylandii branches deep in the soil and reported that I could no longer find them.  However, this week I have found some of them when digging in the compost.  They are deeper down than I remember and are being decomposed by fungi growing on them even at this depth.

I put quite a lot of inoculated charcoal into this bed for the potatoes and I had to be very careful to keep the various parts of the soil separate to maintain the charcoal in the top layer.  

Lots of old woody compost was mixed into the second spit soil.  Some quite large branches were being dug up and they looked unsuitable for mixing into the top soil.  However, after examining them closely they could be crumbled into quite fine material that mixed into the soil well.

I have dug over about a quarter of the bed at the moment and I have already started to run out of material to bury.  I think that I will be lopping off some more branches from the hedge soon.


I hope to plant this area with leaves (chard, rocket, American land cress and lamb's lettuce) together with green manures.  The green manures I will be using are crimson clover Trifolium incarnatum, grazing rye Secale cereale and winter tares Vicia sativa leucosperma.  These green manures will be dug in in the spring.  Only grazing rye will not be a nitrogen fixing plant so I am hoping that digging them in will provide the soil with additional nitrogen.  

I am going to sow the green manures in rows rather than broadcast.  I have grown green manures like Caliante mustard Brassicae juncea by broadcast sowing in the past and this has been quite successful.  Until the green manure has developed a canopy over the ground there is a risk of weeds being able to germinate.  They may well be shaded out by mustard but it is best that there is some easy way of weeding.  With this in mind, I am growing in rows to facilitate hoeing.  Also, I get as good a ground cover in rows as I do broadcast sowing.  There are several reasons for wanting a good ground cover.  Green manure will prevent winter rains leaching out nutrients from the top soil.  It provides a good habitat for micro and macro organisms.  It also provides an effective store of nutrients that can be dug into the soil during the spring.