Transplanting Onions and Wood ash

I have begun to transplant the"Mammoth" onions into larger pots today.  They were in sectioned trays and growing very well but the sections are quite small and the onions needed to be put into something bigger.  I am still transplanting "Vision" onions into pots.  I am hoping to keep them in pots until they grow quite big for a several reasons.

• I want to see how large I can grow all the onions and if I keep them in the greenhouse I can regulate the watering and addition of liquid comfrey fertilizer.  
• I will keep them away from the Phytomyza gymnostoma allium miner fly until they are quite large. However,  I will probably still need to put them into the allotment during April when the fly is still laying eggs.  I will use a barrier of enviromesh to keep them off.  The adults will be hatching out round about now and laying eggs and they will continue to do this until 20th. May.  
• Hopefully the warmth in the greenhouse will bring the plants on and they will be able to gain some growth.  I have eventually worked out how to leave the paraffin heater on at the lowest setting and this is keeping the greenhouse relatively warm.  

The tomatoes are surviving, although they are not growing very fast.  They really need a little more heat.  I have celery and celeriac on the go and growing remarkably well as are the early sown leeks.  I would like to see the second sowing of leeks germinating a little quicker.

In order to get some big turnips this year, I have sown some in a pot to transplant into individual pots later.  I intend to do this for the swedes and kohlrabi  too.

The committee had a big bonfire earlier in the week and I got some of the ashes from the fire to put onto the allotment.  The ashes have a large number of plant nutrients in them, although a lot of the wood nitrogen nutrients have gone up in smoke.  In comparison with other fertilizers wood ash has an NPK of 0:1:3 which is quite good.  The potassium is in the largest in proportion and plants use this for producing flowers and fruit.  I am not quite sure of the biochemistry of this statement but I expect it is a good rule of thumb.  I may use some for the sweet peas and tomatoes.  

There is a large amount of calcium carbonate in ashes and because of this can be used as a substitute for lime.  Charcoal has a relatively high pH as well.  

As I have been adding charcoal to the allotment soil, this is probably  keeping the pH of the soil higher than I would have expected.  

Wood ash is often recommended to be put onto onion beds probably because of the micro nutrients that are within it.  With this in mind I put some on my onion bed and raked it into the topsoil.  I have also put some on the brassicae bed for the cauliflowers.    

I have put up about half of the sweet pea canes but still need some time to put others up.  I am not sure when I will be able to do the rest but the sweet pea seedlings really need to be planted in the allotment now.  

Some people have started to plant their potatoes.  I still think that it is a little early.  However, I will have to start to think about planting things out now.  The serious planting and sowing should start now to make the job a little easier and not a rush later in April.  

Also, planting early, thinning out to correct spacings and watering all help to produce large vegetables.  With any luck I will be able to do all three this year.  

What barriers will be necessary this year?

Every year I cover the carrots with enviromesh but this year I will have to cover other vegetables as well.  I may put some spring onions between the rows of carrots as well. This is to prevent damage from Psila rosae.

The cauliflowers and the cabbages will be covered with enviromesh primarily to keep the cabbage white, Pieris brassicae, caterpillar away from them but also to stop slug and snail damage too. I know there will be some in the soil too and this is why I will be watering on some anti slug nematodes as well.  With any luck the enviromesh will keep any cabbage root flies, Delia radicum brassicae, away.  So it will be worthwhile putting it over these brassicas.  I will be liming this soil quite heavily to see if I can prevent club root Opiopanax horridum.  There is some club root in the brassicas now and I want to prevent this from spreading onto other areas.

The third area which I will have to cover is the onion bed.  I will be covering the leeks, garlic and the onions.  Only in this way will I be sure to prevent damage from Phytomyza gymnostoma.  I am going to put some lime on this area too to see if it will prevent white rot Sclerotium cepivorum.

The big tabby cat knows that there is a rat on the allotment.  It came and sat in my shed until it got fed up and wandered away. Tomorrow, I might put some milk down to encourage it to stay.   Today, I saw the blooming rat looking at me as if it had no cares in the world.

I still have a small area where the parsnips were to sieve for stones.  I lifted the final parsnip today and it was relatively big.  I'd say about 600mm at least.  As with the majority of the other parsnips and carrots, it was not forked.  Does this mean that the old wives tale about stony ground giving you forked parsnips and carrots is false?  I don't think that you could get a much more stony ground than the soil I am sieving so why haven't I got forked roots?

Another myth that is more anecdotal than factual.

I think that the myth about carrots and parsnips forking if you put manure in is also false.  As far as I can see they fork or not regardless of how you prepare their soil.

Believe it or not the slug beer traps are full and need to be replaced.  I forgot to do it today so I must tomorrow.  I will also put some more ferric phosphate around.  I don't like using this chemical but it is much less damaging that other slug pellets.  It also degrades into a fertilizer.

I am putting the traps and pellets underneath the tarpaulin to keep them away from other creatures and to stop the cups from being filled with rain.

When the sun went down today, it got very cold.  I hope there is a really good frost tonight to kill off some of these pests.

Planning for (Napomyza) Phytomyza gymnostoma

This is the leek and onion miner fly, which I am battling with on the allotment.  According to the Central Science Laboratory the first record of Phytomyza gymnostoma  in England was in 2003 when the fly was formally identified on allotments around Wolverhampton.  I reckon that it was on my allotment in 1999 at least.  I had decided to give up half of my allotment in 1998 and then used the top bed on the allotment to grow onions.  I remember someone saying my onions look a little worse for wear. The onions were slowly twisting up.

As I am an organic gardener and there is no effective chemical method of combating this little fly anyway, the  way to protect the onions Allium cepa; the leeks Allium porrium and the garlic Allium sativum from Phytomyza gymnostoma is to cover them with a barrier. 

The adult flies are about 3mm long so the mesh of the barrier needs to be finer than this.  There can be no gaps in the barrier and the best way to construct it is with hoops covered with enviromesh netting.

I am using 2.5 metre lengths of 20mm water tubing with a bamboo cane secured along the top to give more stability.  The blue piping is just stuck into the ground.  The enviromesh is stretched over the top of the hoops and the edges are buried in the ground.

This will give a large protected area for the onions and leeks.

The dates that I am going to cover the onions and leeks are March 15th 2012 till May 20th. 2012.   This should cover the time that the adults are flying.  They are probably flying for less time than this but it will ensure that the Alliums are covered for the correct period.  The nets will go back on the leeks on the 1st. of  September 2011 and come off on the 1st of November 2011 when the adults are no longer flying.

There is some evidence that the Larvae, which is 6mm long, can travel through the soil when the Allium plant it is infecting rots away.  Hopefully, burying the enviromesh edges will prevent the Phytomyza gymnostoma larvae from reaching the protected area.

Regardless of how weedy the onions, leeks and garlic get during this period, I will not remove the mesh until the dates listed.  I have seen some people's onions when they have removed the mesh for weeding and it is obvious that the fly has reached the plants.  I will be watering through the mesh.

That's how I am going to deal with Phytomyza gymnostoma.   

Levelling out where I have triple dug.

I filled the last trench with compost and a dressing of pigeon manure.  Pigeon manure is serious fertilizer.

Several people came and talked.  It is good to talk but I really needed to crack on though.

Before putting the soil back in the trench, I put a new concrete slab in at the end of the row to keep  the soil from falling onto the path; a small concrete slab finished off this curbing. I could not use full sized concrete slabs because this is where a drainage pipe goes across towards the trackway.  Really I should have buried the pipe a little deeper.

I put the subsoil back first making mixing cones of soil in the trenches.  I think that subsoil is thoroughly mixed now and turned much darker because last years compost was mixed throughout it.  Although it is not as good as my top soil it has improved from a sandy clay to a friable soil with lots of compost throughout.

I levelled out the subsoil in the trench with a rake.  After this I put the top soil back making mixing cones with the soil again.

The bed is covered with mounds of soil so these had to be levelled out.  I have begun this and it has been easier than I expected.  Getting all the soil level will take some time and I will do it over several days.  I have other big projects that I want to do before the winter so I will start doing these tomorrow.

I will start to move the strawberries to their new bed; take the sweet pea plants off the canes by undoing the wire ties. I will put the ties in the tie tub and keep them for next year.  I am debating what to do with the canes.  I would like to keep them in the store shed like I did last year, however the store shed is beginning to fill up with stored vegetables and fruit.  (Just got some Bramleys today.)  So I might leave them outside this year.  I will put them in a compost bay that I am not using.  I will reconsider this again when I take the canes out.

I must remember to take some more photographs of the allotment.

The Felthenam first peas have not done very well.  I think that this is due to the dry weather and I have not been watering them.  I think that I will just dig over this area again and put green manure on it.

I will have to plant out the broad beans and the leeks I have in the greenhouse.  I am trying to avoid planting the leeks until the threat of the onion miner fly Phytomyza gymnostoma has diminished.  Have a look at

http://fera.defra.gov.uk/plants/plantHealth/pestsDiseases/documents/phytomyza.pdf

I have decided to cover the bay tree in fleece during the winter to try to keep it alive.  It was hit really hard by the frost during last winter.

Took Some Photographs of the Allotment Today

The allotment always looks untidy in January.

The ground was frosted and covered with a sprinkling of snow so I did not move any more of the blackcurrants.  I got some leaves and lawn mowings and filled up one of my bins with them. I put weed turfs on top of that.         

The bins are made from old pallets which are wired together with fencing wire.  I took two bins down so that I could putup my new shed  but I am going to make some new bins at the end of the comfrey bed.


There is a lot said about making compost.  I find that heaping anything that was once alive into a big pile and leaving for six months to a year breaks down into fairly good compost and even if it doesn't it can be buried relatively deeply and left to its own devices. I am not one for fussing about compost. 

This is one of my charcoal bins with charcoal marinating in comfrey and worm tea. There is also some sugar molasses, and some blood fish and bone in this bin.  I have used almost all of the charcoal in the other bin.  The lid is kept on so that the bins do not fill with rain water and overflow.

This is my comfrey bed.  The plants don't look too good at the moment but in the summer they can grow up to 1.5 metres.  The comfrey is harvested and put into the big green bins. 
Comfrey is as tough as old boots.  It will certainly come back in the spring.  Mine has died down and is difficult to make out at the moment.  I tried digging between the rows and started to dig up roots.  Not to worry though because I just planted them again.  They might not come but I have sufficient anyway. 
A bit of frost and snow will not hurt comfrey.



As the comfrey rots down, I run off the liquid into a small tub and put it into the charcoal dustbin. It looks a bit untidy because I had to move the dustbins.  Someone had pushed them over while I was on holiday but I have still been able to refil one of them with comfrey tea etc.

I use a water butt to make comfrey tea but I am not adding water at the moment. I have 5 rows of comfrey and two rows of nettles - grown properly with weeding and hoeing. I am now using sweet cicerly as well. It all makes a very good liquid fertilizer. I water it down in the watering can but it does not seem to affect the plants adversely if you use quite a concentrated liquid. I think that you are wasting it if you use it too concentrated. Looks just like Tomorite to me.

They say that nettles are high in nitrogen and comfrey is high in potassium. Compared with what though? I think we are talking about very small amounts of nutrient but that is all that most vegetables seem to need. Nettle and Comfrey have more nutrient than farmyard manure but farmyard manure has very little nutrient  so there does not need to be much more to be better. I think that the adding of both comfrey liquid and farmyard manure to the soil have greater effects than just adding artificial nutrient. They encourage soil organisms, which may form symbiotic associations with plant roots or at least provide further nutrients or nutrients in a form that the plants can use.

 5 rows of strawberries.  This half of the strawberry bed has marinaded charcoal and the other half of the bed does not.  I put the charcoal in the planting holes.  We shall see if Terra preta works with strawberries.
Several rows of broad beans behind the strawberries seem to be surviving the very cold weather.  The strawberries were planted during September and the broad beans during October 2010.


This is where the Kestrel potatoes are going this year.  The horse manure will be spread about and dug in as I plant the potatoes.  Half the potatoes will have inoculated charcoal and half will not.  I will also plant some earlies as well. There are still two half rows of carrots, two and a half rows of parsnips and several beetroot still surviving in this bed.  I will need  to clear it by March this year. 


This is the onion bed.  The garlic is in already and showing through. I have not dug this area because it had potatoes on last year.  I have just levelled it out a little so that I can plant the onions and leeks.  I will be covering both the onions and the leeks either with cloches or enviromesh to protect them from the leek miner fly, Phytomyza gymnostoma.  This fly was first detected in Wolverhampton and I have had it on my allotment since 2000 if not earlier.  I thought it was onion eel worm but I can grow very good leeks if I cover them which indicates this is an air borne rather than a soil borne infestation.  It comes to something when you have to cover leeks and onions.

I think that I added a little bit too much brush wood to this soil  It is three spits down though. I will be planting the cordon sweet peas and the runner beans in this bed. 








This will be the brassicae bed this year. I am attempting to move the black currant bushes to a more convenient position but it keeps on snowing.  I will endeavour to persevere. I am planting the blackcurrants with inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi. I don't really want to, however, I will plant half with charcoal and half without just to see if charcoal affects the cropping of blackcurrants.

The purple sprouting broccolli has been knocked about by the snow and frost but it is very hardy and I expect it to recover.  There are some winter cauliflowers behind them that are surviving well.  They are covered with netting to keep the pigeons off them.  Sprouts are behing them.

I am surprised that the bay tree has survived but it gets hardier the older it gets. 

I have picked a lot of the brussel sprouts.  The variety I have left were much smaller than the Trafalgar so I will not plant them this year. Needless to say I have forgotten what they are called.