Using turf on the allotment.

Although it might be too early and they might be caught by the frost,  I have planted all the potatoes.  I have ridged them up so that they will not emerge for a couple of weeks but this may not protect them after they have grown higher than the ridges.  I will have to make sure that they are protected in some way later in April.

A friend of mine has left a big pile of turfs on the allotment.  I was considering what to do with them until Ed came over.  I asked him if he wanted my left over potatoes. He said that he always put left over potatoes on the compost heap, not to rot down but to grow on.  He said that he got some really big potatoes that way.

The compost heaps had been cleared out and used during the winter digging so there was nothing in the compost bins.  However, I did have some turf and there was some bits of cow muck, leaves and lawn mowings in the bins by the gate.  So, together with weeds from another allotment I proceeded to make a new compost heap.  The allotment society had just had a big bonfire and the ashes could be used by anyone.  Ashes are alkaline and are said to have a lot of potash in them so they would make a good substitute for lime.  The turfs would provide the top soil and the cow muck, leaves, lawn mowings and weeds would make up the organic layer.  It took me about an hour to fill one of the compost bins putting potatoes near the edges as the layers were built up.

I am hoping to get a good harvest of potatoes when I take the compost apart.  I may put a pumpkin on this compost heap as well.

I finished constructing the supports for the climbing French beans.  These supports are poles made from tree branches.  As I have been cutting poles from the hedge running down the side of the allotment, I had far too many.  I think that I might need some for the runner beans so I will have to store them somewhere.  The allotment is filling up and there is little space for storing anything.

Two rows of peas were planted and watered in with some of the bamboo charcoal.  I put chicken wire up for one of the rows but the other row is right under the winter cauliflowers so I just put some plastic cloches over them.  I am letting the peas climb up the outside of the chicken wire this year just to see how they do.  They are more difficult to harvest if they are inside the chicken wire supports.

The winter cauliflowers are growing remarkably well now but they have not formed cauliflowers yet.  They always take much longer than I want them to.  I need the space now.  It is a good job that I am trying to grow peas in succession because otherwise I would need the ground to plant peas in.

Winter cauliflowers are looking much better
than this now.

I made the protective barrier for the alliums out of blue plastic water pipe and a large piece of enviromesh.  The enviromesh was very expensive but it had to be bought to get any onions at all.  My other pieces of enviromesh, I bought over 20 years ago, are still very useful.  This makes it sound a lot more economical.  The mesh is covering the garlic and I will plant the shallots underneath it in the next couple of weeks.  The onions are still growing on in the greenhouse.  They will have to be a lot bigger before I put them out.

I cut two big branches off an overhanging oak tree to give the allotment more light.  The larger ones are about 5 inches in diameter.  I was going to give them away to someone who uses them in their wood burning stove.  However, I have changed my mind and am going to make a new Hugelkultur bed with them.

The trench will be about three spits deep and a layer of couch grass and dock turfs will be put at the bottom.  The branches and brushwood will be put in next and the gaps filled with shredded branches.  Leaves and lawn mowing will be put on top of that and finally a layer of turfs will top it off.   The top soil will be sieved back into the trench. Inoculated charcoal and chicken manure will be mixed in as the soil is being sieved. I may use some of the lime to mix in as well.

 If there is any subsoil in the trench, I am going to remove it and put it in the empty compost bin to be mixed in with the compost,.

I am glad the weather is getting colder because it stops me from sowing seeds and planting too early.

Growing medium, compost or just plain soil?

I had an interesting conversation at the weekend, which I am still mulling over.

Most of the commercial seed and potting 'composts' sold nowadays do not have compost in them.  Most of them are peat mixes with such things as perlite, vermiculite, sand and wetting agents like celcote.

Not much compost in them.  So should they be called composts?  I don't think so.

These are growing mediums.    They are sterile, open and water retaining so what is the problem.  Although we might be focusing on growing and gardening, it does not negate consideration of our actions wider implications.  One consideration is the destruction of  peatland habitat by peat extraction.  Maybe it is better to avoid using peat if possible.

Garden composts use sustainable materials and need less transport than growing media.  It is also more fun to make  your  own compost as  we did in the olden days.

I have a very large growing area and covering this with bought growing media is just not viable.  The cost would be astronomical.  Using the two compost bins, I can generate quite a lot of compost and dig it into several of the  beds.  I supplement this with liquid comfrey; a little chicken manure; leaves; blood fish and bone and the free horse manure that is delivered to the allotments.

This has produced some fairly good vegetables for over thirty years now. 

Emptied compost heaps 

Compost heaps filled again

Compost heap growing potatoes and pumpkins.  

Compost nearly ready to go onto the allotment.

This compost  is ready to be used.

Sieved compost being added to the top soil.

I used to make seed and potting composts at the Glasshouse Crops Research Institute.  This was before they developed their peat based growing mediums.

In the olden days soil or old turf was sterilised in large steam boxes. And they were big boxes.  My first job in the glasshouses was to fill and empty the boxes.  The soil was emptied sieved and heaped into a conical pile on the floor of a large barn after sterilisation.  It being the olden days and not knowing any better, peat and inorganic fertilisers were added and mixed  in by shovelling soil from the bottom of the pile to the top. And they were big piles.

When we had done this about ten times the soil was passed through a shredder which threw the soil into a concrete bay.  

Not too sure whether this was compost either.

I grew some really good tomatoes using just the sieved compost from Fred's Mega Compost:
http://tonythegardener.blogspot.com/2011/02/compost-mountain.html

Maybe this is the way to go?  However, I need a steam sterilizer.

Having always gardened using the original soil, I find it very difficult to accept that developing a vegetable garden with growing medium is the right way to go.  I want to garden with the least cost both  financially and environmentally.  I don't want to spend lots of money on something that I can produce for nothing.  Covering my allotment with commercial growing media  is just not a feasible option; it is just too big.

There are another three beds beyond the sweet pea canes

Although there are many types of different growing media and composts, it seems ridiculous to ignore the most valuable resource which an allotment or garden has to offer.   A good well made soil.  

 Good soil  with lots of  well rotted organic matter
incorporated

Soil planted with green manure.  

Undoubtedly, soil preparation and improvement is a major part of success in the vegetable garden. It takes nature about 1000 years to produce 20 mm of soil .  However, adding dead organic matter to the soil and artificially weathering it by digging or rotavating, we can of course increase the amount of top soil available for cultivation quite considerably.

Anthropogenic soil improvement by adding amendments will change the soil relatively quickly, although my soil is only just becoming beautifully friable and highly productive after thirty years of adding organic matter.  I would never suggest that pedogenesis is an easy or quick process that can happen overnight but there are things that gardeners can do to improve the soil for cultivation of vegetables and flowers.

It is difficult to think in three dimensions when considering the environments in which plants live.  The environment of the root is very different to that of the plant's aerial organs.  It is easy to observe the parts of the plant that are above the surface of the soil but underground organs are more of a mystery.  This environment can be studied and analysed for its structure, texture and nutrient content but this does not begin to picture the whole amazing dynamic that is called the soil. 

The soil is an amazing environment that is inhabited by vast numbers of organisms.  In order to survive they must interact with each other competing and cooperating in a dance that allows reproduction to be ensured and the continuation of the species. 

While foraging for water and nutrients, the roots of plants must find methods of protecting themselves from pathogens whilst interacting with symbiotic and helpful organisms.  Although the majority of the soil has a sparse population of microorganisms, there is much activity around the roots of plants and wherever dead organic matter can be found.  Thus a homologous soil with organic matter evenly distributed throughout its three dimensional space will be one with the most active organic life and the best environment for plant roots. 

The natural soil profile is one of layers; an organic layer, a top soil layer, a subsoil layer and the bedrock from which the soil is formed.  It relies on soil organisms to mix the constituents and this is probably why it takes over 1000 years to produce 20 mm of good fertile soil.   However , this is not the totality of types of soil profile and where soil has been mixed as in river silt or settled from dust filled air from a volcano the fertility and organic content can be fairly high throughout the profile. Digging and other forms of cultivation just speed things up a little.  There is no virtue in layering the soil and waiting for nature to mix it for you.  It will take 1000 years...

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.  Afterwards  the amateurs that developed it become evangelical and the gullible see it as some magical method;  following the method’s recipes and instructions as if there were no other ways of cultivating the ground in a sensible way.  It’s 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.  

The raised bed method developed from la culture Maraîchère; the French intensive hot bed method which used horse manure decomposition to create heat and allow crops to be grown throughout the year on raised beds.   Frames and cloches were used to entrap the heat and enable vegetables to be grown even in very cold weather.  The Victorian gardeners copied this but also started to use tan as an alternative. 

I do not think that there is anything magical in the materials that are used to develop these raised beds.  Indeed, filling a raised bed with commercial multipurpose growing media or ordinary garden soil seems to get good results.  Mainly because both materials are either well sieved and mixed or become well mixed during the raised bed construction.    Adding imported sterile commercial growing media that has been mixed and sieved is just the same as digging over your garden but without the effort and with lots of costs both financially and environmentally.  Also this material is neither compost nor soil. The sterility of the growing medium prevents the recycling of nutrients because there are no bacteria, fungi or invertebrate life.  Without this living fraction of the soil, fertility cannot be maintained because there is little to prevent the leaching of nutrients and there is no turning up of nutrients from lower in the soil profile. 

Without intervention, organic matter will accumulate on surface of soil.  Worms incorporate this into the soil’s first few layers. However, they do this relatively slowly so those that do not dig their vegetable plots may experience a lowering of fertility over the years even though they have added organic matter to the surface of the soil.  

Adding organic matter, where nutrients are locked into molecules that can be broken down by saprophytes, produces a long term sustainable process of soil fertility improvement.  It is a slow acting decomposition which does not saturate the soil with leachable nutrient.  What goes in the soil stays in the soil unless it is taken up by plants.

Most gardeners import animal manures, shredded woody material, lawn mowings and leaves to their growing areas.  Although this is a necessity, the environmental and financial cost of these amendments is one of the considerations that has to be taken into account when developing a growing area. 

There are some methods where you start with a layer of news paper to suppress weeds and then cover with compost or other organic material such as straw or hay in layers with some addition of animal 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. 

However, there seems to be little mixing of layers.  This will give relatively high concentrations of nutrients in some parts of the profile, while others have little.  Such efforts to separate the raised bed from the native soil seem perverse.  To produce a viable soil with this method, particularly if it is no dig,  would need worms  to  mix the various layers of the lasagna.   Most raised bed systems start with thick impenetrable layers of weed suppressant material.  Only the most persistent worms would get through that. 

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 with weed suppressing membrane.  However, choose your weeds well because if you have Calystegia sepium or Equisetum arvense, you will not get rid of them this way.  It is always difficult to eradicate these weed, but digging them out does help to reduce their persistence. 

A good garden soil would be one that is homogeneous.  The fertility and organic content should be evenly distributed throughout the profile where it will be equally available to plant roots wherever they are.  This will prevent the roots from bunching around the improved soil in the planting hole and not venturing out into the surrounding soil. 

Sterile commercial growing media (composts) work so well because nutrients, air and moisture are evenly distributed through the sieved and carefully mixed compost.  They are engineered to produce the best results or they would not be able to sell them.

Permanent raised beds need high inputs of water, fertiliser and organic matter to maintain their fertility, just like ordinary garden soil.  The manufacture and transporting of both the raw materials and the final compost product will be dependent on oil.  Also, having to raise everything up to the raised areas makes them time consuming; needing a lot of attention to produce good yields from crowded plants. 

Fungi send out a gossamer candy floss of delicate hyphae that touch all the life in the soil recycling nutrients in an intimate intertwined association that involves most plants.  These are the mychorrhizal fungi. 

Bacteria also form symbiotic associations with the roots of plants allowing nitrogen fixed from the air to be passed to the plants.  Other bacteria fix atmospheric nitrogen and only pass it to the soil when they die or are consumed by some other part of the soil fauna and flora. Should these vital components of soil be disturbed by digging.  

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 allotment gardens. 

I would rather work with native soil which is not sterile and contains high levels of soil organisms such as nitrogen fixing bacteria and mychorrhizal fungi.  Digging is supposed to damage these organisms but they are microscopic and great effort would be needed to damage such small structures. 

Digging does damage some of the larger organisms – particularly the worms and this does need to be taken into account.  However if homemade  compost  is being used to  increase the organic content of the soil then a large population of soil organisms are introduced particularly if it is used as a mulch on top of the dug earth. 

Some commentators say that digging will bring dormant seeds to the surface of the soil; their dormancy will be broken and germination will ensue.  I have dug and not dug and regardless have about the same amount of weeds whatever  I do.  The survival strategy of ephemeral plants is to quickly colonise bare ground by various dispersal mechanisms.  Senecio  vulgaris and Taraxacum officinalis  both have very effective clypsela which are wind blown particularly onto my allotment and I am having to clear them  off continuously.

You are going to have to weed regardless of any strategy that you adopt;  you just have to get over it. Gardening is hard work - but very rewarding.

Mulches and green manures enable the beds to reach high levels of fertility and this can be maintained over many years.  Leaching is reduced and chelating humin, fulvic and humic acids will form complexes  that will entrap minerals in the soil structure.  

Going up or going down does not matter.  Deepening and increasing the fertility of the layer of top soil can be achieved by both.  I have raised my whole allotment about 600 mm above the original ground level and this does seem to improve the drainage.  However I have dug down quite deeply too and broken up the subsoil to quite a depth, adding organic matter, and this might be the main factor in improving the drainage.  Large amounts of organic matter in the form of logs, branches, woody shreddings and leaves have been added to the subsoil in a kind of trench Hugelkulture which might also improve the drainage of the allotment soil. 

Cupressocyparis laylandii shreddings

Mostly Acer pseudoplatinus leaves

Quercus  robur brushwood

Quercus robur branches

Good old farmyard manure.

In my experience adding large amounts of organic matter does seem to improve the fertility of the soil.  It could be conjectured that this is 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.  It is hard to believe that digging would severely deplete the numbers of bacteria in the soil especially if it is combined with adding organic matter.  Hugelkulture, where logs, branches and brushwood are used to make raised beds should really be buried away from the top 300 mm.  of the soil profile.  Trenching and bastard digging allow very high carbon content material to be added to the soil with some success. 

Deep trenches will dispose of large amounts of unwanted organic material.  It can  also be a repository for more pernicious weeds.  While Elymus repens and Urtica dioica can be buried, mare’s tail Equisetum arvense and bind weed Calystegia sepium must be put into the worm bin because they will survive burial even at this depth. 

Logs, branches, brushwood and shredded woody material rots down to a very friable compost after two or three years and this can be incorporated into the tops soil.  While it is rotting down it is forming a sponge like layer that allows water to pass through for drainage; keeping some water as a reservoir for drier periods. 

Tanner’s bark was used in hot beds during Victorian times because it warmed up just like fresh farmyard manure. It  was used in tanning leather.  Mostly oak bark was soaked in hot water to remove tannin and afterwards discarded or given to gardeners.   This woody material was preferred to manure because it kept its heat for up to six months.  Putting shredded woody material under the soil may well have a warming effect too. 

The alternative to burying high carbon material could be to shred it and put on top of the soil as mulch.  It will help to retain top soil moisture and suppress weed seed germination.   However, mulches do attract slugs and snails and may be of more use on mature plants that are not so attractive to these voracious molluscs.  I do not use mulches on vegetable beds until the plants are very mature.  Hoeing is just as good when the plants are immature.  Putting large amounts of decomposing organic matter on the surface of the soil may deplete the nitrogen content of a couple of centimeters of top soil.   

Remember adding carbon reduces nitrogen; adding nitrogen reduces carbon and adding air reduces both.  

Having large reservoirs of carbon deep in the soil may increase the population of beneficial carbon eating microbes like mychorrhizal fungi.  Symbiotic connections could link plants to the decomposing plant material deep in the soil through fungi mycelium.   In order to protect these fungi and other essential microorganisms inoculated charcoal could be added to provide both a protective habitat and  a source of nutrients.   This is what the native South Americans did for thousands of years.  It is the soil called terra preta. 

It is understandable that the repeated addition of inorganic fertilisers would reduce the number of soil organisms by reducing the amount of carbon available to the heterotrophic soil fauna.  However, there are few gardeners that will use inorganic fertilisers to the extent they were used in the past. 

The adding of dead organic matter to the soil also has a number of other benefits that add to the fertility of the soil.  Plants respire as well as photosynthesise.  This means that they take in oxygen as well as carbon dioxide.  As the roots are below the soil they do not have access to light and cannot photosynthesise.  Yet they do respire and need a supply of oxygen from the soil.  Dead organic matter can increase the amount of oxygen that can penetrate the soil by providing air spaces and keeping the soil "open".  In a similar way organic matter can provide a route through the soil for water increasing drainage to avoid water-logging.  As organic matter absorbs water it also provides a reservoir that buffers water-logging and drought. Organic matter and clay are the hooks that enable nutrients to remain in the soil and available to plant roots and mychorrhizal hyphae.  In order to get the maximum benefit from the organic matter added to the soil it should be distributed evenly throughout the profile by digging. 

Mychorrhizal saprophytic fungi form symbiotic associations with plant roots which allows nutrients that are produced by fungal breakdown of dead organic matter to be transported to the plant.  There is some suggestion that these networks of fungal hyphae connect plants with each  other allowing the flow of nutrients and photosynthesis products to move to plants that are compromised because they are in shady or nutrient poor environments.  

I would suggest that my soil is more productive now than it was when I took the allotment on over thirty years ago. A lot of nutrients have been taken off the allotment in the form of vegetables, eaten and disposed of down the sewage system. The reason why it is even more fertile now is due to the addition by digging of dead organic matter in its many forms.  It would never have occurred to me to use growing medium to improve my top soil when I started gardening. Indeed I would have avoided peat because I saw it as an acid medium.    A good load of cow muck was about all that was needed.  I doubt if I could have increased the fertility as much by adding peat based growing mediums even though they are infused with inorganic fertilisers.

You can use any organic matter to produce good soil.  The word organic, in this context, means that which was once alive. (In chemistry it refers to any molecule containing carbon chains.)  There are many lists circulating around the gardening forums.  Regardless of their NPK ratio accuracy, they give a list of things that you can add to the soil or compost heap  that will decompose to give plants nutrients.

Adding any dead organic matter to soil will benefit it.  There is evidence that ancient human settlements can be identified by high phosphate and charcoal levels in the soil.  This leads to a lush growth of plants that has been maintained over many centuries.  I doubt if ancient human civilisations were as selective of the organic matter they buried as modern man is. The self sustaining properties of Terra Preta soils are probably due to an indiscriminate addition of dead organic matter together with charcoal.

Seaweed contains a lot of nutrients - particularly potassium and is a valuable amendment to soil.   So much of our nutrients are sent down the sewers and eventually into the sea. Using seaweed seems to close the cycle so that these nutrients can be returned to the soil.  

There is a suggestion that adding undecomposed organic material could be detrimental to the soil.  This is because micro organisms need nitrogen and forage for this in the soil when they are decomposing organic matter.  Well what goes around comes around.  These organisms will die themselves and decompose in the soil and provide nutrients.  If you are continually adding organic matter into your soil,  then the cycle of decomposition and growth develops a dynamic equilibrium where the level of nutrient in the soil matches the amount being used by living things preventing leaching and locking the nutrients into a sustainable cycle.

If the soil is very compacted then it will need to be double dug to improve the drainage and begin to increase the depth of the top soil. 

Raised beds mean that you don’t have to step onto the bed to cultivate it having access from the many paths around the beds.  The soil is never compacted and is always aerated and well drained. 

Plants need water which they obtain from the soil through their roots.  Roots also obtain dissolved nutrients from the soil and they need energy to do this.  To obtain energy they need to respire using oxygen from the air.  In other words plants need both air and water in the soil.  The more fibrous the structure of the soil the better the relationship between these soil constituents.  Walking on the soil will squash out some of the air.  Walking across wet soil will squash out some of the air and fill the pores with water muddying the soil. 

However, needs must and sometimes you just have to work the soil in wet weather.  Going over the ground that you have walked on with a fork restores the structure and allows air to reenter the ground.  Having said this, common sense says trying to work muddied ground when it is pouring with rain is pointless.  

Soil compaction by the rain is more of a problem in the vegetable garden although taking a hoe through the surface will usually be good enough to allow air to enter the soil. 

When making seed beds you should consolidate the soil by shuffle walking over it to break down the clods of soil and produce a fine tilth.  

The soil can also be compacted by animals like rats, badgers, foxes and the like.  Let’s be honest here, dinosaurs trampled the earth in the past and soils survived.  

The structure of the soil is much more dependent on its organic and mineral content than whether it is walked on.  I have read somewhere that if you get the calcium and magnesium content of the soil just right you can park your car on the soil and it will still be friable.  I would like to try this out before I recommend it – and that will never happen. 

Seedbeds need to be consolidated to conserve water and to ensure good seed soil contact for optimum germination.  This is why you sometimes see farmers using Cambridge rollers to consolidate their land.   I was always taught to shuffle over the soil to consolidate it and then rake it carefully to make a good seed bed.   It would take a very large weight or constant use to squeeze out all the air from soil.  Keeping your soil too fluffy just leads to problems with irrigation.   In any case, plants will grow through concrete – how compacted is that?

How I treat the soil for each of the vegetable types.

There is a science to gardening, however the variety of different soil conditions and environments means that growing plants is more down to knowing and understanding your own small growing area than the generalities of ideal conditions.


Is gardening  more of an art than a science?  Certainly the better you know your local conditions the better you can grow plants.


So all things considered the preparation of the soil for different vegetables probably needs to be changed depending on the plants grown.  I cannot honestly say that I prepare the soil particularly differently for any of my vegetables.  I might get an even better crop if I did but the general strategy is to pack as much carbon into the soil as it will take - and its appetite for carbon seems to be insatiable.


So what different strategies do I use for each of the vegetable beds?


During the winter I marinade charcoal in comfrey liquid.  This infuses the charcoal with nutrient and I add this inoculated charcoal to the planting holes of most of  the vegetables - until it runs out.


I see the peas and beans to be net contributors to the soil fertility.  After cropping they will be dug into the soil to add nitrogen. When I was young I was told that you should cut off the tops of peas and beans and put them onto the compost heap leaving  the roots in the soil. The roots add nitrogen.  This is true but roots only contribute about 30% of the available nitrogen.  60% of the nitrogen is in the stems and leaves of leguminous plants (peas and beans).  So, I dig these into the soil too. This will be done at the end of the year for the roots to get the benefits next year.  


If manure or tree leaves are available I will dig these into the pea and bean bed in the autumn and winter.  I put charcoal and a pinch of mychorrhizal fungi in all of the planting holes.  Together with that, I will water the peas and beans with comfrey, sweet cicely, nettle and worm bin liquid mix during the year.  This year I have been able to put a 50 - 100mm top dressing of good home made, friable compost over the whole area. It is full of weed seeds but I can put up with this because it is also full of nutrients. Chicken manure is sometimes used as a base fertiliser along the rows before planting.  


The comfrey liquid is not scientifically mixed.  Whenever I can crop each of the ingredients, I add them to the digester bins to rot down.  What goes in the bins, stays in the bins.  Everything seems to end as a liquid.


I do not add any farmyard manure or leaves to the brassicae bed.  The bed is given a good dose of lime to prevent the brassicas getting club root (Plasmodiophora brassicae.)  The plants are watered in with comfrey liquid and given charcoal in their planting holes.  The summer brassicas are given comfrey liquid to bring them on during the summer.  The winter vegetables are given nothing because they seem to fair much better if left to fend for themselves.  If you feed Brussel sprouts too much, the buds will "blow" or open out before they can be harvested.
Cauliflowers and cabbages do like to have nitrogen in the soil and this is added in the form of chicken or pigeon manure during the winter or early spring.  


The onion bed gets as much organic matter as I can find.  That is farmyard or horse manure, leaves, grass mowings, weeds etc.  The onions seem to relish lots of organic matter in the soil.  This is another bed that I covered with a top dressing of home made compost.  Great stuff except that it has a lot of weed seeds in it.  When planting, I put charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi in the planting holes.  The onions are watered with comfrey during the year but the solution is very dilute. Onions do  not like too much nitrogen in the soil.  The do require a damp root run and just watering will do this more than adequately.  Really, for my rotation system, I should be liming the onions to keep the pH quite high -to about 6.5 to 7.5.  I will do this in 2012.


The potato bed had quite a lot of horse manure and leaves dug into it last autumn.  They were planted with charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi.  They have had nothing else.  I have not even watered them.  If pigeon or chicken manure is available then that is used on the potatoes as well.  


The roots did not have anything dug into their soil except the old bean and pea haulms; grass mowings and weeds.  This will avoid the problem with forking that manure stimulates.  I put comfrey liquid in the sowing drills and a little mychorrhizal fungi.  That is all that they have had this year.  I have watered them  during the very dry weather.


And that is it more or less.  So if you do this for 30 years or so you will get an allotment as good as mine.  


I cropped the garlic yesterday and it has white rot in some of the bulbs.  I had to throw away about 6 of them.
The others are drying in the store shed.
I harvested one large lettuce, some American land cress and some spinach.


The weather is still particularly cold and this is preventing the vegetables from growing.  There is no point in worrying about this because nothing can be done.


There are more strawberries ready to be picked.    You can certainly eat too many strawberries.

Started sowing seeds

I pricked out the Bedfordshire Champion onions and the Webb's Wonderful lettuce.  I will do the Alisa Craig onions tomorrow. The Early Onward pea seeds were planted in those trays with little divisions.  These ones had 60 sections and I used three of them just for one packet of seed.  I am going to space the pea seedlings a little further apart on the allotment this year.  I think that I put them a little too close together usually.

I decided to plant the autumn sown sweet peas in the allotment.  I had already put up the canes for them so they were planted with a little mychorrhizal fungi and inoculated charcoal.  There was still some noticeable amounts of charcoal that I used for the onions last year lying on the surface of the soil.  I think that the frost makes stones rise to the surface and this is what happened to the charcoal.  I just collected it up and put it into the planting holes with the rest.

I got quite a few Oban Bay sweet peas to survive the winter and they made up the majority of these seedling.  Others were Anniversary, Charlie's Angels, White Supreme, Charlie's Angels and Dynasty. There were about 17 plants in all.  I watered them in with some comfrey liquid diluted with rain water.  I always seem to be taking home dirty pots and trays so this time I decided to wash them all in the water butt by the tap.  The water is not on yet but some people are planting and they have asked for it to be put on again.

I took the dead brassicae off the top bed and put them in plastic bags to bring home.  Then I thought that I might well put these at the bottom of the trench in the new allotment.  So I left them on one of the compost heaps.  The compost on this bed is a little rougher than the compost I put onto the onion bed.  I had not reached the bakers tray sieve in my excavations of the mega compost heap so none of this compost was sieved .  It needed digging in and now that the Brussel sprouts and the purple sprouting broccoli had been taken off there was a great deal more room for digging.  I dug and forked all the bed and then raked it to get rid of any stone.  There was some glass in the compost.  I just cannot get away from the stuff.

I have only once got seriously cut by broken glass on the allotment.  I got a glass splinter stuck down the side of my thumb nail.   I got it out but it could have been a lot more dangerous.  My allotment is regularly covered in cow and horse manure which contains a great number of potentially very dangerous bacteria like tetanus.  I do not want that injected into my thumb.  This is why I always take any glass shards, no matter how big they are, off the allotment.

 More sweet pea canes were put up before I came home.  The digging has taken its toll and I am very tired now.     

The decision is not to dig the compost in.

I still double dig but my allotment would be waterlogged if I didn't. It has two springs on it. The only way to divert the water is to raise the allotment and double dig, putting brushwood in the trenches. I also have two drainage pipes and 3 soak aways leading into a drainage pipe that goes alongside the allotment. 

I think that there is benefit in double digging when you first take over an allotment.  You can bury an awful lot of weeds if you do it properly.  This must be a better way of retaining nutrients than burning. 

 If you put your manure at the bottom of your second spit then it is less available to your vegetable plants.  The way that the Victorians did it was to double dig every year and put the manure in the top most trenches, so that the manure nutrients would be brought to the surface in the second year.

Whenever I can avoid digging then I will. Forking or hoeing the top of the soil seems to be as effective as digging with a spade.  If it is available then I will cover the soil with manure and allow the worms to mix it in over the winter.  You can also do the no dig method with compost heap compost or leaf mould. 

 If you are following the blog you will know that I am putting the mega compost heap compost on the top of two of my vegetable beds and I am thinking whether it is worthwhile digging it in.  When I am sieving the compost I am also on the lookout for earthworms.  The majority are in the roots and rhizomes of the weeds growing on the compost.  I get hundreds of worms and put them in the sieved compost.  I am hoping that they will do the job of mixing in the compost to the top six inches of the allotment soil. 

My soil is not compacted at all so it does not need loosening or air putting into it. There are no weeds on my allotment as you can see from the photographs but if there were it might be a reason for digging. 

I think that the no dig method makes your soil more friable than digging it.  There is some suggestion that digging destroys the micro organism soil community within the soil.  I have some sympathy with this because in dug soil there is little evidence of mychorrhizal fungi aiding plants to grow healthily.  While the numbers of invertebrates - millipedes, centipedes, spiders and beetles increases in undug soil.  

There is some suggestion that you should avoid digging because it brings weed seeds to the surface and you get a bloom of weeds just when you want to plant.  Well, I have gardened every which way and no matter what I do I get a flush of weed seeds germinating in April to May time.  You just cannot avoid it.  Every year I have to get down on my knees and hand weed between the rows.  Even with a thick mulch of manure or compost, I still have to do this - digging or not. 

I have a tarpaulin over some of the allotment soil and the worms have been having a field day underneath it.  The soil is particularly friable and will make a really good tilth for seeds to germinate in; particularly as it now has the compost spread over it.  So I don’t think that I will dig this area. 

I still say that you cannot avoid digging when you are cropping.  There is no way that I am going to believe that I have removed all the little potatoes until I have thoroughly dug over the potato bed.  They are a pest to get out when you have planted something like onions and they start growing between them.  

When is clean too clean?

I am in two minds about whether we should keep seed compost sterile or not.

Several people suggested that I use the mega compost heap compost to make up a mix to plant seeds into.  Well   the probability is that this mega compost heap has never heated up enough for seeds to be killed off.  So using it will mean that there will be a lot of weed seed germination.

As weed seeds would probably grow faster than the vegetable seeds,  competition and crowding out would mean that vegetable seed germination may be very disappointing.

We used to use a big steamer when I worked at the Glasshouse and Crops Research Institute.

We steamed the loam and mixed it with peat in the proportions that the scientists wanted.  It was mixed in a big pile by hand - I know cus I was there.  It is where I learnt my mixing techniques.  We also threw it through a massive shredder.  I had muscles the size of footballs when I eventually left that job.   I suppose if I had access to a good steamer to sterilise the compost heap compost then it could be a very good  seed compost or at least the main ingredient of one.

Using things like leaf mould is better because this is a little more sterile than compost heap compost.  Peat is sterile and that is why it is used in commercial seed composts.

It is important for the seed to germinate within a soil community so that it can build a good immune system.  Possibly this is more important to plants than it is to animals.

Now I still maintain that there is a need to keep all the pots and trays washed and clean.  The build up of diseases and pests in the remains of compost at the bottom of discarded pots could be the source of such things as damping off and mildew.  I would use a fairly insipid chemical like soap rather than the powerful petrochemicals that are made into fungicides.

There is a place for cleanliness especially in the greenhouse but that may not have to extend to the seed and potting compost.  As Percy Thrower used to say, a tidy clean garden is a good garden and I, in the face of such gardening excellence, would never presume to disagree.

Photographs of the mega compost heap.

Corner of the mega compost heap.

These are some pictures of the mega compost heap.  Mixed in are various assorted plastic bags and nets.

I had taken out most of the centre of the heap although there was a lot left.  I took another four barrow loads today and put them on the area where I am going to plant lettuce and Florence fennel.

Top of the compost cliff

However, once you have sieved out all the rubbish, the compost is ideal.










It is hardly believable that with a little sieving we can get  really good compost like this.

After getting more than enough compost - it is about 10 cm deep over the whole of this bed and the pea and bean bed - I wanted to think about whether I needed to fork the compost in.

While I had a think, I put up some more of the sweet pea canes.

They look neat don't they.  Probably the last time that will happen.
They are running north south so that both sides get some sun.  I haven't grown them north south since I first started to grow them seriously four years ago.  It means that the plants do not get the full blast of the sun at midday.  I think that sweet peas like cooler temperatures really.  This year I am only growing those sweet peas that are known as exhibition plants.

In the foreground you can see the stump of my old family plum tree.  It really should come out but I have planted so many bulbs around it that digging a big hole would disturb them.   I am just going to leave it until it gets in my way somehow.  The cyclamen are still flowering away but the species iris have gone over now.  A spectacular show, but over so quickly.

These are the climbing French bean poles.  I am using silver birch branches rather than canes.  I don't think that there is any difference at all but these are free while the canes are quite expensive.  The flowers on the bottom left are aubrietia, which have just started to flower today.  Now lots of people would say that making a triangular frame is not as good as making a vertical frame.  They keep telling me that the plants will get all tangled at the tops when both plants grow together.  Air will be excluded and disease will be encouraged.  I have never had disease at the tops of my beans or the sweet peas.  If you leave the top and not pinch out the leading stems when they reach the top of the poles then you will get a mass of growth at the top of the canes.  So I pinch out the stems that reach the top.  This encourages fruiting side shoots to grow and I get a heavier crop.
The sweet peas will not be left to over grow the top.  I will try to layer them down this year.  It was not very successful last year because the stems and leaves got a lot of mildew on them.  I think this is because I was growing them east to west and one side got a lot less sun.
The advantage of the triangular construction is that it is particularly strong and stable.  We have some high winds up on top of the hill, which knock down a lot of the bean rows.  A strong structure makes this less likely to happen.

The alternative method of putting canes up

Fiddling around making a cross piece for the main supports is not what I am good at. It is easier to wire one cane to the main supports and then lean the canes onto that.  Having said that, I do think that vertical canes are a bit better and give you healthier plants.

But that is how I do it. And it was the way my father and grandfather did it so I will be keeping with the traditions of my family...

Still getting the compost Tony.

The soil temperature was 5^oC  today at 1o'clock this afternoon.  There was a very cold wind blowing and I needed to get myself warm.

I decided to go and get some more compost from the mega compost heap.  Even more friable good compost was recovered and taken to my old brassicae bed.  I think that I took about 4 heaped barrow loads.  It hasn't made much of an impact on the compost heap though. 

Here is a good composting website:
http://www.weblife.org/humanure/chapter3_12.html

I was going to take a photograph of the wall of compost and I tidied it up like "Time Team" but it was too blooming cold and I forgot to go back when I had cleared up.  So no photograph yet.

I used the cultivator claw to pull all the compost across the bed so that it would be easier to dig it in.

Then I put some more of the bean poles up.  I am using thick wire and pliers to tie them up.  We get some powerful winds so I don't want the beans to be blown over.  I'd done about four poles when the heavens opened and a lot of water rained down on me.

Needless to say, the stream  reappeared on the trackway and is cheerfully flowing down to the carpark.

So no point in staying at the allotment watching everything get very wet.  I came home and had a nice cup of tea.

Compost heap wild life.

Soil temperature was a heady 9^oC at 12o'clock today.  Now don't let that go to your head because it is still February and a lot of winter could still be infront of us.  

I moved about 6 barrow loads of compost from the mega compost heap today.  Lovely friable stuff that spread out really well on my allotment.  Whenever you get a compost heap that has been neglected like this there is always the possibility that you will find that it has been inhabited by larger wildlife.  Why is it that rat tunnels and nests are always so dry?  And they are characteristic in that they always contain loads of shredded plastic bags and that is what this one had.

Now I had to  make the decision whether or not to carry on taking the compost or to leave it due to safety thoughts.  I had no worries about the rat attacking me because it was long gone before I even reached the rat tunnel.  I was more worried about getting an infection from rat urine.

I had my gauntlet garden gloves on so infection from rat urine was unlikely.  The compost was going to be spread on the soil where urease is one of the most common enzymes.  Seems sensible because there is always some animal or other peeing about somewhere.  So I was not really worried about the compost either.  Finally, I decided to carry on regardless.  This made me think about the contribution larger animals have to the composting process.  Adding chewed up pieces of plastic bags does not seem to be that valuable to the composting process though. However, allowing oxygen to penetrate deep into the centre of a big heap like this must help in allowing aerobic decomposition.

There are some parts of gardening that are just plain boring both to do and to write about.  Shifting compost is one of them.  Eventually, I thought that I needed to do something else so I put up the poles for the climbing french beans.

Compost mountain.

Soil temperature at 12o'clock today was 7^oC


A mate of mine on the allotment said that I could have some of his compost heap.  This heap is about 6 feet tall and 15 feet long.  It is a monster of a compost heap.  It is obviously a compost heap that was neglected and forlorn because , as soon as I started to dig into it, I found various buried plastic trays, tubs, pots and other miscellaneous gardening paraphernalia.  It is reportedly about thirteen years old at the bottom.

Mega compost heap

The top and sides were covered in a mat of couch grass and bindweed rhizomes and they had to be removed before the friable, clean compost could be reached.  Now I can tell you that this compost has never been turned, layered, or otherwise mollycoddled, yet it was as good, if not better than, carefully crafted compost. 

Theory would have it that this compost, which continually grows through addition of extra material, should be a putrefying mess of foul smelling goo.  Compaction and water logging should have produced an anaerobic compost heap.  It is not foul smelling, slimy or putrefying.  

Why?

As I have said, it would be very difficult to produce compost that does not contain at least some pockets of anaerobic respiration; it would also be difficult to make compost that does not have any oxygen at all.  The one noticeable characteristic of this 6 foot mega compost heap is the number and variety of small animals that inhabit all parts of it.  I can testify to this because I have been up close and seriously eye ball to eye ball with them on a large cliff face of compost. 

It is unnecessary to list all the creatures that make compost their habitat; however worms could be found throughout the heap.  The role of these invertebrates in keeping a supply of oxygen throughout the compost and allowing aerobic decomposition to take place cannot be overstated.  They cannot be ignored when considering composting on allotments and in heaps that are more mounds of rotting material rather than pristine compost bins. 

It is truly unrealistic to imagine that people working full time  can possibly have enough time to turn their compost every week and it is unnecessary particularly if you can reliably leave it to the invertebrates – particularly the worms – to do it for you. 

I hear a "compost turning" myth exploding…


I took about 6 barrowloads of compost and put them onto the new pea bed spreading it out so that it covered a lot of the soil.  I will dig it in when I take out last years brassicas.  

After getting myself thoroughly tired, I decided to call it a day and take the bean poles out of the store shed and leave them where I will put them up for the climbing french beans.  


There was still a pile of rhubarb roots on Mike's allotment, which he did not want so I thought that it might be an idea to put them into the shed now that there was a little room in there and force them. They were already shooting so I think that they might give me some good stems later in the spring.  It is quite dark in that shed.  


The new sweet pea seedlings are just poking themselves through the compost today.

Composting woody material Montezuma method and Hugelkulture

I think that a lot of misconceptions are being perpetuated by people that see composting more as a crusade rather than just a method of recycling.  There are some reasons why good well made compost was valued in the past. It was used in various mixes to make seed and potting compost.  Fine grained well rotted material was needed to produce this.  Woody material was avoided because it did not rot down very quickly and tended to reduce the level of nutrient in the compost.  The main decomposers of woody material are the fungi and they send out foraging hyphae that glean nitrogen and other nutrients to make the fungi’s structure. The extent of nitrogen depletion in soils with buried woody material seems to be questionable and the results of experiments are not very clear.  It would seem that sometimes there is relatively little nitrogen loss. 


We must also not loose sight of the fact that invertebrates also have an important role in the decomposition of woody material and these organisms would add to nitrogen to the soil when they die.   

A few years ago I downsized the amount of land I cultivated and this meant that I resented any space that was not being utilized for crop growing.  I made the decision to bury all my waste plant material rather than compost it so that I could dismantle the compost bins and use the area for planting. 

So I have, for many years, been burying woody plant material in order to recycle it and not have to burn it.  I call it the Montezuma method because the South American native civilizations used it to make their gardens on lakes, on mountains and in most inhospitable and infertile areas.  Chinampas were developed using woody material to produce growing platforms that sludge could be put onto to raise the level of the Chinampas above the water of  lakes.   These gardens were very productive and some are still in existence today.   Ancient civilizations throughout South America used similar brush wood techniques to produce terracing on steep sided mountains.  Not only did the brush wood rot down to produce very friable soil but it also helped in drainage and moisture retention. 

A composting method that is similar to the South American method is the Hugelkultur.  It is an old form of composting that was developed in Eastern Europe.  Brushwood either fresh or beginning to rot was gathered into a pile or put into a pit, covered with other compost material like tree leaves, and  finally a layer of soil was used to cover the pile.  The permaculturists suggest that the soil could be planted immediately with a variety of quick growing vegetables.

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/08/03/the-art-and-science-of-making-a-hugelkultur-bed-transforming-woody-debris-into-a-garden-resource/

I bury my logs and brushwood much deeper for several reasons.  If fungi are rotting down the wood, I would like them to glean any of the nitrogen that has leached from the top soil because then I might have some opportunity to recycle it into the top soil when I dig deeply again. The brushwood’s ability to absorb moisture from the soil and then allow it to return to the soil in a more controlled way means that deep rooted plants like runner beans will have a source of water throughout the growing season.    It also means that cultivation of the top soil is relatively easy because digging over an area that is full of brushwood would be difficult. 

Only incomplete information about the factors that influence the decomposing activity of fungi and bacteria has been gleaned for wood, however moisture content, oxygen concentration, acidity, temperature and nutrient concentrations – especially nitrogen - seem to all play their role.  

The degradation of these woody carbon sources initially does not require the production of lignin degrading enzymes.  However, in the later stages of decomposition the ligno-cellulose matrix in wood is attacked by slow growing saprotrophic (an organism that feeds by absorbing dead or decaying organic matter) lingo-cellulolytic fungi.  These fungi are able to decompose lignin using extra cellular enzymes allowing them access to previously inaccessible cellulose and hemicelluloses. 

When nitrogen, in an available form, is added to a pile of woody material there is usually an elevated respiration or a loss in mass.  This might be down to relief of nitrogen as a limiting factor for opportunistic fungi and bacteria. 

Nevertheless, other research found that there was no effect when nitrogen was added giving unclear data about how nitrogen affects wood decay.  The variable responses to the addition of nitrogen may well be due to the different populations of bacteria and fungi.  As bacteria are more efficient in using nitrogen, it is suggested that they will have a greater response to the addition of nitrogen.  High levels of nitrogen lead to increases in the growth of microorganisms probably because less energy is expended in foraging. 

We must remember and take into account that woody material is nitrogen poor and fungi have developed strategies to deal with this limited amount of nitrogen.  Unfortunately for us, Tone, one of these methods is to translocate soil nitrogen via hyphae in the soil to the wood leading to soil nitrogen poverty for other plants.

Bacterial growth is greater on small sized particles of woody material probably because they have relatively large surface areas, which make close contact with nitrogen in the soil.  The larger the wood fragment on the top of the soil the more likely it is to favour fungi, possibly because the wood might be more difficult for the bacteria to reach.

There was more fungal biomass in large woody fragments than in small ones.  The rate of decomposition was always greater in larger pieces of wood than in smaller pieces.  More bacteria were found in smaller wood pieces possibly because they could not make their way into large solid pieces of wood.  It could be suggested that fungi grew better in large pieces of wood because there was less competition from bacteria.  Bacteria produce a great number of antibiotic compounds that prevent fungi from exploiting a food source, while fungi also produce an armoury of chemicals that hinder bacteria. 

It seems that buried wood develops more fungal growth and cellulase and hemicellulase enzyme activity than surface wood.  Early decomposition is begun by opportunistic cellulolytic fungi with a definite movement of nitrogen from the soil to the wood.

Addition of nitrogen to the wood gave an increase in the rate of decay and fungal growth.  Nevertheless, over longer time periods the difference between bacteria given nitrogen and those that had none became much less distinct.  When nitrogen was added to small woody fragments there was an initial drop in the bacteria population, which wore off over time.  This suggests that fungi are favoured  when nitrogen is added to woody material buried in the soil.

The higher rate of decay in nitrogen rich soils may be due to more efficient microbial decomposition or different communities of fungi that are more efficient at decomposition but also have a higher nitrogen demand. 

The effects of lignin decomposing fungi are seen later in the process and this decay is relatively much slower.  Lignin is difficult to degrade and prevents access to other cell wall components.  Lignin is a complex polymer of phenyl propane elements, which have cross links to each other with a variety of different chemical bonds.  The initial break down of lignin is undertaken by white rot fungi which produce extracellular lignin and manganese peroxidases.  This process is aerobic and in anaerobic conditions lignin can persist for a long time.

Adding a small amount of nitrogen to woody material often increases the rate of decomposition.   Further additions of nitrogen did not increase decomposition rate any further. 

There is confusing data about the immobilization of nitrogen due to the addition of woody fragments into the soil.  Some research has shown no nitrogen immobilization and growth retardation while others have shown marked immobilization and greater effects.