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.

Potatoes neither like nor dislike lime.

I think that it is safe to say that potatoes do not have emotions.  They neither like nor dislike lime.

The addition of lime to a potato bed seems to be associated with potatoes getting scab.  Scab is a raised unsightly blemish on the potato skin.  Streptomyces scabies seems to be the organism that produces scab and this appears to live in more alkaline soils.  Lime makes soil more alkaline (raises the pH).

These organisms, that resemble fungi, only infect the surface skin of the potatoes and do not grow into the centre.  So I eat potatoes infected by Streptomyces scabies  and have done so for years.  Most of the time I peel off the outer skin of potatoes anyway.  I tend to avoid the scabby ones when making baked potatoes.

The most that can be said about growing potatoes in soil with a relatively low pH is that the skins will probably be more smooth and "shop like".  The taste will be exactly the same as potatoes growing in a soil that has a relatively high pH. I don't think that scab overtly alters the size and quality of the potato.

If you are growing for exhibition then the state of the potato skin is important and a low soil pH would be essential  but how many of us are exhibition growers?

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.

You might think that digging over the potato bed has become a long term project.

Still doing a prodigious amount of cropping.  A good harvest this year.

Now you might think that I am taking an interminably long time digging over the potato bed but you are disregarding the opportunity of putting a lot of unwanted stuff in the bottom of a large trench.  If you take out a trench about 2ft wide and 2 ft deep then you can bury an awful lot of stuff in it.  However, I think that I have overdone it a little again.  I have a lot of tourists from the rest of the allotment site coming to look into my trench and ask how much higher I am going to make the allotment beds.

Double digging

I would take a photograph if I hadn't lost my camera.  That just reminded me to look for it again and I have found it in my desk draw, so there may be a picture.  I just need to remember to take some photographs now. The allotment has started to look a little untidy because a lot of vegetables have been harvested and I have not been able to plant green manures - because I have been double digging the potato bed.

It has been taking me so long because I have been looking around the allotment for things to bury while I have a big trench to put them in.  I have buried all of the three year old strawberries and, while I was at it, I planted some of the stolon offsets  in three inch pots using bought peat free compost.  I am going to move the strawberry patch up to where the brassicas are now. They don't seem to survive under a canopy of potato foliage and that is what is going to be planted in the strawberry and roots bed next year.  It helps to sort the strawberries out if I move them.  I can put them into neat rows about 1ft apart, give them a little fertiliser in the form of comfrey inoculated charcoal and maybe a little mychorrhizal fungi. They really  need to be moved now  because I want them settled in before the weather gets too cold.  I'll move them with a large clump of soil so that they will not get too much of a shock and plant them immediately.  I usually get a good crop of strawberries even when treating them like this.  I am hoping to get at least two rows of brand new plants from the plantlets in the pots.

I also cut out the old fruited raspberry canes, cut them up and put them in the trench.  I had several of the canes that grew over seven feet tall.  Is there something about this height of plant and my allotment?  The pink fir apples were this length as well but they were flopping over each other so they did not look 7ft tall.

So I will say again there is absolutely no substance in the internet myth that raspberries and potatoes should not be planted close together.  The only disadvantage that I can see is that the raspberries may shade the potatoes and even this can be alleviated if the raspberries are planted north to south as mine are.

The new raspberry canes were tied onto several wires stretched across the row.  I have three tree stakes, one at each end and one in the middle, holding up the row and two bamboo canes,  got from the inside of rolls of carpets, tied across the top.  Putting the canes across the tops helps to stop the tree stakes from leaning in when the wires are tightened.  Although you don't need to, I reduced the tops to about six inches above the bamboo canes.  I don't need to be greedy  and the unsupported tops will probably break off during the winter anyway.

I don't know how but perennial hedge bind weed, Calystegia sepium  a pernicious weed, reared its ugly head in the raspberries.  There was nothing for it but to take three raspberries out and dig around until all the bindweed rhizomes were discovered and removed.  I doubt that I have found them all so there will be a continuing battle to remove it all over the next few years.  The raspberries are right next to the path so I think that I may have to lift the slabs to see if rhizomes have gone under them.  This is where I put that 3ft x 2ft two inch thick beggar of a concrete slab, which I vowed never to move again, and I am not really inclined to give it another opportunity to fall on my foot.

I replanted the raspberry canes straight away not giving the roots time to dry out and then watered them in with rainwater.  The shed butt has nearly filled up over the last week or so now that it has rained a little.  Several of the canes were ones that I kept from the old row.  These were given to me in 1982 when I took over the allotment and they were a diverse range of raspberry varieties.  I thought that I had only kept the best ones but it seems that one of the varieties I kept produces very small raspberries.  They taste pleasantly sweet but they are very time consuming when picking so I decided not to replant this raspberry and plant another that a fellow allotmenteer  had given me.  I am not sure of the variety.  It was only one plant but I am told that it begins to fruit in July and carries on until the autumn.  Needless to say, it did not fruit at all  this year.

I healed in some Autumn Bliss next to the tap butt last year and they are producing raspberries now but I do not have any room to put them with the other raspberries.  They don't seem to grow as large as the summer fruiting raspberries so I think that I will keep them apart.

I went down the trackway cutting back the hedges and the trees overhanging.  These trimmings went into the bottom of the trench as well.  There is an oak tree that is beginning to shade my allotment with its overhanging branches so I would like to get up a ladder and take them off.  If I do they will go into the bottom of the trenches too.

The next thing I did was to cut out the fruited canes of the blackberry.  It has done very well this year so I am keen on training next years fruiting stems onto the climbing frame supports.  This will prevent the stems from being blown about in the wind and getting damaged. I might buy another blackberry so that I can say to my daughter I have a brand new blackberry and it only cost me a few quid.  Much better than an iphone.

The cabbages that were left over have gotten rather moth eaten - or rather slug eaten, so I decided to take these out and put them in the trench.  I cut off the roots because I never bury them and took them home to put into the green bin.  There were some with club root which I think has come from the compost from the compost mountain.  This has taught me a lesson - do not take home made compost from alien allotments -just in case. Please note I am not being jingoistic - all allotments except my own are foreign and I should have remembered my rule of not accepting plants, compost or soil from other allotments.

The cabbage tops went into the bottom of the trench with all the other unwanted organic matter.  Some of my part rotted compost went on top and then the bottom spit of soil was replaced with the good topsoil on top of that.
If all that woody material does take nitrogen out of the soil then I don't care at this depth because it is much lower than my top soil.  My own brand of Hugelkultur...

Now I have a problem.  I am running out of things to bury so I am resorting to the shreddings left in the bins by the front gate.  They are mostly laurel shreddings but there are other hedge plants in there as well.  It is all grist to the mill.

You might be wondering why I dig deep trenches two spits down and fill them with woody material.  I could tell you that this is to improve the drainage of the allotment,  or to introduce a large amount of carbon to the soil which can be incorporated into the upper layers  when it has decomposed, or to prevent this material from being burnt and releasing valuable nutrients to the atmosphere or a number of other very valid reasons.

But the truth of it is, I just like digging big holes.

Finishing off the supports for the newly planted peas.

I've finished putting up the chicken wire supports for the Kelvedon Wonder peas.  They haven't grown on as fast as I would like since I planted them but I reckon they will do ok.  The peas have settled in quite well and the dryish weather has not made them wilt.  I did put a watering can of water on each row and this seems to have helped.  I did not use any comfrey liquid so I can see what effect just watering with water has on the plants.  Will they grow as large as the Early Onward?

The sweet peas growing up the climbing French bean supports have really taken over and are shading both the climbing and the dwarf French beans.  As I have not had time to take off the flowers that have gone over there were a lot gone to seed.  I decided to cut them down as far as I could so that light could reach the beans. I gave the whole bed a good hoe to remove any weeds although there weren't that many.

After this, I started to take some more potatoes out.  I filled one of the plastic baskets, which was about half a row, and took them up to be washed.  I like to wash the potatoes at the allotment so that any top soil remains on the allotment and not going down the drain at home.  Several of the potatoes had little round holes in them and when they were cut open the insides were riddled with tunnels.  This is slug damage but I only found one of the beggars in a potato.

The trouble is that if you store potatoes with slugs in them they tend to burrow into others.  This means that the whole bag of potatoes can become useless.

There were only three or four potatoes that had  tunnels within the potato.  They would not store well even with the slug extracted so I put them into the worm bin.

I harvested beetroot - mainly Boltardy, carrots, courgettes, runner beans, climbing French beans and the outdoor tomatoes.  This is the first year ever I have been able to grow outdoor tomatoes.

I talked to Fred for a bit and I remarked on how large his sunflower flowers were.  They were self sown and so were the ones on my allotment.  They grew from the bird seed I had been putting out.  The point is, when ever have sunflowers been able to self seed in this country?  That one crept up on me without me knowing.  Twenty years ago, growing sunflowers involved sowing indoors.  Then carefully planting after the frosts.

There are parts of the allotment that are particularly dry while others where the soil is quite moist.  The moist areas are probably where the springs are. I am going to continue to add lots of organic matter to the soil to increase its water holding capacity.   My next door neighbour allotment holder said that I could have  a large pile of weeds she had taken out.  These will be dug into the potato bed.  When I have packed this organic matter into the soil, I will plant winter green manures to be dug in next spring.  I have grazing rye, winter tares and clover to plant.

I may also plant some winter salad leaves on the old potato bed too.  I was going to plant some carrots but I have far too many with the ones I already have so there is no point in sowing more carrots.  I am going to plant lamb's lettuce, rocket, spinach, chard and American land cress instead.  This will see me through the winter I think.

Tomorrow I will take some photographs of the allotment.  It is a bit untidy this time of year because a lot of things are being harvested leaving large areas of bare soil.  I am endeavouring to make sure that I cover the soil this year.  I will mainly be using green manure to do it.

Garden maintenance

The onion bed needed weeding so I started with the onions and worked across the bed.  I find that doing this systematically gets it finished very quickly.  I used the onion hoe to weed between the plants.  It is a very useful tool.


It is a handy tool that allows you to earth up the leeks as well as hoe the weeds.  I don't always hoe up the leeks but if you do it will give you more blanched leaf than if you just leave them.

I had a different tool for many years which was more or less an oval blade but it eventually  wore itself out. I did like it because it was very efficient getting weeds out.

I was going to feed the onions but I didn't want to take the weeds off.  They would wither away in the hot sun if I just left them on top of the soil.  Watering would only help them to recover and start to grow again.  I will leave it until tomorrow.

I took out a couple of lettuces that had gone over and put them in the worm bin.  I didn't think that there would be any worm liquid after I had cleared the bin out, however there was quite a bit.  I put this into the comfrey bin without a tap.  It will go through and get some comfrey liquid with it.  I am using the liquid from this bin to put into the dustbin with the charcoal.  It is pretty concentrated because I have not put any water into this bin.  I am hoping to get some powerful inoculated charcoal.  I would like to keep this charcoal marinading in comfrey mixture until next year if possible.  The I will use it on all the vegetables.

I tied up the tomatoes that I planted on the onion bed.  I just noticed that the potatoes might have blight so I will probably loose all the tomatoes.  We shall see.

I gave the runner beans and the sweet peas another feed with comfrey liquid.  The sweet peas are beginning to recover from being layered and producing some really big flowers.

There was a handful of runner beans to be picked and the stems that had reached the top of the cane supports needed pinching out.  If you pinch out the growing tips of the runner beans when they reach the top of the canes it makes them produce more side shoots.  The more side shoots, the more flowers so it is worth doing if only to prevent the top of the canes becoming overcrowded and top heavy.  When this happens the whole row could topple over especially as we have some wicked winds at the top of the hill.

I have taken out another row of potatoes.  Got a barrow load from twelve plants. Not sure of the weight because I have not weighed them yet.

I washed the potatoes so they are looking quite good at the moment.  They were washed for a couple of reasons.  There is no point in bringing best topsoil home and washing the soil off them only to go down the drain.  If the potatoes are washed in a tub at the allotment then I can put the soil back on the potato bed.  The dirty water was poured around the tomato plants on the potato bed.  Secondly, any slugs and snails will be washed off the potatoes and not be put into the store paper bags to reek havoc while the potatoes are stored.

I started cutting the old fruiting raspberry canes out because they have gone over now and all the strawberries have been picked.  This is a summer fruiting variety with a very sweet taste.  The old canes apart from having the fruiting branches are also very dark brown while the new ones are usually quite green.  This means that it is quite easy to identify the old canes and cut them out.  I tied most of the new canes to the support wires but I will have to make sure they are fastened securely but I will do this when I take the Pink Fir Apple potatoes out and I can get down the other side of the row.  I might have to take the potatoes out sooner than I expected because they might have blight.  I was going to glean the old raspberry canes for any fruit left on them but there was very little and what there was had been spoilt by the rain.

More blackberries were ready for picking and I took off quite a few.  With a few beetroot, carrots and the last of the summer cauliflowers I had quite a car full when I was going home.  All the summer cauliflowers had club root and if they did it was probably in the seed.  However, cabbage root fly also makes the cauliflower root swell.  It probably was cabbage root fly (Delia radicum) rather than club root (Plasmodiophora brassicae.)  I have not had club root on the brassicas for years now.

Pink Fir Apple potatoes.

Soil temperature today was  4^oC I told you not to let that  9^oC go to your head.  I think that the soil temperature will be up and down during all of March.  It is better to wait and plant in the greenhouse so that I don't loose any seeds.

There has been very poor germination from the Bedfordshire Champion onions.  I will prick out the ones that have germinated and plant them.  There are about four or five germinated out of the whole packet.  Still they were at least one year old.

I bought some pink fir apple potatoes from the allotment shop today and guess what they were JBA potatoes. http://www.jbaseedpotatoes.co.uk/catalogue.html
I wasn't going to grow these this year because I did not have room.  I will grow them instead of the Epicure. I put the pink fir apples in the greenhouse to chit in egg trays. It seems that JBA has sold out of pink fir apples now.

Picked some more of the Brussels sprouts and brought them home.  I will wash and peel those tomorrow because I got home too late today.

The seedlings in the greenhouse are all right although they need to be watered.  I don't really want to water them because it may make them rot off at the base.  I will water them on the first warmish day we have.  They will survive until then.
Virtually all the new sweet pea seeds have germinated.  I might buy all the sweet peas seeds from Simply Seeds next year.

I put some of the compost mountain onto the onion bed.  I might just spread it on the top because I have not dug this area since the potatoes were dug out.

Do potatoes need a concentrated NPK fertiliser?

I have to keep reminding myself of this: N - Nitrogen: promotes the growth of leaves and vegetation P - Phosphorous: promotes root growth K - Potassium: promotes flower and fruit growth I know that the biochemistry is much more complicated than this but this is good enough for me. The Marshalls's potato fertiliser is N:P:K 15:21:24.5 which is massive and I don't know why potatoes would need so much potassium. Whatever, I use comfrey for potatoes and this has a higher ratio of potassium, but nothing like the Marshalls's fertiliser. Comfrey's percentage NPK is 0.74:0.24:1.19 nowhere near the Marshalls's fertiliser. Relative to the amount of carbon dioxide and water that the plants need to produce sugars, the amounts of N:P:K that they require is tiny. I would question the necessity for such high ratios. It is remarkable how the amounts of these elements in plants mimic the amounts in the soil. There is some evidence that excessive nitrogen in food is not a good thing. I like to put quite a lot of animal manure on the potatoes and this year it was mixed in well with tree leaves. Apart from this, I am sticking to home made compost, comfrey tea and nettle tea to fertilise my veg. Have a look at what my potatoes are like now in May with only comfrey, horse manure and leaves added to the soil.  Kestrel potatoes at the end of May Kestrel potatoes in June

Has aminopyralid finally gone away?

There were many of us organic growers in UK affected by the aminopyralid herbicide. It affected potatoes particularly badly. Used on grass, which it did not affect, it was supposed to be effective for at least two years. Cows and horses ate the grass and we used the manure on our allotment gardens. The effect of this herbicide on our allotments is only now beginning to wear off. It is worrying to realise that chemicals like this can pass through the food chain with little monitoring from the people that produce the chemicals. We were told by Dow AgroScience that our produce would be edible but we all had to think hard about whether we were going to eat it. 

Aminopyralid herbicide was banned for a while in the UK but now it can be used again. The government has published instructions that say affected manure cannot leave the farm. I am just wondering if it is on bedding straw that is moved to farms and stables . They can sell us their manure but it will still be contaminated. A lot of us are thinking hard about using cow and horse manure now.

Is rotation of crops necessary?

I have been religiously rotating crops for about 30 years now without really questioning it properly.

There is some indication that crop rotation does in fact improve your harvest of most vegetable crops, particularly if it includes a legume element.  
If you are rotating with a green manure as one of the crops it will improve fertility by adding nitrogen and making other nutrients available for plants to use. I like to use a mixture of grazing rye grass and tares. Rotating using peas and beans as one of the crops also helps to add nitrogen to the soil if these plants are dug into the soil after the peas and beans have been cropped. 

I use a six year rotation with 6 fairly similarly sized beds.  This might seem to be a little excessive because most examples in books suggest a three year rotation.  I have one year when very few vegetables are grown on one of the beds and this bed is devoted mainly to sweet peas.  I get a good crop of cut flowers during the year and then can dig in the plants as green manure in the autumn.  

Crop rotation helps to improve and maintain the friability of the soil and in improving and maintaining the organic content of the soil. When  potatoes are grown some people put mulches of comfrey leaves or manure along the rows. When the potatoes are lifted this gets incorporated into the soil improving it for the following crop. 
 
Rotation improves the use of nutrients through the soil by varying the length of plant crop roots. Some plants like beetroot have relatively shallow roots while parsnips can have very long roots. They can get nutrients from different depths of soil. 
 
It enables you to use manure and fertilizers more efficiently, targeting crops that need high nutrients. If these are followed by crops that need fewer nutrients then no manure needs to be added the following year. Lime need only be added to the brassicae bed (It is a source of calcium for plants but also prevents club root Plasmodiophora brassicae ) as they rotate around the allotment. You do not have to add excessive amounts of lime to the soil because calcium stays in the soil for a relatively long time as does phosphorus. 
 
It does help you control some weeds, insect pests and plant diseases. I think that I have reduced the level of club root on the allotment significantly by a very strict rotation especially for brassicas. 
 
It is said to improve the diversity of micro organisms in soil. A monoculture of the same plant growing in the same area of soil must reduce the number of different organisms that can live in that area. I think that it maintains the health of the soil and this is what all the plant crops depend on. So I would suggest that rotation is the best method of managing the allotment. 

Some things that I would not rotate are:
All the soft fruit - blackcurrent, blackberry,raspberry, gooseberry, etc.  However, I would not plant them in the same place if I were replacing them because they could be affected by soil sickness.  Raspberries Rubus idaeus is particularly prone to soil sickness.  In order to avoid this I  completely change the soil but if you cannot do this it would probably be best to replant in a different area of the garden completely.
Any of the perennial herbs like thyme,mint,bay and sage.
Rhubarb

2012's  rotation is:
Bed 1: Roots (carrots, parsnips, scorzonera, salsify, Hamburg parsley and beetroot)  and leaves (salad burnet Sanguisorba minor, chamomile, spinach, lettuce, chard, celery, parcel, celeriac and maybe some of the other herbs.)

Bed 2: Peas (Douce Provence, Early Onward and Hurst Green Shaft); climbing French Bean (Trail of Tears and Cobra); broad bean (my own saved seeds); asparagus beans; mange tout  and the strawberries.  I may have some dwarf French beans as well but they did not do very well last year so I may leave them out.  

Bed 3 Brassicas (purple sprouting broccoli,   Brussel sprout, red cabbage, cabbage, cauliflower, calabrese, kohlrabi, swede, turnip, American land cress and rocket.)

Bed 4 Sweet peas, runner beans and this year some climbing French beans.

Bed 5 Alliums (onions, garlic, shallots, leeks) and cucurbits? (pumpkin, courgettes, squashes, cucumbers, maize, tomatoes).

Bed 6 Potatoes.

This is my final crop rotation plan.  I doubt if I will change it again because everything fits in well.

I have kept the runner beans in the same place for many years but now it is part of the rotation. I have some tree posts that are fairly easy to move and use these to make a climbing frame for the beans.

If your ground has been left fallow for some time, I think that it would be fine not to rotate for a couple of years. However,  why wait until you have disease and nutrient depletion before you begin to rotate?


There are many ways to rotate and this is just one of them:
http://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Data/Crop%20rotation/Crop%20rotation.htm
This is the way that I do it.