Sowing the Douce Provence Peas

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Starting to sow a lot of seed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue putting ramail on the paths.

Sow peas Douce Provence and parsnips Tender and True.

Take some photographs of the allotment.

   

Heating up the compost heap.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what it looked like a week ago.

And after two turnings it looks like this now.

Compost after the second turning 

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

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

 Bastard Digging or True digging. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I do not raise beds.  I raise allotments.  

Pinching out all the sweet pea seedlings.

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