Early November

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

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

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

Field beans growing in November

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

Green manure on the new sweet pea bed.

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

Comfrey

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

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

Farmyard manure

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

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

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

New sweet pea bed

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

Grapes

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

New brassica bed.

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

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

More of the pumpkins

  

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

Sieve digging the soil on 3A

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

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

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

First spit being taken out.  

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

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

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

Concrete reinforcing wire

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

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

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

More area to be triple dug

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

Hot beds in the little greenhouse.

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

Various cuttings and potted up plants.  

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

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

Brassicas 

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

Dug over part of the brassica bed.

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

A little overgrown

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

Mess

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

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

Roots

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

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

Blackcurrants.

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

Cold frame.  

Plants in the cold frame

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

The large greenhouse.

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

M9 rootstock potted up for grafting.

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

Daphne

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

Pond

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

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

Possible new allotment?

I was thinking of taking over this allotment. What do you think?

I really think that allotments should not be allowed to get into this kind of state.  It is just unfair to all the other gardeners around.  It's covered in nettles, brambles and bindweed.  I think that the mounds were compost heaps. Over the heap in the foreground there is a thick carpet - not very effective is it?  If I do take it over then I will take photographs as I clear the ground.

Thinking about this piece of ground; there is little chance of a no dig method being effective.  I am going to double dig and skim off weed turfs to bury in the lowest most trench.  With the amount of metal, I think that I will need a skip just for this allotment.  Luckily, I have not found any glass but that might change and I will be ultra careful in any case.

The allotment is far enough away from my own allotment that it does not affect me that much but maybe it would be worthwhile to put some soft fruit on.

It was really warm today and the allotment site was buzzing.  It is a shame that they do not keep that up all year. The soil has warmed up - I didn't remember to look at the soil thermometer today so I don't know exactly the temperature but it was warm to the hands.

I got three more barrow loads of sieved compost and put them onto the onion bed and levelled them off.  There is still a substantial amount left and I was thinking of sieving it and putting it on top of my compost heaps so that I could grow pumpkin or courgette on the compost like I did last year.  I will not be using this compost this year with all the compost I have from the mega compost.

I put up another row of canes for the sweet peas. I am putting them 9 inches apart.

Tomorrow I will start planting seeds in earnest starting with ordinary peas.  I might have to reorganise the greenhouse and put some more staging in along the other side so that I do not have to put the peas on the floor.  I cannot be sure that the field mouse has gone from the garden yet.  It did eat some of the stored potatoes but I have not seen it for several weeks now.  It really irritates me when I plant several trays of peas and the blooming thing then goes and eats them all.

Several people have planted their potatoes but I think that it is still a little early.  I have been caught before with severe late frosts.  I will wait until the end of the month or the first week in April.  The potatoes are chitting away really well in the greenhouse and this will give them a good start when I eventually plant them.

My allotment via Google

This is my allotment of about three years ago.  They had not changed the soil on the bottom bed next to the carpark on this photograph.  I now have two sheds and four compost bins on the allotment that I didn't have then.  The car park looks spectacular here.  Well they ripped it all up and took it away because it was contaminated.  It did not contaminate my soil. Oh no, that was already polluted with benzo (a) pyrene, so they had to replace the soil in the bed on my allotment next to the carpark.

I took the greenhouse down because it was getting smashed up by vandals.  Thank heavens we have cured that now.  The trackway has had a lot less water on it because I put a proper drainage pipe alongside the allotment.  There are two springs on my allotment.  The first is in the bottom right corner and the other is about half way down the right hand side.
I dug down quite deep today and did not find any water.  I did find a lot of brushwood that had not decomposed even after a year Tone.  That surprised me. 

The allotments around me look quite good don't they? I wish.  Now that some of the old blokes have gone it is getting a little untidy again.

Allotment Garden Planning for 2011

 In the early days, I religiously recorded where I had planted vegetables, how well they grew and the weight of the produce I got.  I must have done that from 1982 through to 1985.  I realised very early that I could not compete on price with shop bought vegetables, however I consoled myself by saying that I could produce vegetables that were not contaminated by pesticides.  I knew where and how my food was grown and that was enough for me.  Growing was not just a means of producing vegetables for the family.  It was also a means of keeping fit and exercising in the fresh air.  It was a means of keeping stress away and touching the earth.  

So for 29 years this little piece of ground, 25 feet by 124 feet, has been providing my family with vegetables.

This is what the allotment looked like in February 2010.  Wet and muddy.  You can see how I use slabs to hold the soil back. I do not raise beds - I raise allotments. 

What is most surprising is that it is still producing great vegetables and flowers after so many years.  In fact, I think that it is producing more now than it has ever done.  After the first few years, I did no more planning.  The rotation was locked in and I began to get stricter, not allowing myself to break out of the scheme I had developed.  (Last year was a great exception when I had too many seed potatoes). 

This year I am going to break with tradition because I have actually planned the allotment.  Really I did no planning at all because I knew where everything was going to be planted.  However, the software makes spacing and numbers of plants needed very specific.  It is interesting to see how my rough plan was interpreted by the software program and whether plants would fit where I had imagined they would.  

So this is what I envisage the allotment will look like when I have finished planting it this year.   

Allotment plan for  25 (b)

I don’t think that I will stick rigidly to this plan having already decided not to have so many rows of sweet peas.  I might also have the runner beans on the other side of that bed.   I may also put in some other varieties of brassicae having found seed in the shed.  The top pea and bean bed really needs to have some horse muck put on it.

This is the bed in 2007 with peas on it; the last time that it had legumes on it.  I had grown caliente  mustard in it and dug it in in September 2007.  

Allotment plan for 26(a)

I intend to plant Big Max pumpkins to replace the garlic and onions when they go over.  It looks like I will be planting Gardener's Delight in pots on the south side of the shed again this year.  I had some really good tomatoes off bushes planted here last year. 

Allotment plan for 26(b)

Have I planted too many strawberries this year?  We will see.  I did not buy any this year and these are all from runners off the old strawberry plants.  I thought that some of the strawberries would die because of the very cold weather but they all seemed to have survived.  The rhubarb will probably overshadow some of the strawberries.  I will be spraying nematode worms Phasmarhabditis hermaphroditaunder the rhubarb to try and limit the number of slugs and snails in this bed.  I will not even order the nematodes until March/April time though.  I hope that the Xania gooseberry cuttings grow because I will only have one if not.  I need five of the cuttings to take.  Xania is a heavy cropping red gooseberry that is fairly resistant to American mildew.  The other gooseberries have been taken out and buried because they were all very old varieties and they had been growing in the same place for about 20 odd years.  One of the old blokes on the allotment gave me them when I first came onto the allotment site.  I think that I would like to have named varieties so that I can look up and find out how and when they crop. 
Now I have changed the plan so go here if you want to see the final plan - or so I think at the moment.
http://tonythegardener.blogspot.com/2011/03/final-final-plan-for-allotment-although.html

Out of control allotments

Are we to say that those that do not or cannot do their allotment should be asked to relinquish it? My gut reaction is to say yes. Unkempt allotments are unsightly and detract from the quality of the whole allotment site. Weeds spread across the allotment; there is a home for allotment unfriendly wildlife, getting past them with the wheel barrow is a chore, they can attract human vermin that see the allotments as somewhere no one cares about and they become dumping grounds for other people’s rubbish.

I have very little to do with the allotment committee. This is not a boast but out of necessity. Working full time means that all free time is devoted to cultivating the allotment. I find that they make some outstandingly stupid decisions that have very little to do with gardening, however that is another story. 

The most effective official on the allotment is the secretary. He walks around the allotments and checks on each one. Afterwards, he either writes this down or colours in on a plan of the allotments how everyone is doing. If there is a problem with any of the allotments he has a word with the allotment holder especially when they are paying their rent. He says that they are not doing well enough. A little patronizing but it seems to have worked very well. If allotment holders have not then cultivated at least some of the allotment, they are sent a letter. Interestingly, the treasurer of the allotment committee was sent a letter this year much to his annoyance. 

If there is a waiting list it is unfair to hold onto an allotment when you know that you cannot do it. Maybe there should be a way of allowing someone to take it on when you are ill or when work prevents you from doing it. 

The problem with when is the allotment being cultivated and when is it not, is a tricky one. The number of people that come onto the allotment and cultivate a metre square out of a full allotment cannot be said to be cultivating. This is why the secretary is giving people half and quarter allotments when they first allocated an allotment. If they do that well, then they are given larger allotments when they become available. This also means that there are less people on the waiting list for allotments. It encourages them and enables them to build up their expertise before the daunting task of turning a wild allotment around. 

Many of us are experimenting with companion planting and permaculture which leads to unkempt allotments in the eyes of a few. This means that the people on committees need to be fairly experienced in the different styles of growing. I find that many of the committee members are inexperienced in even the traditional ways of growing and this leads to a great many problems. Still it is those that put themselves up for election that will get voted on. 

Our allotment site is not one of the most picturesque. When I first started the majority of the allotments around me were abandoned and high in weeds. We could do what we wanted on the allotment just so long as it did not annoy anyone else. Now we have a waiting list but also uncultivated allotments. After so many years surely we could have worked out a way of giving allotments to committed people that would keep them cultivated.