What barriers will be necessary this year?

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

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

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

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

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

Another myth that is more anecdotal than factual.

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

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

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

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

Sowing onions and leeks.

I sowed the Mammoth onions into sectioned trays one seed per section.  I doubt if they will all germinate but there are 60 sections and I doubt if I would need all those plants.  I do like onions though and will grow as many of them as I possibly can do.  I have left the seed tray in the cold greenhouse but will bring it inside the house because the weather is beginning to change and get much colder.

The Mammoth leeks were sown into a pan using the New Horizons peatless compost.

I will put both of them into plastic bags and leave them in the house.  I did not plant any tomato seeds today.  I will do that tomorrow.

Sieved some more of the potato bed soil while mixing in a lot of horse and pigeon muck.    It was a little easier today because the ground had dried out a little from yesterdays rain.

The ground is still very dry two spits down.  This little bit of rain will not dampen the subsoil unless we have a lot more downfalls.

I have taken out all the carrots now and will put these new ones in a clamp of their own.  The parsnips will have to be taken out soon too.

I finished early today because the temperature was falling very rapidly because the sky was very blue and clear.  I will get those seeds in now.

Forgot to take photographs of the allotment.  I will do that first thing tomorrow.

Regardless of how uneventful the activity is, I will write about everything that I am doing in the allotment.  It will give me a chronology of planting times and a time table for next year.

Warmer temperatures today.

With the warmer temperatures, I have eventually been able to move the black currants to their new home.  They have all had inoculated carcoal and mychorrhizal fungi put at the bottom of the planting hole in my attempt to produce Terra preta soil.  Black currents are very hungry plants and need a lot of nutrients.  I hope that this will give them a good start.  I had moved some of the primula yesterday because they were going to be in the way of the black currant row.  I am going to move the others tomorrow.

The retaining slabs alongside the blackberry bushes needed sorting out.  They had begun to lean over and were never right after the land drain was put in by the contractor.  I use upended slabs to keep my raised beds from overflowing onto the trackway.  I took out four of the 2' by 2' slabs and dug out a trench so that I could make sure that they were upright.  I know that I should have used a bubble but I decided I could do it by eye.  I am not so sure now and when I do the others I will use the spirit level.

The sweet pea seedlings are looking decidedly dejected.  Not sure what to do with them but I will leave them alone until the warmer weather.  If they do not seem to be recovering from the very cold weather, then I will sow some more but not until March time.

Only harvested carrots today.  I was going to dig up some parsnips as well but we have two at home now anyway.  Think when you are planting parsnips Tone, you will never eat more than one row.    Make sure that you thin the carrots and use them before the very cold weather (Or store them where the very cold frosts cannot get at them.)

I am going to select some of the vegetable seeds for  this year and record them here so that I know what I was sown this year (2011)

Although a lot of my potatoes have rotted because of the very cold weather, I think that I will continue with Kestrel.  It is a good second early potato and is very resistant to many potato pests and diseases.  My first early will be Epicure.

American land cress
Apple mint (already planted)
Bay (already planted)
Beetroot 'Boltardy'
Brussels Sprout 'Trafalgar'
Broad Bean (already planted)
Broccoli 'Red Arrow'
Blackberry 'Adrienne'
Blackcurrant (various already planted)
Blueberry (already planted)  Fashion accessory but I was given it so I will try it. 
Cabbage 'Stonehead' or 'Golden Acre'
Calabrese 'Green Sprouting'
Cauliflower (winter)  
Carrot Flyaway
Chamomile
Chicory 'Variegata Di Castelfranco'
Comfrey (already planted)
Courgette Parador
Cucumber Burpless Tasty Green.
Fennel Florence
French climbing bean 'Cobra'
Garlic (already planted)
Gooseberry 'Xania'
Grape (already planted)
Jerusalem artichoke (already planted)
Leek 'Musselburgh Improved'
Lemon Balm (already planted)
Lettuce 'Webb's Wonderful'
Mizuna
Okra 'Pure Luck'
Onion 'Ailisa Craig' (planted in seed tray 4/01/11)
Pea Early Onward
Parsnip 'White Gem'
Plum 'Victoria' (already planted)
Pumpkin 'Big Max'
Radish 'Cherry Belle'
Rocket 
Runner Bean 'Aintree'
Runner Bean 'Red Rum'
Rhubarb 'Champagne' (already planted)
Rhubarb Chard
Salsify
Scorzonera
Spinach 'Medania'
Squash
Strawberries 'Cambridge' mainly (already planted )
Swede 'Marian'
Sweet  Cicerly (already planted)
Sweetcorn 'Two's Sweeter'
Tomato (not sure which variety yet)
Thyme (already planted)

I would like to try some Oca but 'The Real Seed Catalogue'  has sold out. Might try a Yacon though.

Now for some more thoughts...

Lots of the remedies recommended by “organic” gardeners have unpleasant chemicals in them. I am worried that any chemical that you use will alter the population of soil organisms and cause more problems than it solves.
I’m sure that pyrethrum and derris are going to be banned if they are not already but these have dosage rates on the bottle and have been tested to some degree.
I have never used nettle tea as an insecticide but I would suggest that it would not damage your health because we eat it in similar concentrations in nettle soup and tea. As at least two common butterflies eat the leaves I cannot believe that it has any insecticide properties.

If plants are grown as healthily as possible then you are less likely to get disease and pests
 
I would rather use natural remedies like nematode worms, Bacillus thuringiensis, mycorrhizal fungi, and such like. Put up a few bird boxes around the allotment to encourage insect eating birds. Encourage hedgehogs and toads. Try to work with nature rather than battle against it. I know that the pristine allotment with regimented rows of beautiful vegetables is the ideal of all allotment holders but you will never achieve it, so get over it and accept what you’ve got. It will still be a lot healthier than vegetables sold in  shops.

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/Organic%20superiority.pdf

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/Compost%20tea.pdf

http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~Linda%20Chalker-Scott/Horticultural%20Myths_files/Myths/magazine%20pdfs/CompostTea.pdf

Chilly December

I have just returned from holiday in Malta and Greece to a very cold England. The ground has been frozen for about two or three weeks now and little can be done in the allotment.

I went to the allotment yesterday with the intention of moving some of the black current bushes. Althought the top couple of centimetres were not frozen, below this was a thick layer of frost. Not the kind of ground to start planting into. The black currents will probably have to be moved in the spring if this weather continues.

Remarkably, I was able to get out some of the parsnips. They were excellent and shows you why thinning out is very important if you want big roots. I also got some carrots. I think that the ground was not so frozen here because of the horse muck I had put close to them.

Beetroot are very small but I harvested them in any case.

I took off some of the Brussel sprouts and I will prepare them today by peeling off the outer leaves. There are some plants that are producing large buds and some that are only producing small ones. I cannot remember the varieties that I planted so I will not be able to ensure I have large buds next year.

They did not burn down my shed on bonfire night which I am very greatful for. The committee put the bonfire closer to Tony's allotment and quite far away from my shed.

Someone however put a load of fireworks on my allotment right where I had planted broad beans. I am not happy. These are the fireworks you stick into the ground. Needless to say I will be asking the committee why they pick on my allotment to do these things without any consultation with me.