Beer traps

I had to reset all the beer traps today because I had trapped so many slugs.  I emptied the old ones into the comfrey bin.  They can continue to rot down in the bins.  The old plastic cups were a little dirty and not suitable to reuse so I have put them in the recycling box and replaced them with new old cups.  I fill about quarter of the cup with beer.  It does not need more than that and possibly could have less in - but not that much less.

There is some talk that beer traps attract slugs and snails that otherwise would not come on the allotment.  My view is that they would still come on the allotment beer or not.  My aim is not to remove all the slugs and snails from the allotment anyway.  I just want to reduce the numbers until my plants are not overtly damaged by them.    They can have a few of the lower leaves but no more.

I put a little more of the Ferric phosphate pellets under the tarpaulin but they do not seem to be as effective as the beer traps.

I thought that I would finish the soil sieving today but no.  There is still about five foot square to do.  After that I have finished with sieving for a very long time.

Some turf has been left in the bins by the gate and I was considering using it under the sweet peas.  Rather than just stacking it in a corner, I will put it at the bottom of the sweet pea trenches.  I have some fairly well rotted horse manure to mix in as well.  This is probably all that they will need.  Apart from the flowers that they produce during the summer, I see the sweet peas as a green manure.  They will be dug in after they have finished flowering and this will add fixed nitrogen to the soil as they break down and decompose.

This year I have also put other green manures on the old sweet pea bed.  This will add to the organic matter in this soil.  As some of them are clovers and tares they will also add more nitrogen.

I am going to grow summer cauliflowers and cabbages in this area this season so the added nitrogen means that they will need very little added fertiliser.  I will probably water them in with liquid comfrey, nettle and sweet cicely fertiliser and not add anything else.

I did not buy any chicken manure last season and I am hoping that I don't have to this season.

I will buy some more lime because I am going to lime the brassica bed quite heavily to prevent club root.  I am also going to lime the onion bed not only to try to prevent white rot but also because the onions like a bit of lime in their soil.  In my six year rotation the onions follow the potatoes.  I make the ground a little acidic for the potatoes by adding manure.  This means that the onions will need some lime on to raise the pH.

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.

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.