This blog is a personal reflection on what I have been doing on the allotment. It is a working allotment that is designed to produce as much fruit, vegetables and flowers possible.
The blog just records how and when I do things in order to inform next year's planting plan. The blog does not give a very good explanation about how to do things.
There are a lot of plants that have been potted up and are in the greenhouse waiting for the weather to become a little more clement. It started off really warm this morning but by twelve o'clock it was very cold again. A north easterly wind was blowing onto north facing allotments. Little or no protection against it was available for the plants. This has put us back about two or three weeks compared with last year.
So what is germinating and growing on the allotment in the first week of May?
The carrots are through as are the parsnips but they are not growing very fast. Salsify has germinated but little of the scorzonera is showing. There are no signs of the Hamburg parsley, beetroot or salad burnet. The lettuce plants planted in April are surviving well but do not seem to be growing. The Swiss chard, celery and celeriac seem to like this wet weather and are growing quite well.
I have a tray of dill to plant out on this bed and I will probably have time to do this tomorrow.
Strawberries are beginning to flower - what can you say? Peas are doing remarkably well. The winter cauliflowers still have not headed up. I will give them some more comfrey liquid fertiliser tomorrow.
The polls are up for the heritage "Trail of Tears" climbing French beans. It is far too cold to plant them out at the moment and they are languishing in the greenhouse at the moment. They will have to be hardened off soon though.
All the brassicas are doing well but some are being eaten by flea beetle. A little annoying but I have more seed and seedlings to replace any badly affected. It is mainly the kohlrabi and swedes that are affected. I still need to plant out the Brussel sprouts and the purple sprouting broccoli but when I do that will be the brassica bed full.
The black currants have a remarkable amount of blossom on them. If it turns into fruit then we will have a good crop this year.
The sweet peas have not liked this wet weather at all. They have stopped growing and started to turn a little red. All they need is a little warmer weather to start growing again. I cut out the extra shoots and left only one then tied up the plants so that they did not blow about in this cold wind.
I have put a row of gladioli between one of the rows of sweet peas. I put some mychorrhizal fungi in the planting holes and I am hoping that this helps to produce some big flowers.
The rest of the bean canes were put up where the leeks had been taken out. There are a lot of beans potted on in the greenhouse, which I am trying to harden off. These cold nights are not helping. When I get some more glass for the cold frame I will be able to harden them off on the allotment.
Onions, garlic and shallots are growing but very slowly. I have started to remove the tulips from the rest of the bed so that I can put in the sweet corn, cucumbers, squash, pumpkin and tomatoes. I have built a hot bed with the farmyard manure and put a cold frame on top. The cold frame does not have glass in it at the moment so that is another project for as soon as possible.
Rhubarb is producing some good leaves and petioles. I am taking some home almost every time I go to the allotment. I love eating rhubarb.
Spuds - the potatoes are the only things that are growing and they are just what I do not want to grow in this cold and frosty weather. I have hoed them up again and the mounds are quite large now. Covering them with soil in this way might help them to survive the frost.
I emptied one of the comfrey bins today putting the old comfrey onto the compost heap. I will be filling the bin with this years first cutting of comfrey, nettles and sweet cicely.
Due to the cold wet weather nothing is growing very fast so I am running out of jobs to do on the allotment. When the weather warms I will be hurtling about trying to get everything in and growing well. Roll on the warmer days. Blooming English weather.
Showing posts with label comfrey liquid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comfrey liquid. Show all posts
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Friday, 10 June 2011
How I treat the soil for each of the vegetable types.
There is a science to gardening, however the variety of different soil conditions and environments means that growing plants is more down to knowing and understanding your own small growing area than the generalities of ideal conditions.
Is gardening more of an art than a science? Certainly the better you know your local conditions the better you can grow plants.
So all things considered the preparation of the soil for different vegetables probably needs to be changed depending on the plants grown. I cannot honestly say that I prepare the soil particularly differently for any of my vegetables. I might get an even better crop if I did but the general strategy is to pack as much carbon into the soil as it will take - and its appetite for carbon seems to be insatiable.
So what different strategies do I use for each of the vegetable beds?
During the winter I marinade charcoal in comfrey liquid. This infuses the charcoal with nutrient and I add this inoculated charcoal to the planting holes of most of the vegetables - until it runs out.
I see the peas and beans to be net contributors to the soil fertility. After cropping they will be dug into the soil to add nitrogen. When I was young I was told that you should cut off the tops of peas and beans and put them onto the compost heap leaving the roots in the soil. The roots add nitrogen. This is true but roots only contribute about 30% of the available nitrogen. 60% of the nitrogen is in the stems and leaves of leguminous plants (peas and beans). So, I dig these into the soil too. This will be done at the end of the year for the roots to get the benefits next year.
If manure or tree leaves are available I will dig these into the pea and bean bed in the autumn and winter. I put charcoal and a pinch of mychorrhizal fungi in all of the planting holes. Together with that, I will water the peas and beans with comfrey, sweet cicely, nettle and worm bin liquid mix during the year. This year I have been able to put a 50 - 100mm top dressing of good home made, friable compost over the whole area. It is full of weed seeds but I can put up with this because it is also full of nutrients. Chicken manure is sometimes used as a base fertiliser along the rows before planting.
The comfrey liquid is not scientifically mixed. Whenever I can crop each of the ingredients, I add them to the digester bins to rot down. What goes in the bins, stays in the bins. Everything seems to end as a liquid.
I do not add any farmyard manure or leaves to the brassicae bed. The bed is given a good dose of lime to prevent the brassicas getting club root (Plasmodiophora brassicae.) The plants are watered in with comfrey liquid and given charcoal in their planting holes. The summer brassicas are given comfrey liquid to bring them on during the summer. The winter vegetables are given nothing because they seem to fair much better if left to fend for themselves. If you feed Brussel sprouts too much, the buds will "blow" or open out before they can be harvested.
Cauliflowers and cabbages do like to have nitrogen in the soil and this is added in the form of chicken or pigeon manure during the winter or early spring.
The onion bed gets as much organic matter as I can find. That is farmyard or horse manure, leaves, grass mowings, weeds etc. The onions seem to relish lots of organic matter in the soil. This is another bed that I covered with a top dressing of home made compost. Great stuff except that it has a lot of weed seeds in it. When planting, I put charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi in the planting holes. The onions are watered with comfrey during the year but the solution is very dilute. Onions do not like too much nitrogen in the soil. The do require a damp root run and just watering will do this more than adequately. Really, for my rotation system, I should be liming the onions to keep the pH quite high -to about 6.5 to 7.5. I will do this in 2012.
The potato bed had quite a lot of horse manure and leaves dug into it last autumn. They were planted with charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi. They have had nothing else. I have not even watered them. If pigeon or chicken manure is available then that is used on the potatoes as well.
The roots did not have anything dug into their soil except the old bean and pea haulms; grass mowings and weeds. This will avoid the problem with forking that manure stimulates. I put comfrey liquid in the sowing drills and a little mychorrhizal fungi. That is all that they have had this year. I have watered them during the very dry weather.
And that is it more or less. So if you do this for 30 years or so you will get an allotment as good as mine.
I cropped the garlic yesterday and it has white rot in some of the bulbs. I had to throw away about 6 of them.
The others are drying in the store shed.
I harvested one large lettuce, some American land cress and some spinach.
The weather is still particularly cold and this is preventing the vegetables from growing. There is no point in worrying about this because nothing can be done.
There are more strawberries ready to be picked. You can certainly eat too many strawberries.
Is gardening more of an art than a science? Certainly the better you know your local conditions the better you can grow plants.
So all things considered the preparation of the soil for different vegetables probably needs to be changed depending on the plants grown. I cannot honestly say that I prepare the soil particularly differently for any of my vegetables. I might get an even better crop if I did but the general strategy is to pack as much carbon into the soil as it will take - and its appetite for carbon seems to be insatiable.
So what different strategies do I use for each of the vegetable beds?
During the winter I marinade charcoal in comfrey liquid. This infuses the charcoal with nutrient and I add this inoculated charcoal to the planting holes of most of the vegetables - until it runs out.
I see the peas and beans to be net contributors to the soil fertility. After cropping they will be dug into the soil to add nitrogen. When I was young I was told that you should cut off the tops of peas and beans and put them onto the compost heap leaving the roots in the soil. The roots add nitrogen. This is true but roots only contribute about 30% of the available nitrogen. 60% of the nitrogen is in the stems and leaves of leguminous plants (peas and beans). So, I dig these into the soil too. This will be done at the end of the year for the roots to get the benefits next year.
If manure or tree leaves are available I will dig these into the pea and bean bed in the autumn and winter. I put charcoal and a pinch of mychorrhizal fungi in all of the planting holes. Together with that, I will water the peas and beans with comfrey, sweet cicely, nettle and worm bin liquid mix during the year. This year I have been able to put a 50 - 100mm top dressing of good home made, friable compost over the whole area. It is full of weed seeds but I can put up with this because it is also full of nutrients. Chicken manure is sometimes used as a base fertiliser along the rows before planting.
The comfrey liquid is not scientifically mixed. Whenever I can crop each of the ingredients, I add them to the digester bins to rot down. What goes in the bins, stays in the bins. Everything seems to end as a liquid.
I do not add any farmyard manure or leaves to the brassicae bed. The bed is given a good dose of lime to prevent the brassicas getting club root (Plasmodiophora brassicae.) The plants are watered in with comfrey liquid and given charcoal in their planting holes. The summer brassicas are given comfrey liquid to bring them on during the summer. The winter vegetables are given nothing because they seem to fair much better if left to fend for themselves. If you feed Brussel sprouts too much, the buds will "blow" or open out before they can be harvested.
Cauliflowers and cabbages do like to have nitrogen in the soil and this is added in the form of chicken or pigeon manure during the winter or early spring.
The onion bed gets as much organic matter as I can find. That is farmyard or horse manure, leaves, grass mowings, weeds etc. The onions seem to relish lots of organic matter in the soil. This is another bed that I covered with a top dressing of home made compost. Great stuff except that it has a lot of weed seeds in it. When planting, I put charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi in the planting holes. The onions are watered with comfrey during the year but the solution is very dilute. Onions do not like too much nitrogen in the soil. The do require a damp root run and just watering will do this more than adequately. Really, for my rotation system, I should be liming the onions to keep the pH quite high -to about 6.5 to 7.5. I will do this in 2012.
The potato bed had quite a lot of horse manure and leaves dug into it last autumn. They were planted with charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi. They have had nothing else. I have not even watered them. If pigeon or chicken manure is available then that is used on the potatoes as well.
The roots did not have anything dug into their soil except the old bean and pea haulms; grass mowings and weeds. This will avoid the problem with forking that manure stimulates. I put comfrey liquid in the sowing drills and a little mychorrhizal fungi. That is all that they have had this year. I have watered them during the very dry weather.
And that is it more or less. So if you do this for 30 years or so you will get an allotment as good as mine.
I cropped the garlic yesterday and it has white rot in some of the bulbs. I had to throw away about 6 of them.
The others are drying in the store shed.
I harvested one large lettuce, some American land cress and some spinach.
The weather is still particularly cold and this is preventing the vegetables from growing. There is no point in worrying about this because nothing can be done.
There are more strawberries ready to be picked. You can certainly eat too many strawberries.
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