I have bought quite a few seeds from the Real Seeds Catalogue but maybe I should have tried a little harder to buy heritage seeds.
http://www.realseeds.co.uk/
However, if you want disease resistant varieties because you need to grow without pesticides then sometimes you need to compromise. Also, I want to be able to keep some of my vegetables stored over winter and these good keeping varieties are not necessarily heritage. Cauliflower: Brassica oleracea botrytis 'Clapton F1 Hybrid' is a club root resistant variety so I thought that I would try it. It was also half price in an end of season sale so I could not resist it. (Several others of the F1 seeds were in the sale as well so I got them too) I have been growing Daucus carota 'Flyaway F1 Hybrid' for years to combat carrot root fly. This year I am growing Resistafly F1 Hybrid.
The bottom line is to produce some organic carrots to eat. To make this a little more certain I will be growing crops that are resistant to pests.
I would like to believe that heritage plants have a greater affinity for mychorrhizal fungi and grow even better with charcoal but I have not found any significant difference between modern varieties and heritage grown with charcoal. Both types of plants seem to benefit from the application of inoculated charcoal and mychorrhiza. Keeping the old varieties going is more to do with biodiversity than anything else.
I have two dust bins full of marinading lump wood, barbecue charcoal. The liquid is made up of comfrey, nettle, sweet cicely, worm bin and diluted pigeon manure. It has been marinading for at least five months now and I will not use it until the spring. I reckon that will be ample time for the charcoal to take up nutrients.
It will be used on the potatoes first. I cannot get barbecue charcoal at the moment because there is none in the shops, however I still have the Takesumi charcoal to experiment with.
While some of the old vegetable varieties are better flavoured there are many that are not and they are not so disease resistant either.
Looking around the allotment site people are using the same varieties year after year because they grow well in our allotment soil with our north facing aspect. These varieties are more or less the same as I am growing some of which are F1 hybrids. I think that I will continue to buy F1 seed at the moment.
Finally, I have got into growing particular varieties and want to carry on if I can.
This is why I kept some seed in 2011 and I am going to sow it during next season (2012). Seed saving has been quite successful this year so I am going to continue to collect my own seed. For this I need non F1 hybrids because only these will breed true. Maybe this is an argument for selecting heritage seeds. So, there are good reasons for getting both F1 hybrids and heritage seed and I will be using both.
Showing posts with label inoculated charcoal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label inoculated charcoal. Show all posts
Thursday, 22 December 2011
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
More thoughts on Terra preta soils.
I am attempting to create a Terra preta type soil using lump barbecue charcoal. (Have a look at the links on the right to see the Terra preta film.)
This type of very fertile soil has been found in South America and has been made by people over thousands of years using charcoal as a soil amendment. The evidence that I originally read was that charcoal reduced the fertility of the soil when it was initially added to the soil. This discouraged me from doing experimenting on my allotment. However, after reading around the subject and talking to people on various websites such as Allotments.uk I developed the hypothesis that an "inoculated" charcoal may be able to be used as a beneficial soil amendment to produce a sustainably fertile soil.
Some people are still trying to develop an inoculated charcoal that is very similar to that found the South American Terra preta. My reasoning was that this seemed to be over complicated because if the charcoal could be amended by Amazonian nutrients then it should be able to be inoculated with nutrients originating in my local area.
I am experimenting with using comfrey, nettle and sweet cicely liquid fortified with worm bin liquid.
Inoculated charcoal is charcoal that has been marinaded in nutrients. Charcoal has some remarkable properties that allow it to absorb or adsorb chemicals within its labyrinthine structure. We can use this property to enable us to deliver nutrients to the soil in a form that might not readily leach away.
I would conjecture that the charcoal acts as a kind of buffering mechanism that allows nutrients to diffuse into the soil when there is a low concentration of them while adsorbing them when there is an excess.
The structure of charcoal also gives a relatively safe place for beneficial bacteria and fungi to live adding more nutrients to the soil.
Research has found that Terra preta soils also contain mychorrhizal fungi which form a symbiotic relationship with plants. The charcoal could give these fungi a source of nutrient that can be transferred to plants and also a protected environment for their spores.
Now all of this is complete conjecture because research in this area is in its infancy. We are trying to follow in the footsteps of ancient Amazonian peoples and it is difficult.
I have had impressive results this year after adding charcoal to the soil. Whether this is due to the charcoal or to some other factor this year, I don't know. We are attempting to replicate a soil that has developed in the Amazonian rain forests areas. There is no evidence that this can be replicated in places like England.
I would like to think that I have not wasted quite a lot of money buying charcoal and that it does have some beneficial effect on the fertility of the soil. What worries me is that there is not a rush to add charcoal to the soil by farmers and market gardeners. Is this because the data is inconclusive or for some other reason such as the cost effectiveness of charcoal.
Now as a warning, I need to emphasise that it is the genuine lump wood charcoal that should be used not the briquets. Charcoal briquets are made with cement and will alter the pH of the soil significantly. Charcoal itself is alkaline so any further raising of the pH will significantly change the character of the soil.
Is adding charcoal to the soil any better than just burying unburnt brush and logs? Hugelkultur raised bed systems, which the South Americans also developed, would suggest that there is little difference. Both are good ways in which to add large quantities of carbon to the soil. Is the quantity of carbon in the soil significant in raising its fertility?
Although plants need relatively large amounts of carbon dioxide and water to produce their food, the amount of other nutrients they require is very small.
Anything added to the soil that will help to retain moisture will be beneficial to plants. There is evidence that charcoal helps to retain moisture in the soil. Together with water retention there is also a benefit in that addition of long lasting carbon will help with drainage of the soil.
I would conjecture that there is an overall benefit of adding charcoal to the soil and this is similar to adding unburnt organic matter to the soil.
This type of very fertile soil has been found in South America and has been made by people over thousands of years using charcoal as a soil amendment. The evidence that I originally read was that charcoal reduced the fertility of the soil when it was initially added to the soil. This discouraged me from doing experimenting on my allotment. However, after reading around the subject and talking to people on various websites such as Allotments.uk I developed the hypothesis that an "inoculated" charcoal may be able to be used as a beneficial soil amendment to produce a sustainably fertile soil.
Some people are still trying to develop an inoculated charcoal that is very similar to that found the South American Terra preta. My reasoning was that this seemed to be over complicated because if the charcoal could be amended by Amazonian nutrients then it should be able to be inoculated with nutrients originating in my local area.
I am experimenting with using comfrey, nettle and sweet cicely liquid fortified with worm bin liquid.
Inoculated charcoal is charcoal that has been marinaded in nutrients. Charcoal has some remarkable properties that allow it to absorb or adsorb chemicals within its labyrinthine structure. We can use this property to enable us to deliver nutrients to the soil in a form that might not readily leach away.
I would conjecture that the charcoal acts as a kind of buffering mechanism that allows nutrients to diffuse into the soil when there is a low concentration of them while adsorbing them when there is an excess.
The structure of charcoal also gives a relatively safe place for beneficial bacteria and fungi to live adding more nutrients to the soil.
Research has found that Terra preta soils also contain mychorrhizal fungi which form a symbiotic relationship with plants. The charcoal could give these fungi a source of nutrient that can be transferred to plants and also a protected environment for their spores.
Now all of this is complete conjecture because research in this area is in its infancy. We are trying to follow in the footsteps of ancient Amazonian peoples and it is difficult.
I have had impressive results this year after adding charcoal to the soil. Whether this is due to the charcoal or to some other factor this year, I don't know. We are attempting to replicate a soil that has developed in the Amazonian rain forests areas. There is no evidence that this can be replicated in places like England.
I would like to think that I have not wasted quite a lot of money buying charcoal and that it does have some beneficial effect on the fertility of the soil. What worries me is that there is not a rush to add charcoal to the soil by farmers and market gardeners. Is this because the data is inconclusive or for some other reason such as the cost effectiveness of charcoal.
Now as a warning, I need to emphasise that it is the genuine lump wood charcoal that should be used not the briquets. Charcoal briquets are made with cement and will alter the pH of the soil significantly. Charcoal itself is alkaline so any further raising of the pH will significantly change the character of the soil.
Is adding charcoal to the soil any better than just burying unburnt brush and logs? Hugelkultur raised bed systems, which the South Americans also developed, would suggest that there is little difference. Both are good ways in which to add large quantities of carbon to the soil. Is the quantity of carbon in the soil significant in raising its fertility?
Although plants need relatively large amounts of carbon dioxide and water to produce their food, the amount of other nutrients they require is very small.
Anything added to the soil that will help to retain moisture will be beneficial to plants. There is evidence that charcoal helps to retain moisture in the soil. Together with water retention there is also a benefit in that addition of long lasting carbon will help with drainage of the soil.
I would conjecture that there is an overall benefit of adding charcoal to the soil and this is similar to adding unburnt organic matter to the soil.
Saturday, 9 July 2011
Inoculated charcoal Terra preta soil
The judges for the allotment competition came back to see my allotment again today. I think that they were interested in the sweet peas but did not really look at anything else.
They were asking what was put on the soil to augment it and I said horse muck, inoculated charcoal, comfrey liquid and mychorrhizal fungi. They could not believe that such a productive allotment could be sustained with so little input of fertiliser.
Most soils will have ample nutrients for plant growth without a great deal of augmentation, although whether these nutrients are readily available to the plant is another question. Making the nutrients available is the work of the mychorrhizal fungi.
Nitrogen input into the soil comes from the legumes growing on the allotment. The allotment is producing a remarkable amount of produce now and the plants are growing particularly big. Is this due to the charcoal experiment?
Inoculated charcoal has been used throughout the allotment during the planting season. It certainly seems to have helped the vegetables grow well. Ordinary lump charcoal for barbecues was used. It was put into a dust bin and comfrey liquid poured over the top of it. The charcoal marinaded in the comfrey liquid for several months during the winter. In the spring the charcoal was crushed with a bull hammer and put into the planting holes of the vegetables. The hypothesis is that the charcoal adsorbs and absorbs nutrient from the comfrey liquid so that it becomes saturated with it.
When it is added to the soil it acts as a type of buffer; releasing nutrient when there is a lack of them but absorbing or adsorbing them when there is a surplus.
Another suggestion is that mychorrhizal fungi can find nutrients in the charcoal and transport them to the plant easily. So they are added to the planting hole as well.
Now it has been said before that there is plenty of mychorrhizal fungi in the soil all ready. However, I think that we destroy these symbiotic relationships when we disturb the ground for digging and cropping. Therefore adding them to the allotment will only help the plants to grow.
They were asking what was put on the soil to augment it and I said horse muck, inoculated charcoal, comfrey liquid and mychorrhizal fungi. They could not believe that such a productive allotment could be sustained with so little input of fertiliser.
Most soils will have ample nutrients for plant growth without a great deal of augmentation, although whether these nutrients are readily available to the plant is another question. Making the nutrients available is the work of the mychorrhizal fungi.
Nitrogen input into the soil comes from the legumes growing on the allotment. The allotment is producing a remarkable amount of produce now and the plants are growing particularly big. Is this due to the charcoal experiment?
Inoculated charcoal has been used throughout the allotment during the planting season. It certainly seems to have helped the vegetables grow well. Ordinary lump charcoal for barbecues was used. It was put into a dust bin and comfrey liquid poured over the top of it. The charcoal marinaded in the comfrey liquid for several months during the winter. In the spring the charcoal was crushed with a bull hammer and put into the planting holes of the vegetables. The hypothesis is that the charcoal adsorbs and absorbs nutrient from the comfrey liquid so that it becomes saturated with it.
When it is added to the soil it acts as a type of buffer; releasing nutrient when there is a lack of them but absorbing or adsorbing them when there is a surplus.
Another suggestion is that mychorrhizal fungi can find nutrients in the charcoal and transport them to the plant easily. So they are added to the planting hole as well.
Now it has been said before that there is plenty of mychorrhizal fungi in the soil all ready. However, I think that we destroy these symbiotic relationships when we disturb the ground for digging and cropping. Therefore adding them to the allotment will only help the plants to grow.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Comfrey tea
I have said in several of the previous posts that I use comfrey, sweet cicerly and nettle teas to inoculate charcoal. I also use them as liquid fertilizers.
I have grown comfrey (Symphytum officinale) for about 30 years now. It has a beautiful pink purple flower and large dark green leaves. It can grow up to 1.5m tall and is rather a thug in the vegetable plot if you allow it to be. I have five 25ft rows of it.
 |
| Comfrey bed |
My plants are not the sterile Bocking 14 and they produce seeds prolifically. They will spread. Their roots are very thick and robust and you can use them to propagate new plants. They are, indeed, very good ground cover plants because little will grow under them particularly if you grow them closely.
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| Neat comfrey coming out of the butt. This butt does not have a tap |
Whenever I feel in the mood I cut down the comfrey and put it into a butt (a water barrel) with a tap at the bottom. The comfrey rots down to a black liquid and that can be drained out of the barrel. Some people cover the comfrey in water but it is unnecessary. The liquid is relatively high in potash (Potassium) so it is good for fruit and flowers. Its percentage NPK is 0.74:0.24:1.19 for the Bocking 14 comfrey
which compares very favorably with commercial tomato liquid fertilizers.
However, it costs nothing!
What goes into the barrel stays in the barrel. It will all rot down regardless of how tall the comfrey grows. It does get coarser as it gets bigger and takes a little bit longer to break down in the barrel but it still forms the black liquid. Now, you might think that the decaying comfrey would block up the tap at the bottom of the butt but it decomposes so quickly that it rarely if ever blocks the tap.
I kept a large bottle of comfrey liquid for about 3 years and it still seemed to be alright. I keep my comfrey for about 6 months to a year in the butt but I keep topping it up as I crop the comfrey. It lasts over the winter as well.
Nowadays I bury most of the allotment undiseased waste in the comfrey bed and let the comfrey recycle it for me. It gets a dose of manure or lawn mowings along the rows when I have nowhere else to store them.
The stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) and Sweet Cicerly (Myrrhis odorata) also make valuable liquid fertilizers. Ref: “Ear to the Ground” by Ken Thompson.
Both worm tea and comfrey tea seem to make tomatoes grow. I don’t know the NPK ratio for worm tea but I don’t think that it would be too different from comfrey tea.
Comfrey does smell when it is rotting down and that is why I put it in a covered water butt. I do not put water with it because that makes it smell even worse. If you are constantly using it, like I am, then the smell does not seem to be so bad. I use it on all the vegetables although things like beans and peas together with tomatoes and pumpkins seem to thrive on it.
Hunts (see comment below) said that he found maggots in the dried comfrey liquid. I reckon that these were rat tailed maggots. They are larvae of one of the hoverflies such as Eristalis tenax. The larvae are one of the few that will live in very polluted water. While some hoverfly larvae feed on aphids, Eristalis tenax larvae probably live off bacteria or other microorganisms living in the polluted water.
So how to make comfrey tea that will not go ‘off’. I think that Hunts’ went off because all the water in it evaporated away. So, run it into old orange squash bottles –the large ones with a handle at the top. Screw on the top and this will prevent the adult hover flies from reaching the liquid. I have kept comfrey liquid for some time like this. You can then dilute it down however you want. I dilute it down like Tomorite plant food.
Nowadays, I put the comfrey liquid into a lidded dustbin full of charcoal so that the marinating charcoal soaks the tea up and I can put it onto the soil in a more sustainable form. I suggest, and there is very little evidence I can quote on this, that the comfrey liquid nutrients will not be leached out of the soil quite so readily in this form. This is one of the main principles behind the development of a method of creating Terra preta type soils in England's temperate climate.
As Mikey says in the comments below, the comfrey leaves can be put into the worm bin as in the photograph below.
However, I would fill this little bin up several times over with the amount of comfrey leaves that I produce. So the large bins are also brought into service. In addition to comfrey leaves, I put most of my pernicious weeds in this worm bin. Bindweed Convolvulus sepium and horse tail Equisetum arvense ( arvense meaning of the field) are the two main weeds added to the bin. Comfrey leaves or not, the bin produces copious amounts of black tea like liquid which get mixed with the comfrey liquid manure. In the front of the worm bin is an area of nettles Urtica dioica which is also added to the worm bin and the comfrey bins. It is all grist to the mill.
As Mikey says in the comments below, the comfrey leaves can be put into the worm bin as in the photograph below.
Sunday, 16 January 2011
Growing better soil
The Terra preta experiment that some of us here in the UK have started is about growing better soil.
I don’t think that the production of Terra preta type soils depends on the climate. Our indigenous micro organisms should be able populate charcoal in a similar way to those that are associated with Terra preta soils in other parts of the world.
When artificial petrochemical and industrial based chemicals are placed on the soil, I would speculate that it affects micro organisms within the soil adversely.
I would also suggest that we destroy the symbiosis between plant and fungi in many ways, not least by cultivation itself. Adding insult to injury, if we then pour on damaging chemicals, the ground is further denuded of beneficial micro organisms. Adding mychorrhizal fungi to garden soils just helps to replace ones that we destroy through cultivation. If there is a way of maintaining these fungi by giving them a new habitat within charcoal then we may not have to keep replacing them.
I doubt if gardeners will stop breaking the soil because even the act of cropping potatoes, carrots and parsnips involves us in destroying the fine networks of symbiotic relationships within the soil Maybe charcoal is a way to ameliorate this problem.
It may be true what academics say about mychorrhiza being abundant in the soil; however I cannot see their influence in the vegetable garden.
“Inoculated charcoal could produce a slow nutrient release system. Affinity of the charcoal for nutrients depends on the condition and type of soil it is in, but I would suggest that this could be a buffering mechanism. It would adsorb nutrients when they were in surplus but as concentration decreases the charcoal would lose nutrient by a diffusion process, maintaining equilibrium with the surrounding soil.”
I would like to believe that the ancient indigenous civilizations of South America knew what they were doing when they created Terra preta. This would have been a fundamental scientific understanding of how the soil works and how it provides nutrients to the plant. Remember, science is not a list of unassailable facts; it is the best interpretation of data that we can come up with. It may seem impersonal but that is the best way of understanding nature and can prevent us from going down blind alleys. We want to know if adding charcoal to soil works the way that we think it does. Through some rudimentary experiments, I have come up with a a little encouraging observational data, which has convinced me of charcoals efficacy.
It will be even more convincing if I can replicate my results in 2011.
Artificial, manmade chemicals must affect microorganisms adversely and subsequently go on to have an effect on higher animals. All life is beneficial and the more diverse it is the stronger the web of life becomes. As Chief Seattle said: “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”
The chemicals that we put onto the soil go somewhere. I have been told that they break down into other less harmful substances. I would rather that we did not have any artificial chemicals so they would have no chance of entering our food or the food of other living things.
So the experiment goes on. The soil will be fed with a diet of homemade inoculated charcoal.
Wiki charcoal!
It is so important that homemade charcoal soil amendments are developed because we must avoid industrial take over. There is great concern that areas of natural forest might be felled to plant crops that could be used to make and inoculate charcoal. This is what they did with biofuels. Making the inoculated charcoal a cottage industry will help to prevent this from happening.
We have enough domestic vegetable waste to produce all the composted charcoal that we need. You do not necessarily have to use the “teas” that I do. It may be that composted charcoal is a better soil amendment than inoculated charcoal.
The soil created by adding augmented charcoal seems to be a lot healthier especially when it is used on poorer soils. Soil should be alive with micro organisms in their many forms and produce a strong web of life within the soil.
It has been suggested that we use the system called Bokashi devised by Professor Teruo Higa in Japan with inoculated charcoal. The Bokashi system uses very specific bacteria to break down kitchen waste, however it can also be used as a remedial process that can help to cleanse polluted land and water. I hope so…
Humanity has gone over the edge of the cliff and now we must work to make our landing a little softer.
Monday, 10 January 2011
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...
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
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...
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
Saturday, 8 January 2011
Blackcurrant bushes
Moving the blackcurrants is not a difficult job. It is just a little time consuming. They are relatively shallow rooted plants and taking them out is fairly simple.
I just cut around them with a spade and then go under them to lever them out. I was replanting about 6 feet away so there was no long distance to transport them. Getting blackcurrants in a straight line is a bit difficult because they are such big bushes. I used the garden line but also two sighting sticks at the ends of the row. The currant line is a little wonky but it will do for me.
Each of the planting holes had inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi scattered into it before the plants went in. As the soil was returned to the hole, I shook the plants to make sure the soil was falling right up to the roots. I think there was a little big bud mite (Cecidophyopsis ribis) on some of the branches so I took these off with secateurs.
I moved five primula that were growing in the same area using the charcoal and mychorrhiza. These were moved because I have to redo the retaining slabs along this bed. All I have to do is straighten them a little because they were never right after the land drain was put in by the contractors. I wish they had contacted me before they did it because I would have done it myself, if they had given me the materials.
The spring is not flowing down the side of the allotment any more, however water is still bubbling out in the corner of the brassicae bed and where it disappears after that I don't know. Just so long as the water does not flow onto my allotment, I will be happy.
Still, that is by the by. The primula were moved and I just had time to dig one more hole before the lack of light and freezing wind forced me to go home.
Monday 19th January
I have eventually moved all the blackcurrant bushes
.[:D][:D][:D]
It's amazing what a few frost free days can achieve. 9 bushes and I think 9 varieties but I am not sure because I have lost the labels. I just planted the best fruiting ones.
I like to bury things so they will probably go at the bottom of a trench. It is amazing how much soil they have around their roots and this has left quite a hole in the new bed. I will double dig this area using the compost, weed turfs and last years lawn mowings in the bottom of the trench. Before that though, I will cut up the old blackcurrents and put them at the bottom. I hope that this will raise this area up to the level of the rest of the bed.
I just cut around them with a spade and then go under them to lever them out. I was replanting about 6 feet away so there was no long distance to transport them. Getting blackcurrants in a straight line is a bit difficult because they are such big bushes. I used the garden line but also two sighting sticks at the ends of the row. The currant line is a little wonky but it will do for me.
Each of the planting holes had inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi scattered into it before the plants went in. As the soil was returned to the hole, I shook the plants to make sure the soil was falling right up to the roots. I think there was a little big bud mite (Cecidophyopsis ribis) on some of the branches so I took these off with secateurs.
 |
| Black currants need a good mulch. January 2012 |
 |
| The blackcurrants mulched with horse manure and the strawberries with straw. March 2012 |
The spring is not flowing down the side of the allotment any more, however water is still bubbling out in the corner of the brassicae bed and where it disappears after that I don't know. Just so long as the water does not flow onto my allotment, I will be happy.
Still, that is by the by. The primula were moved and I just had time to dig one more hole before the lack of light and freezing wind forced me to go home.
Monday 19th January
I have eventually moved all the blackcurrant bushes
.[:D][:D][:D]It's amazing what a few frost free days can achieve. 9 bushes and I think 9 varieties but I am not sure because I have lost the labels. I just planted the best fruiting ones.
Cecidophyopsis ribis)
Now I have to decide what to do with the 3 bushes I do not want. I like to bury things so they will probably go at the bottom of a trench. It is amazing how much soil they have around their roots and this has left quite a hole in the new bed. I will double dig this area using the compost, weed turfs and last years lawn mowings in the bottom of the trench. Before that though, I will cut up the old blackcurrents and put them at the bottom. I hope that this will raise this area up to the level of the rest of the bed.
Monday, 3 January 2011
Early January Jobs
I went to the garden centre to have a look to see what onion varieties they had in their seeds. I think that I am going to stick to the traditional Ailsa Craig but I didn't get any so I can change my mind if I want.
I already have some peat free potting compost so I can plant straight away when I get them. I will probably germinate them inside because the greenhouse is not heated. I will put the tray into a transparent plastic bag and leave it near the window. Now it is my understanding, although I don't know where I read it, that onions can stand quite low temperatures once they have germinated. So, I am going to put them out in the greenhouse and hope for the best.
We have been having a very cold winter here in the UK and temperatures in my garden have gone down to -16oC several times. This means that I have lost a lot of my stored potatoes. I store them in large paper bags and cardboard boxes. Once they freeze they go soft and begin rotting. I might still have enough to last until the spring but I have lost about half of them. I was not expecting the weather to be so severe this year.
Over the years I have forgotten how bad winters can get. Each year the winters have been warmer and storing vegetables has become much easier. Still nothing goes to waste and they were put onto the compost heap.
In the 1950s and 1960s I put my potatoes in a clamp.
I already have some peat free potting compost so I can plant straight away when I get them. I will probably germinate them inside because the greenhouse is not heated. I will put the tray into a transparent plastic bag and leave it near the window. Now it is my understanding, although I don't know where I read it, that onions can stand quite low temperatures once they have germinated. So, I am going to put them out in the greenhouse and hope for the best.
We have been having a very cold winter here in the UK and temperatures in my garden have gone down to -16oC several times. This means that I have lost a lot of my stored potatoes. I store them in large paper bags and cardboard boxes. Once they freeze they go soft and begin rotting. I might still have enough to last until the spring but I have lost about half of them. I was not expecting the weather to be so severe this year.
Over the years I have forgotten how bad winters can get. Each year the winters have been warmer and storing vegetables has become much easier. Still nothing goes to waste and they were put onto the compost heap.
In the 1950s and 1960s I put my potatoes in a clamp.
 |
| The spring was just infront of the shed. I removed all the top soil from the path and from under the shed and replaced it with stones. Covered the stone with a little subsoil and then laid the slabs. |
Saturday, 1 January 2011
Sweet peas
I usually sow sweet pea seeds in the autumn. October seems to be the best month. I do not nick, sand or any other way mutilate the seed. I find that they germinate well without damaging the outer shell of the seed. I think that if the seed do not germinate, it is more to do with the viability of the seed rather than the thickness of the seeds outer coat. The pots are left in the greenhouse overwinter. It is a cold greenhouse with no heating at all.
I sow the seed in individual 3 inch pots and label them carefully. I use New Horizons peat free compost to plant them in.
When the seedlings have grown their second or third leaf, I pinch out the growing tip to encourage side shoots. The strongest side shoot is left while all the others are removed. Some growers leave two side shoots. From what I have seen of other sweet pea growers, this is quite an important thing to do if you are growing exhibition standard cordon sweet peas.
In the past I have taken out a trench and put in well rotted compost or manure, however now the soil is very fertile on the allotment I don't necessarily do this any more.
I use canes to grow the sweet peas up and make a line of canes in a similar way to runner bean rows.
I plant sweetpeas out fairly early - end of March or the beginning of April. When I planted the sweet pea seedlings I included both inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi in the planting hole.
I grow them as cordons i.e I take off all side shoots and tendrils and tie them to a cane. It is really the only way to get large flowers. The other secret, and please don't tell anyone else, is to feed the sweetpeas with comfrey liquid. They love it.
I am experimenting with using charcoal inoculated with comfrey tea and that had even better results for me. We will be experimenting again in the spring.
The leaf is the food factory for the sweet pea. If you take off the leaves it will begin to starve to death. The tendrils grow out of the leaf and these can be taken off - not the leaves. If you are cordon growing them then you will need to take off the tendrils and the side shoots. They are then grown up strings or canes to support them. I am going to put some pictures of my sweet peas on the blog later. You will also have to tie them onto the canes with wire because you have taken off their natural climbing apparatus. If you do this carefully and feed them with comfrey liquid you will get large exhibition flowers.
If you just want flowers for the house then let them grow naturally and provide them with netting to climb up themselves. They will not grow as large as cordon sweet peas either in height or size of flowers.
I sow the seed in individual 3 inch pots and label them carefully. I use New Horizons peat free compost to plant them in.
When the seedlings have grown their second or third leaf, I pinch out the growing tip to encourage side shoots. The strongest side shoot is left while all the others are removed. Some growers leave two side shoots. From what I have seen of other sweet pea growers, this is quite an important thing to do if you are growing exhibition standard cordon sweet peas.
In the past I have taken out a trench and put in well rotted compost or manure, however now the soil is very fertile on the allotment I don't necessarily do this any more.
I use canes to grow the sweet peas up and make a line of canes in a similar way to runner bean rows.
I plant sweetpeas out fairly early - end of March or the beginning of April. When I planted the sweet pea seedlings I included both inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi in the planting hole.
I grow them as cordons i.e I take off all side shoots and tendrils and tie them to a cane. It is really the only way to get large flowers. The other secret, and please don't tell anyone else, is to feed the sweetpeas with comfrey liquid. They love it.
I am experimenting with using charcoal inoculated with comfrey tea and that had even better results for me. We will be experimenting again in the spring.
The leaf is the food factory for the sweet pea. If you take off the leaves it will begin to starve to death. The tendrils grow out of the leaf and these can be taken off - not the leaves. If you are cordon growing them then you will need to take off the tendrils and the side shoots. They are then grown up strings or canes to support them. I am going to put some pictures of my sweet peas on the blog later. You will also have to tie them onto the canes with wire because you have taken off their natural climbing apparatus. If you do this carefully and feed them with comfrey liquid you will get large exhibition flowers.
If you just want flowers for the house then let them grow naturally and provide them with netting to climb up themselves. They will not grow as large as cordon sweet peas either in height or size of flowers.
Saturday, 10 April 2010
First Terra preta experiments, chinampas, huglekulture and Montezuma method
I have had my allotment for 28 years now and still enjoying every minute of it. I completed digging this week and now the interesting part comes. Planting. I have planted Pentland Javelin and Kestrel potatoes breaking my rotation - something that I have never done before. I bought too many Pentland Javelin for the bed I had prepared for the potatoes so I had to put some of the kestrels in the bottom bed. That is the bed that the council replaced all the soil to a depth of 60cm because they found that it was contaminated with some foul chemical which I would be able to tell you the name of if I still had my original blog.
The new soil was completely unsuitable for allotment gardening and replaced some beautiful fibrous soil that had been built up over 27 years of continuous cultivation. Well, it has now been bashed into submission and is beginning to take on the resemblance of acceptable soil, however its fertility is suspect and I have just covered it, again, with about 4cm of well rotted cow muck.
Into this I have planted three rows of Kestrel. I am not expecting exhibition standard potatoes, although stranger things have happened. On the middle bed on the top half allotment I have planted four rows of sweet peas. I am hoping to grow some exhibition standard blooms again. I never show the sweet peas - I just like to show myself that I can do as well as the exhibitors. They are grown uncovered and open to all the elements. I will be growing them up canes and side shooting and detendrilling them as they grow.
I triple dug the onion bed during the winter mainly because I was taking down five silver birch in my garden. They had grown far too large for my small garden and were taking a lot of water and nutrients from the lawn. I needed to find somewhere to get rid of them and, as is my want; I like to bury anything that is or has been organic. So triple digging, and I think I will post the photographs to show what I did, allowed me to bury the five birches under about 1 metre of soil. I also buried about ten gooseberry bushes and an old Granny Smith apple tree which was not producing anything edible. Then I ran out of things to bury and I still had quite a bit of this bed to dig.
The allotment committee has allowed someone to dump laylandii shreddings in one of the bays near the gate. No one wanted to use them and one allotmenteer was heard to say that they were poisonous. Not a view that I subscribe to. Well if no one else wanted them, I thought, well why not put them under the subsoil because they cannot do much damage there.
Now there is madness in my method. I am becoming more and more fascinated by ancient South American Indian agriculture and horticulture. One of the things that the South American Indians did in the past was to stake out an area in a lake bed and fence it off. The farmers then layered it with mud, sediment and decaying vegetation until it was above water level. These were called Chinampas. When I first had my allotment there were about three springs on it. The allotment site is north facing at the top of a hill. So I have set about raising it in the same way that the Aztecs did in the past. I don't do raised beds - I do raised allotments. In order to keep the soil off the paths I have put upright paving slabs completely around the allotment. I will be doing this with the bottom half allotment too. So the allotment is about 2 foot higher than the surrounding paths.
However, I think that I overdid it a little with the laylandii shreddings on the onion bed and it is a little high now. Still it keeps the water flowing beneath my allotment and I do not sink into the soil to my hips like I used to do. I am not joking... Still this is my Montezuma method and it is similar to huglekulture but I like to bury rather than putting brushwood on the surface and covering . Burying high carbon organic material does not necessarily make your soil infertile, in my experience.
Trying to justify and research burying brushwood and logs, I found out a lot about South American agriculture and their methods of growing.
So what has all this to do with Terra Preta? Well as soon as it was brought to my attention that there were extensive farms and gardens along the Amazonian rivers and that they produced extremely fertile soil in an area that was thought to be extremely infertile my interest was aroused. It seems that these soils are very high in charcoal or what the Americans like to call biochar.
Some of these terra preta, manmade soils are over 2 metres deep and there is some evidence that they were being produced up to a thousand years ago. It seems that the Amazonian civilization was decimated soon after they were discovered by the Spanish, however their soils are still fertile to this day.
I, and several other allotmenteers, are trying to replicate these soils. I am using lump charcoal for barbecues, blood, fish and bone meal mixed in with comfrey tea. Now the science behind this could be very interesting and the adsorption of chemicals to the surface of charcoal may have something to do with it. I remain to be convinced. I am using this mixture along the planting lines for the sweet peas, onions, shallots, garlic and potatoes.
The new soil was completely unsuitable for allotment gardening and replaced some beautiful fibrous soil that had been built up over 27 years of continuous cultivation. Well, it has now been bashed into submission and is beginning to take on the resemblance of acceptable soil, however its fertility is suspect and I have just covered it, again, with about 4cm of well rotted cow muck.
Into this I have planted three rows of Kestrel. I am not expecting exhibition standard potatoes, although stranger things have happened. On the middle bed on the top half allotment I have planted four rows of sweet peas. I am hoping to grow some exhibition standard blooms again. I never show the sweet peas - I just like to show myself that I can do as well as the exhibitors. They are grown uncovered and open to all the elements. I will be growing them up canes and side shooting and detendrilling them as they grow.
I triple dug the onion bed during the winter mainly because I was taking down five silver birch in my garden. They had grown far too large for my small garden and were taking a lot of water and nutrients from the lawn. I needed to find somewhere to get rid of them and, as is my want; I like to bury anything that is or has been organic. So triple digging, and I think I will post the photographs to show what I did, allowed me to bury the five birches under about 1 metre of soil. I also buried about ten gooseberry bushes and an old Granny Smith apple tree which was not producing anything edible. Then I ran out of things to bury and I still had quite a bit of this bed to dig.
The allotment committee has allowed someone to dump laylandii shreddings in one of the bays near the gate. No one wanted to use them and one allotmenteer was heard to say that they were poisonous. Not a view that I subscribe to. Well if no one else wanted them, I thought, well why not put them under the subsoil because they cannot do much damage there.
Now there is madness in my method. I am becoming more and more fascinated by ancient South American Indian agriculture and horticulture. One of the things that the South American Indians did in the past was to stake out an area in a lake bed and fence it off. The farmers then layered it with mud, sediment and decaying vegetation until it was above water level. These were called Chinampas. When I first had my allotment there were about three springs on it. The allotment site is north facing at the top of a hill. So I have set about raising it in the same way that the Aztecs did in the past. I don't do raised beds - I do raised allotments. In order to keep the soil off the paths I have put upright paving slabs completely around the allotment. I will be doing this with the bottom half allotment too. So the allotment is about 2 foot higher than the surrounding paths.
However, I think that I overdid it a little with the laylandii shreddings on the onion bed and it is a little high now. Still it keeps the water flowing beneath my allotment and I do not sink into the soil to my hips like I used to do. I am not joking... Still this is my Montezuma method and it is similar to huglekulture but I like to bury rather than putting brushwood on the surface and covering . Burying high carbon organic material does not necessarily make your soil infertile, in my experience.
Trying to justify and research burying brushwood and logs, I found out a lot about South American agriculture and their methods of growing.
So what has all this to do with Terra Preta? Well as soon as it was brought to my attention that there were extensive farms and gardens along the Amazonian rivers and that they produced extremely fertile soil in an area that was thought to be extremely infertile my interest was aroused. It seems that these soils are very high in charcoal or what the Americans like to call biochar.
Some of these terra preta, manmade soils are over 2 metres deep and there is some evidence that they were being produced up to a thousand years ago. It seems that the Amazonian civilization was decimated soon after they were discovered by the Spanish, however their soils are still fertile to this day.
I, and several other allotmenteers, are trying to replicate these soils. I am using lump charcoal for barbecues, blood, fish and bone meal mixed in with comfrey tea. Now the science behind this could be very interesting and the adsorption of chemicals to the surface of charcoal may have something to do with it. I remain to be convinced. I am using this mixture along the planting lines for the sweet peas, onions, shallots, garlic and potatoes.
Monday, 1 February 2010
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