More mundane chores and harvesting the potatoes

The sweet peas are looking good again after layering. It has taken them a little while to recover but they are beginning to flower really well now.  They still needed to be tidied up today because some of the flowers had gone over and started going to seed.  Also there were some side shoots and tendrils that needed to be taken off.

In order to make watering a little more effective they were hoed carefully using the swoe.  They were watered just with water because they had been given comfrey liquid yesterday.

The onions, sweet corn and the pumpkins were watered too.  Several pumpkins have started to produce fruit but they are not too big yet.

Yesterday I dug up about 36 kg (79lb) of potatoes.  This was from one line of twelve plants which gives an average of about 6lb of potatoes per plant. I think that this is quite a good yield of potatoes.  Last autumn I dug in a mixture of leaves and horse manure (NPK 0.44:0.35:0.3).  The horse manure was put on top of a pile of leaves (NPK 0.8:0.35:0.2) and this meant that you picked up leaves when you were forking the manure into the barrow.

Potato bed in January

Potato bed in February

I dug all this in in January and did not add anything else to the soil until the potatoes were planted.  When the potatoes were planted, inoculated charcoal and mychorrhizal fungi were put into the planting holes and the potatoes were planted on top of them.

Potato bed in March

Potato bed in April

Always have a tub next to you when you are gardening.

Potatoes in May

Potatoes in June

Potatoes in July

I dug up about the same amount of potatoes today and got 28 kg (62lb) from twelve plants.  Now, that is just two rows dug up.  I still have several to go.  The point is that I have not added the expensive, high NPK potato fertilisers.  In fact, I have not added any bought fertiliser at all.  Regardless of JBA's advice on another blog, I don't think that potatoes need a high NPK fertiliser.  You don't need to buy expensive fertilisers and amendments to get a really good crop of potatoes.  

I have dug up the third row of potatoes now.  Only 24 kg. (53lb) from this row.  I hope that the yield does not continue to fall like this.  Some plants produce a lot less than others.  Maybe I should leave them in a little longer. If I average the weight of potatoes over the three rows it comes out at about 5lb per plant, which is probably more than I will need.  

End of July 12 potato plants

These are from JBA seed potatoes.  Thanks a lot JBA these were fantastic seed potatoes.  Produced a lot of spuds.  I will be getting more from you next year because these are obviously superior seed potatoes.  

General Summer Allotment Chores

The first thing I did today was to water the onions with comfrey liquid.  They are still growing fairly well and I think they will produce some big bulbs.  As I was on a roll I did the sweet corn and the pumpkins too.

I weeded around the lettuce carefully and then put my beer traps along the first line.  I have had some big slugs and snails in the lettuce but I did not see any when I was weeding.  Hopefully, they will go for the beer rather than my lettuce.

The beer traps consisted of a plastic cup dropped into a hole with some beer in it.  I covered the traps with broken slabs mainly to keep the rain out.

The rest of the onion bed was weeded and watered with comfrey liquid.

I had a cup of tea and a flapjack cake.  My favourite.

I was going to take the blackcurrants bushes out because they had big bud mite on them.  However, when I looked at them carefully they had all made some really good growth from the base of the branches.  I decided to just prune hard back to these ground level shoots.  As I pruned them back I took all the currants off the stems.  Most of them were ripe but I took off the unripe ones as well.  If you are only making jam with them the green ones will help the jam to set.

To pick black currants you need the patients of a saint.  It is incredibly pernickety.  Still I got another 2kg of currants off the pruned branches.   


Put some more beer traps under the climbing French bean supports.  The slugs and snails are still devastating the beans here.  The runner beans are fine and have flowers on them.  


I picked some American land cress and lettuce to take home.  I have had them for salad this evening.  


As part of the allotment competition you need to have compost heaps on the go.  Mine are just piles of stuff I have taken off the allotment - like the blackcurrant branches.  I thought that I might as well cover these up with some grass mowings and soil from the mega compost heap.  I got five barrow loads of grass mowings but only one barrow load of mega compost.  Looks a bit more like a compost heap now.  


I don't know why I am bothered about the allotment competition.   I just want to know whether my allotment is as good as others in the town.  I think that I will find that it is better than some and not as good as others and I will be none the wiser.  

Coming to the end of a very busy period in the allotment.

This is really a frantic, busy  time of the year. Seeds have to be sown and seedlings transplanted.  Yet once the allotment is full there is an anti climax where you wonder what you can do next.

I'm getting towards that stage now.  I do have a little more to plant out in the allotment but compared with what I have planted it is not very much.

I have virtually emptied the greenhouse of seedlings and the tomatoes have taken over.  I have not got any peppers or aubergines this year.  However, if I see some good ones at the garden centre, I may find some room for them.

There may well be a frost tonight so I will not be planting out the curbits.  There are still some brocolli and leek seedlings that need to be planted out.  I may take them to the allotment today but I doubt that I will have time to plant them.

I will need to prepare the pot for the cucumber I am going to keep in the greenhouse.  It will grow in the plastic greenhouse within the greenhouse.  I can give it a little more warmth and humidity inside the plastic.

All the tomatoes have settled into their new pots well.  I have flowers on the Totem bush tomatoes.  That's a first for April.  I know that it is May now but they did have flowers on them at the end of April.  I am hoping for some little tomatoes by the end of May and that will be a first for me.

The winds and the hot weather have not done the allotment or garden any good at all.  I don't think that it has done too much damage but you can see that a lot of plants are suffering.  It is the first time that I have done so much watering in April.  There is still a lot of water in the soil at the moment and there is rain forecast for the weekend.  I really hope that it will be a substantial amount because everything will grow away if it is a significant quantity.

Having said that, the more pressing concern is that we will have a frost tonight.   There seems to be a suggestion that it will go down to  2^oC  tonight and that is uncomfortably close to freezing.  I will look very closely at the beans and the potatoes tomorrow morning.

Hope springs eternal - as old Popy said.

The allotment and companion planting

This year I have spent some time planting companion plants alongside my vegetables.
I know there is some scientific research for plants like marigold, mustard and maybe chamomile but there seems to be very little research on any of the other recommended plants. I must admit that the poached egg plants that I planted under the sweet peas may have helped them. I would much rather think that it was the inoculated charcoal that was more effective though. I am the belt and braces kind of gardener that uses every technique he can to produce the best results.

The companion planting lists seem to be repeated from web site to web site and book to book with very little passing through people’s brains.

The lists of pests they are reported to be effective against read like the old quack remedies such as snake oil.

Is there anyone that can suggest some good research that has been done on companion planting?


I am always amazed at what academics research, because they seem to go for stuff that is not very good for everyday life. In horticulture research, I think that the funding comes from industry so research will be focused on what they think are important.
My main worry is the thoughtless copying of long lists of companion planting that I have seen in many books and websites.


I find it very difficult to rely on old wives tales about gardening techniques because I have found that many of them do not work. The “plant onions or garlic with carrots to keep away carrot root fly” does not work for me and I have tried it for years. However, each time I hear about a method I have not tried I will give it a go even though my scientific training makes me very skeptical.


Now I have read on http://www.allotments-uk.com/ that planting potatoes next to raspberries encourages blight. What is that all about? I have been reading gardening books and research for years and have not heard about that one. Rubus idaeus the raspberry and Solanum tuberosum potato both totally different species from different parts of the world. Not only that, I am growing potatoes right up to my raspberries this year. I can’t put them anywhere else because it would mess up my rotation.

What fascinates me is that there are very few non cultivated plants within the lists. If there is something in companion planting, and I think there maybe, then surely the fact that a plant is cultivated cannot be the important factor.


Native uncultivated plants, weeds for short, probably have a greater affinity for native mychorrhizal fungi may give a greater help to crop plants than the list plants. Mychorrhiza will be able to transfer any beneficial chemicals to partner plants much quicker, easier and more effectively than diffusion through the soil.
It may be true what people say,
But I keep wondering anyway…