Starting to clear and triple dig an allotment (8)

I have just finished trench seven and am about to start trench eight.  It has taken a while to riddle out all the perennial weed rhizomes and I have also been gardening elsewhere.  I have moved the Rubus idaeus "Glen Prosen"  to the new allotment and tied them up onto wires stretched between tree posts.  When all the raspberries have been moved, I should have raspberries from July to October.  "Glen Prosen" is a mid summer cultivar, which I quite like.  The summer raspberry varieties need to be in the sun for as much time as possible and they were shaded for most of the day where I had them on the old allotment.

I remembered to plant the canes with a little mychorrhizal fungi and mulched them with a little horse manure. I really need to put more manure or compost on them but I will do this later in the year.  There are some raspberries on the new allotment which are probably "Autumn Bliss" which fruited in the autumn.  They are poor specimens so I might just take them out and put them at the bottom of the digging trench.

I have started to put curbing along the trackway using 1 foot square, concrete paving slabs.

I have put one foot square paving slabs along the end  of
the allotment.  

They are quite useful because I can use them to help me with spacing between veg. rows.  I have planted Laurus nobilis every two feet and Buxus sempervirens in between to make a hedge alongside the slabs.   This is the north side of the allotment so I am using the hedge and the Sorbus vilmorinii to shelter the rest of the allotment from winds from the north.  The bay may not like this very much but it has survived on the old allotment in a very exposed position.  The sorbus is being planted every ten foot in the hedge.

As I have run out of Buxus sempervirens rooted cuttings, I am using the Pyracantha rogersiana seedlings to finish off the whole of the run across the allotment.

I will need 40 two foot slabs to complete the path down the east side of the allotment.  Two down 38 to go. I will put curbing along the path as well to contain the soil.  The path will then go along the hedge to the shed. That will need 24 slabs and a path up to where the greenhouse is going - right in the middle of the allotment - will need 30 slabs.

The Fraxima ananasia "Cambridge" and "Marshmallow" plants were containerised at the old allotment using comfrey leaves at the bottom and good sieved top soil at the top of the containers.  I have moved these potted plants to the new allotment where they will be used to make a large strawberry bed next to the compost heaps.

I will move the compost heaps to enable me to use a little more of the ground that they are on.  If I move them round 90 degrees then the lorries and trailers will be able to back into the bays and tip out the manure where it needs to be stored.

The top fruit trees are not planted in the right places for the new allotment plan so I will be moving them during the winter.  I want to make sure that they are dormant before I start to do this.  They have just lost their leaves so I will leave them for another couple of weeks.  The Malus domesticus "Ribston Pippin" and "Egremont russet" will be put alongside the east path and the  Pyrus communis "Doyenne du Comice" will go by the west path.

I am going to move the two pears and apple trees from the old allotment and plant them by the east path.  I don't know the cultivar names of these at the moment but I will try to identify them when they fruit.  The pears are probably "Conference" and I think that the apple is "Discovery"

Although I have run out of brushwood and shreddings to put at the bottom of my trenches, I will continue to dig and scrounge  more from where ever I can.  There is quite a pile of horse manure at the old allotment and I can bag this up and bring it to the new to put under the topsoil.  The manure will have broken down well by next spring.

I have bought some volcanic rock dust, as an experiment, to add to the new allotment soil.  As the new allotment soil has a lot of clay in it, I thought that I would add some horticultural grit to open it up a little. However, why not use some rock dust instead?  I am not sure how well it will aerate the soil being dust rather than gravel but if it will introduce some nutrients as well as improving drainage, I will be pleased.  I think that the jury is out about whether rock dust is of any use in the garden.  I like to experiment and, as I have never used rock dust before, see whether it is useful or not for myself.

I will add the rock dust to the soil as I sieve it.  I will also apply it to the surface where I have already dug.

So on to trench number eight and the search for material to bury at the bottom of it.

Starting to clear and triple dig an allotment (7)

I have been plugging away at digging and sieving the allotment over the last month.  At times it has been quite wet and difficult to work.  The subsoil is a mixture of sand and clay which can become very waterlogged.

The green manure of tares, rye and crimson clover, has germinated and grown on very well.

I sowed the seeds in lines to make sure that I could cover the ground.  I have weeded between the rows but I have left the weeds that have germinated since to dig in with the green manure.  I doubt if many of the weeds will flower and set seeds before the spring now.

I have started to plant a new strawberry bed alongside the trackway but this may have to be altered because I am setting in curbing concrete slabs along the track.  These strawberries are Elsanta, which are said to be bland.  I had never heard of them before encountering them growing on this allotment, however they did taste really good.  Most of the new ones will be Cambridge and Marshmallow mainly because I already have 30 of these offsets growing in pots.

The green manure has produced some good healthy coloured plants.  They are taking up the surplus nutrients in the soil and storing it away for the winter so that it can be dug back into the soil in the spring,. This green manure was sown in September and this is the best time for germination.   I will probably have alliums in this area  next spring.  

I have put two posts in to support the wires for the grape vine. I don't know whether the posts are in the correct place and will have to measure their positions again.   I am going to prune the vines to the guyot system.

The guyot system.

This green manure planted in October is not growing on as fast.  I have also sown some broadcast a week ago but this has not germinated. (10/11/2013) I am not going to sow any more green manure until next spring now.  The newly dug soil will just have to be exposed to the elements over the winter.  I will be getting some horse manure later and will use this to cover as much of the ground as possible.  I am putting 1 foot square slabs along the trackway.  This will be useful in several different ways.  It will retain the soil and give me an edge to work from but also it will give me an easy way of measuring out lines of vegetables.  I am going to put two foot square slabs down the path and this will help me to measure out spacings too.  I have planted a Sorbus vilmorinii, one of a number grown from seed,  in the corner.  It was liberally dosed with mychorrhizal fungi and hopefully this will spread to the vegetables next year.  The theory is that the vegetables will be able to tap into the photosynthetic products produced by the tree and nutrients that the fungi has gleaned from the soil.

I am going to plant a hedge of rooted bay cuttings along the one foot slabs and then plant some Pyracantha rogersiana, grown from seed, when I run out of bay cuttings.  About 12 sage plants, grown from seed, will be planted down the path, followed by a similar number of rosemary plants.

I planted some spearmint under the first path slab so that it would grow through the cracks.  Every time that it is trodden on it will give out a beautiful minty odour.  The mint had mychorrhiza fungi over its roots too.

The sieved top soil looks in fine shape.  I am adding horse manure, pea and bean tops and annual weeds about 12 inches down.  

Although there are still little bits of  bindweed and mare's tail rhizomes still left in the soil, most of the larger pieces have been removed using the sieve. Six, yard width trenches have been completed and the seventh is marked out with the garden line.

Although I want to move the compost heap, the area marked out by the pallets is particularly useful for shreddings, manure and grass to be left.  Trailers can just be backed in from the carpark and emptied.  While I may well move the compost, I will construct a fence along the side to prevent manure being tipped over the plants.

I am taking out the central path and putting it on the near side of this photograph.  The trench is dug right across the allotment path so that I can remove all the rhizomes in the soil.  The path part of the trench is then filled with stones sieved out of the dug top soil and subsoil from the trench.  The topsoil from the path is just added to the growing area and not wasted underneath the concrete slabs of the path.

Although the soil where I am about to dig looks fairly clean, I have only hoed and raked off  the surface rhizomes, however there are numerous rhizomes below the surface of the soil.

The carpets have been successful in removing the green tops of the weeds, which makes digging  easier.  I found these carpets at the back of the allotment when I took it over.  They must have been there for many years because they were covered in several layers of composted material.  New carpets have nasty chemicals in them and I would never use them on an allotment.

However they do not stop the rhizomes from growing underneath.

I have turned back the big thick green tarpaulin and found lots of bind weed rhizomes.  I was hoeing off all the ones that were growing out of the edges,however  it seems that the rhizomes have decided to grow under the bark chippings of the path.  I doubt if they will have gone down very far but it means that I will have to carefully sieve the path stones to make sure that I get all the bindweed out.  

Blue plastic does not stop weeds growing because it lets light through.  It also breaks up into little pieces which are hard to remove from the soil.  The blue plastic was on the allotment before I put the carpets and tarpaulin over the weeds.

I still have this much of the allotment to dig and remove the bindweed and mare's tail.  The carpets and tarpaulins are useful now but I am not too sure what I will do with them after I have cleared and dug the allotment.  Lots of rain has made digging difficult but I am endeavouring to persevere.

The half allotment that I planted this year has produced some passable vegetables.  The winter crops will start to be used now.

Lots of the plants like the cardoon in the foreground will have to be moved to make way for the greenhouse. I have continued the raspberry row along the path at the back of the allotment.  I have planted most of the Malling Admiral and tied them to the wires.  They were planted with mychorrhizal fungi.  As the raspberries are near to the Crataegus monogyna, I am hoping that the mychorrhiza will tap into the roots of the hawthorn and transfer nutrients to the raspberries.

The small apple tree is a ribston pippin that I grafted onto an M9 rootstock.  This tree will have to be moved because it is in the way.  I have three other rootstocks that I want to graft onto in late winter.  I need to find some good scions first though.

The four rhubarb plants have died back now and can only be identified by the bamboo canes.  They will be moved down the allotment out of the way later in the winter.

The stones have been removed from the old path and put into the new and covered with subsoil.  The old path hole will be filled with top soil from the new path.  And so on to trench seven...

Before I complete this trench I will need some more brushwood shreddings; brushwood from pruned garden shrubs; old shrubs I am taking out of the garden, horse manure, and any other organic matter I can get my hands on.

Then on again to dig out another trench.

Starting to clear and triple dig an allotment (6)

Started on trench number five.  Very hard work and tiring but it has not defeated me yet.

It is taking me a long time to sieve out as many of the bindweed and mare's tail as I can find.  While I am not so stupid to believe that I have removed all the rhizomes, at least I will have dented the amount that will come back and irritate me.  Sieving the soil to a depth of at least three feet seems to be the most effective in finding the rhizomes.  

I put some horse manure into trench four and now I am wondering if this is a good thing to do.  Owners give horses worming medicines and these can pass through the animal and into the manure.  However, most of the chemicals are broken down in the horse itself, while some of the chemical is broken down by sunlight.  The rest stays in the manure and is broken down within a fortnight by microorganisms in the manure.  Composting and turning will speed up this process.   Other manures have the same problem but with careful composting the chemicals can be broken down to safer ones.  

The problem with worming medicines is their effect on soil worms.  Most say that it has little effect on soil worms because it breaks down so quickly.  

I am putting fairly fresh horse manure into the trenches, however this soil will not be used until next year so the manure and any chemicals within it will have broken down and decomposed long before any problem that might come from medicines in the compost.  

Having said this, I have put green manures on both allotments where the ground has become cleared.  I am using Hungarian grazing rye Secale cereale on the old allotment to draw up nitrogen from the soil. 

In order to put a little more body into the new allotment soil, I have sown a mixture of Trifolium incarnatum, Vica sativa and Lolium multiflorum  bought from seedaholic.com as Lansberger Mix. The seeds have germinated and grown on really well.  I will be using this company again.

As I am not going to eat the green manure, adding horse's manure to their soil will not be a problem.

I have taken down most of the sweet pea plants on the old allotment and put them into the trenches on the new allowment.  The old sweet pea haulms will add nitrogen to the soil because these plants are legumes and have nodules filled with bacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen.  This nitrogen is incorporated into the swee pea cells as a constituent of proteins and will be released into the soil as the sweet pea haulms decompose in the trenches.

I will add the old runner bean haulms to the trenches for the same reason.  I have not added them yet because I am allowing the bean fruit to ripen and go brown in order to save the seed.  I have collected quite a few seeds for next year both from the runners and the climbing French beans.  
I need to start looking at the catalogues for next year's vegetable seeds.

Starting to clear and triple dig an allotment (5)

The clearing and digging project has not progressed very much recently but  I am in no hurry.  The slower I am, the better I  remove the weed rhizomes.  Also, I have the whole winter to finish the digging.

Due to clearing off weeds and planting green manure on the old allotment, I have neglected the digging on the new allotment but that will change next week.

To be reasonable with myself and not to apply too much pressure on joints, a trench will take me at least two days and possibly three to finish.

I have collected a lot of organic matter to add to the bottom of the trenches and I will put as much as I can into each trench.

Taking out and sieving the top soil of trench three

The third trench top soil is put onto the previous
trench top soil.  

The soil in this part of the allotment is a little 'thin'
- meaning it does not have a lot of organic matter in it.

One spit of topsoil is removed and sieved through the bread tray and left on the side and when this is completed a second subsoil spit is taken out and sieved.  This will help to provide good drainage, a deep root run for vegetable plants and enable me to bury a lot of organic matter.  The organic matter will act as a sponge that will allow water to pass through it during wet periods and retain water during dry periods. When digging, air is added to the soil and this enables organic matter to be decomposed quickly. As the organic matter decomposes, it will release nutrients back into the soil which can be returned to the top soil.

I dug the trench on across the allotment but I still have not taken the top soil out all the way across the allotment.  Although this topsoil is pretty thin and lacking in organic matter, it looks quite good after sieving.

The second spit down will be sieved well in order to remove as many of the bindweed and mare's tail rhizomes as possible.

Parsnips and peas in the new allotment.

Inevitably at this time of year the allotment looks very untidy because a lot of vegetables have been harvested and some have gone over.  While the parsnips will be left in the ground over the winter, the pea plants behind them will be taken out and put into the digging trenches.  The pea supports will have to be stored somewhere for next year.

Winter brassicas

I took out all of the Kestrel potatoes at the end of August.  The ground has been left bare in preparation for sowing with winter green manure.  There is a little ephemeral weed on it but these can be hoed off very quickly.

Some of the early sprouting broccoli have flowered so I will take them out and put them into the digging trench.  Although I put these plants two feet apart  they still seem to be crowded.  I may give them even more space next year.

Forked over old potato bed

I was going to use the Mantis tiller to prepare the ground for the green manure but it only took me 15 minutes to fork over this area.  The Mantis does make a fine tilth and I may still use it.  My preference is to use the fork because this enables you to find any potato tubers that have been left in the ground.

Rhubarb

This rhubarb is in the wrong position now and will be moved during the winter. There is one root of Timperley Early and the others are a heritage variety.  In order to make sure that I don't have to move them again, I need to make a careful plan of the allotment now to make sure that I know where I am going to put things.

The wooden stakes are going to be used along the raspberry line.  Wires will be stretched between them and the raspberry canes will be tied to the wires.

I am saving a lot of the bean seeds for next year.  Sweet pea and garden pea seeds are being saved as well.

Starting to clear and triple dig an allotment (4)

I took a large Acer campestris stump up to the new allotment to bury in the second trench.  I had gone down about 500 mm. but wanted to go deeper for the stump.  I took out another spit of soil at the bottom of the trench and just put it to one side in the trench to keep it away from the top soil.  This soil was particularly clay like although there was some sand stone mixed up with it.  This is what gives the allotment soil its characteristics of sandy clay.  I had forked over the bottom of the trench yesterday and this made taking out a hole for the stump much easier.

The tree stump fitted snugly into the hole.  The bottom of the trench needed to be forked again where I had walked on it but this was no effort; the soil being soft and crumbly after forking yesterday.  I put some processed wood planks on top of the stump and some brushwood on top of that.  The wooden planks were very rotten and the web like white fungi mycelium could be seen growing all over it.

The allotment needs to be cleared now so the vegetables that have gone over, like bulb fennel and summer cabbages, are being added to the trenches too.

The rake was used to drag the subsoil back over the added organic matter and the trench levelled off before the top soil was put back on.  I was going to sieve the top soil as I put it back into the trench but I didn't bother.  There were very few small pieces of Calystegia sepium and Equisetum arvensis that were raked out and put into the trusty weed tub.    I am not stupid enough to believe that I have removed all these pernicious weeds but I think that the small pieces that are left in the soil will be easily removed if they decide to grow.

The old potato bed was cleared of weeds so that I could prepare it for sowing green manure.  I am going to plant Secale cereale and Vicia sativa to cover the whole area.  I will also sow green manure where I am clearing the other vegetable beds.  I want the whole allotment covered in green manure eventually, except where the winter vegetables are growing.

By the time that I have cleared and dug trenches out towards the back of the allotment, these winter vegetables will have been harvested and I will be able to put them at the bottom of the final trenches.

I will have to prune back the raspberries and tie them to wires so that the canes do not break due to winter winds.  I will use the prunings to put at the bottom of the digging trenches.  It is all grist to the mill.

The Prunus cerasifera 'Victoria' has cropped extremely well this year.  I think that I have had from 10 to 15lb. of just one tree. I have taken all the plums off the tree because they attract disease if you leave them on the tree to over ripen.  The diseased and eaten plums are being added to the trenches as I go along.

The comfrey leaves under the Victoria plum are going to be dug in where the strawberries are going next year. Strawberries Fragaria x ananassa seem to grow much better when I do this.

At the old allotment lots of vegetables needed harvesting.  I started on the brassica bed because the old cauliflower area was covered in weeds.  I bagged the weeds up ready to take down to the new allotment.  I will add them to the trenches as I dig back.

I harvested two large cabbages but left the swede and kohlrabi for next time.  The sweet corn needed harvesting as well so I went down to the bottom bed and took them all out whilst cropping them.  I eventually ended up with about 25 well formed cobs.  This is the most that I have ever got from sweet corn Zea mays.

The tomatoes have late blight and are no longer any good.  I will take them out and bag them to take to the new allotment.  Really they should have been grown more in the light.  The maize shaded them a little too much.

The cucumbers are still cropping and I took two of them off to take home.

Jobs to do at the old allotment are;
1) Hoe and rake the old potato bed ready for the green manure.
2) Tie up the chrysanthemums.
3)Weed and tidy the roots and leaves.
4)Take down the pea supports and store them away in the shed.
5)Hoe and rake the pea bed ready for green manure.
6)Move the strawberries onto their new bed.
7)Take out the sweet peas, take down their canes and store the canes in the store shed.
8) Collect sweet pea seeds and put them into brown paper bags.
9)Collect the runner bean and climbing French bean seeds and put them into brown paper bags.
10)Collect the dwarf French bean seeds and put them into brown paper bags.
11)Move the raspberries to the new allotment.  (I will need some more mychorrhizal fungi)
12)Take out and pot up the camomile seedlings that have come up on the potato bed.

So a busy month again.