Rotten allotment tasks

Things I have discovered I hate doing:

Digging potatoes in the wet – I know we should have got them out of the ground when the weather was fine, but remember, strictly speaking they aren’t our potatoes: Duncan grew them and we felt he should have first dibs. Then the heavens opened and it doesn’t matter who dibs now, the spuds are lurking sullenly in clayey, gluey soil and are horrible to dig out. They have to be washed in a bucket of water before we take them home, where the first ones we dug could actually be laid out in the sun to toughen for a few hours before transporting home. If you can do that, they keep a lot better, but if you leave them in the sun for more than about eight hours they start to go green. Fat chance of that, this week!

Weeding in the wet – Yes, you can hoe, but if you have clay soil like us, even the sharpest hoe gets clogged with clay very quickly, so bucket number two (the one that doesn’t have potatoes in soak) has to be used to wash the clay off the hoe every few feet. Ugh.

And I hate not being able to get my storm kettle going ...

Labels: allotment-potatoes, allotment-rain, allotment-tasks-july, allotment-weeding

Allotment chills

Do wind chill factors affect plants, does anybody know? I have a feeling they must do, but I can’t find any information in any of my books on the subject, only lots of stuff about ambient or air temperature.

In any case, it feels like it’s freezing on the allotments, although the temperature gauge says 7 degrees, so that’s why I’m wondering about wind chill. Things are coming up, like rhubarb (is it possible to stop rhubarb coming up, I wonder?) and garlic, but whether the latter carries on coming up is anybody’s guess. The harvest last year seems to have been variable in the extreme, with the eastern side of the UK having a better garlic crop than the western side, apparently. Because it keeps raining, and the mud is somewhat clinging, there’s no real point digging over the ground, although there’s no reason not to weed, and many of my neighbours who did weed and then put down weed suppressors in January, have been back to hold them down with BIGGER rocks and BIGGER stakes this week, because there’s quite a lot of weed-suppressing material (newspapers, old carpets and bits of fruit box) that has blown into the surrounding fences in the gales we keep having.

I’ve been thinking about successional sowing, which we were utterly useless at last year and whether there’s a simple system to be better at it this year – any suggestions? We had loads of simple crops like lettuces and carrots that it should be possible to sow and harvest in succession, but we seem to forget, or our new sowings catch up with our old ones, and we end up with a glut – carrots are okay, there’s no limit to the amount of carrot one can freeze or turn into carrot soup or carrot cake, but what on earth do you do with a glut of lettuce?

Labels: allotment-digging, allotment-garlic, allotment-rhubarb, allotment-weeding

Allotments in the News

Cableform Allotments Association has received a cash grant in the latest Lottery Awards for All funding. The grant is specifically to clear a piece of derelict land next to the allotment site in Sowerby Bridge site and turn it into ten new plots. The Allotments Association has been give permission to take over the land by the people who own it, but at present it is covered in Japanese knotweed which is very difficult to remove because it must be cleared by experts and disposed of in a way that allows no risk of the plant propagating itself, for example through composting or being dumped elsewhere. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, it is an offence ‘to plant or otherwise encourage’ the growth of Japanese Knotweed. This could include cutting the plant or roots and disturbing surrounding soil if not correctly managed. – which means that Japanese Knotweed polluted soil or plant material is classed as 'controlled waste' and should be accompanied by appropriate Waste Transfer documentation. The association is discussing a further sum with Calderdale Council, which could be between £500 and £4,000, to complete the job by covering the ground with new topsoil.

A disabled woman was locked into an allotment site in Calne, Wiltshire for several hours one evening this week after builders added an extra lock to gates to safeguard their materials. Builders creating new playing fields are using land at the allotments to store their machinery and installed a combination lock to safeguard their equipment.

The woman was trapped in the allotment until 9pm and was only rescued after a passer-by heard her shouting for help. The 58-year-old victim described the situation as terrifying. She wasn’t able to climb the fence and it was fully dark by the time she was freed. She said that there had never been a problem with the council locks but the new builder's locks made it impossible to get in or out of the allotment.

Labels: allotment-finance, allotment-news, allotment-weeding

October tasks

If you’re making compost, you can look at your comfrey and see if it’s ready to become an organic accelerator. A rich compost is vital to for soil health and plant growth and comfrey both accelerate decomposition of green waste into compost and provides beneficial nutrients to the overall mix

Leeks need to be weeded now, and if you’re lazy that means hoeing, while if you’re a committed leek lover, it’s down on the hands and knees. The risk of hoeing, of course, is that you swipe the top off a leek or two as you go. – I suppose it all depends which is more important to you – time or leeks! Weeding is a general process now, as every cleared area is likely to sprout a bunch of miserable weeds.

October’s a funny time of year on the allotments – half the plots have begun to clear, which leaves them looking empty and rather boring, the other half are still stuffed (and sometimes overstuffed) with crops, flowers and various gubbins. Above is an example of the stuffed allotment, and doesn’t it look great!

While you’re out there, why not think about planting something permanent – my suggestion would be a pyracantha for the lovely autumn colours of the berries which will feed the birds through the winter: if you want to be a bird feeder choose the red berried variety, if you want to keep the berries and starve the birds, choose the yellow berried one, as they only eat those in desperation. Another advantage of the pyracantha (aka firethorn) is the wicked thorns, straight and sharp, that deter vandals and harvest despoiling thieves.

Labels: allotment-crops, allotment-tasks, allotment-weeding