I was chatting over the gate with another plot-holder on my allotment this morning; he was telling me about rebuilding his compost bays, I was telling him about getting rid of mine for good a year ago. We agreed that it is good soil that grows decent crops, not a tidy plot. At least we…
Allotment & vegetable growing
Soil, the never-ending no-dig, no compost, green manure experiment. 14/11/2021
I have been an adherent of a no-dig philosophy on my allotment for around six years now and have written the occasional piece about my experiences. I’ve also written several other pieces that are still in the drafts folder on WordPress, if they even made it that far. Much of the time it all feels…
Continue reading ➞ Soil, the never-ending no-dig, no compost, green manure experiment. 14/11/2021
Soil, getting it good and keeping it that way. 8/9/2021
I’ve had my allotment since April 2013 and have been a committed no-digger since about two years in. I could see what was happening to my soil, the good structure (aggregation into granules) that it had when I started very quickly started to break down. I stopped digging and divided the plot into beds about…
Continue reading ➞ Soil, getting it good and keeping it that way. 8/9/2021
Mulching.
Eight months ago I spread the compost from my heaps onto my allotment and resolved not to make any more. I would simply shred everything that came my way and spread it back on the ground. I wrote a blog about it at the time. It seemed a slightly radical course to take and I…
Soil texture
A few years ago I took on an allotment. It was a new site and had been operating only a year when I started; I took over a plot that had proved too much for the first tenant. At the start it had been shallowly ploughed, turning the grass over but not effectively burying it.…
On Compost and Composting
It's a funny old place the internet, full of information about absolutely everything and providing an equal opportunity for complete idiots and world experts to put forward their views as if they were of similar value. The distinction between fact and fiction has never been fuzzier. On almost every topic under the sun you will…
Dahlias
I grow a dozen or so named Dahlia varieties in the garden and three or four up the allotment. For the last few years I have collected seed from some of them and sowed them in March of the following year. I grow them on and plant them out on my allotment around May. They…
Allotment update – 19/11/2019
It wont have escaped the notice of any UK gardeners that it’s been very wet lately. I try to stay off my rather fragile silty soil in such conditions as it’s structure is rapidly degraded by my big feet. Today though was the third dry day we’ve had in a row, practically a drought, so…
Carrots
The picture above is of some carrots that I dug up on my allotment two days ago. As I explained back in June, I have taken to sowing carrots in deep pots and planting them out as an undisturbed pot full once they are a couple of inches high. I started to do this because…
Allotment update – 12/8/2019
I haven't had much to say about my veg growing this year and I have to admit that the weedy appearance of the plot suggests my enthusiasm for it has faltered a little. I don't think it has by much but I have probably not done as well this year as last, mainly because I…
garden ruminations 