Last week I was showing you all the stuff I have dotted around the greenhouse and garden, that really needs to get into the ground. After all it is June now. So this weekend I'm starting to get some of the greens and brassicas in the ground.
Now the soil I start with at the allotment is clay based. This means it's never the free running stuff you see all the Gardeners World presenters running their fingers through just before they start planting. When Its wet, it sticks together in clumps and when its dry it forms like concrete with cracks. It's at its most manageable when you have showery weather with sunny spells - perfect growing weather. But the thing is we don't seem to get perfect growing weather any more, we get weeks of rain followed by weeks of no rain - meaning the soil is either too wet to work with, or too dry.
You therefore need to add material to the soil regularly to keep the nutrient content high and to try and break the clay down into a more manageable state.I do this in two ways. Home composting and regular manuring...something I will focus on in a future blog. However, in spite of the fact that I do this, my soil is still a real challenge, especially when the weather isn't playing ball.
And for me there is one more element that I have to deal with which really does push me to the brink...bindweed.
You may have seen my opening blog where I am scattering lime (another soil improver) on a freshly dug patch ready for some brassicas. That was 8 weeks ago. Well the veg was ready to go in about 3 weeks ago but because of the very dry weather and my inability to guarantee watering every night because the plot is 6 miles away I couldn't plant anything out, just to let it burn up and die. Trouble was, the longer I left it, the more the soil 1) would turn to concrete making it totally undiggable and 2) the bindweed (which seems to grow in anything) would return.
We had a bit of rain this week, so I finally bit the bullet - this was the week to start planting out. And look what I am confronted with.
Apart from the clumps of lunar rock in the foreground, you can see the bindweed, couch grass and other pernicious weeds all taking centre stage, meaning effectively to put anything in the ground, I'd have to start again re-digging the whole patch again.
And when I say digging, its more like a combination of earth moving and excavating.
The fork lifts a whole clump of clay riddled with the tell tale white roots that split and multiply at the slightest touch, generating trails of stems and leaves which grow and spread incredibly quickly and themselves root, spawning more and more of it. You have to take each clump (which won't split easily as it is solid clay) and break it up by hand searching out the root and discarding it to the wheelbarrow. Even when you dig an area that has no greenery on top, there's probably a load of white root waiting to unfurl its unwanted vegetation and drawing out the goodness of the soil before the veg gets its chance for good measure.
Well it took me 5 hours of back breaking graft and you've seen the before shot...here are the after shots.
Note the wheelbarrow on the right - that was the second barrow-full.
Then I got the young sprouts and red cabbage plants in...
And finally I netted the whole area (that's what the hoops are there for above) to make sure the cabbage white butterfly can't invade and lay its caterpillar eggs for its newborn to strip the leaves.
I also found time to get the sweetcorn in too (on the left) alongside the squash (with more bindweed creeping into shot bottom right) and you get another view of the netting top right...as well a view of as how much of the bed I still have to weed. And I don't even want to think about the patch top left which I haven't even started work on!
So, hard work but a successful day nonetheless. I've only scratched the surface of what I need to plant out as there are some leeks and another row of sprouts that I didn't have time to get in - so they will spend the week in the cold frame made out of a shower door (below) which I will keep closed, again as protection from the cabbage whites.
And that's not to mention all the kale, broccoli, calabrese and cabbage still in the greenhouse.
So still lots still to do - well there always is, especially when you have to keep digging your patch over and over just to keep the bindweed out. Hope you have more luck with your patches....
Until next time #bindweed #digging #brassicas #allotment #growyourown #claysoil #sprouts #redcabbage
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