Helpful Hands

Mum and Auntie Jill came over to the allotment last weekend and provided not only cheap labour, but also an amazing fount of knowledge on all things green. I'll try to jot down what they said just so I can remember their sage advice;

"What are you doing with that watering can?!"
 Water properly, don't use the rose to water all the soil around where your plants are - get close and direct the water at the plants.

"Water that poor pear!" 
Mulch trees and shrubs; not only does it keep weeds down, but if you build it up into a little dam around it (think of a volcano crater) then it holds moisture and directs it at the roots.

"Don't water every day, give them a good drenching once a week" 
OK, I knew this one already, but I hadn't appreciated what 'drenching'  really was! The pear wasn't drenched until it had almost two watering cans full. Apparently, watering once a week encourages the roots to go hunting nice and deep for water. This is good, as cant really get up there every day.

"If you get interesting looking weeds, keep them!"
I cant believe we haven't done this before. After a spot of weeding mum found what turned out to be fennel. Brilliant.Sure they're not in the right place for our crop rotation, but who cares! Jill says "stick a pole in so you know where they are and make sure you water them".
I instantly thought that this would maybe make a great companion plant but after a bit of hunting online, found that; "Fennel is an odd plant in that it pretty much is a poor companion for everything."
Haha. But it does say that it repels aphids, so that's good for where it is, right on the peas and beans patch :) 



"What are all these dandelions doing here?!?!"  [needs to be said with outrage as if someone has trampled over your prize blueberry bush] If you cant be bothered to dig them up, just pick off the flower heads. I was lazy, so just grabbed the flowers off, managed to get over 100.. dandelion tea perhaps?

"Your compost is rubbish, but you'll learn!"
To me it looked tons better than it did two weeks ago, but wasn't really going anywhere - no heat and quite broken down. so we decided that should start a new one and put the rest out on the plot. Top tips for compost success are layers of twigs and green and adding "recycled beer" and chicken poo. There was also much loling at the beetroot growing in the compost - if you chop them up, they don't keep growing. Who'd have thought? Also, roots the length of your arm are not a good idea either.

"We've had two loads of rhubarb already this year" 
Force your rhubarb and you'll get a super early crop




Plus they did LOADS of weeding :) cheers guys!


More photos on flickr 

Companion Planting

Saw this pretty infographic this morning showing some common companion planting combinations. I think that some of these are more often employed in annual crop  rotation instead of strictly companion planting (eg Beans & Brasicas), but still good stuff.

Compost

After reading Mark Diacono's excellent book Veg Patch fairly constantly since Christmas, it's become a bit of a crutch for me... rather than just hack away with a shovel, I'll now find myself reading up beforehand, nodding and then hacking away with a shovel. Whenever Harriet and I talk about the allotment, I seem to precede every sentence with: "Mark says..."


Its like I've turned into an adoring three year old. 

Anyway, Mark says that your soil is your most important bit of your plot. More important than the veg even (!). Well we gave ours a bit of a manure last year, but haven't really done anything since. Makes sense tho, if you're taking things out of the soil, you'll need to keep the nutrients all topped up if you want to keep doing it every year.


One way of getting nutrients back into the soil is by composting. We've got a compost bin, so last weekend I had a look at how it was doing.  Definably more like soil than the rotten cabbages and chard that it was made up of, but quite dry and not fully broken down. And not many worms. (Also think i saw a rat in there, but it could have been just been a potato.) 


As we've not been visiting enough to make regular additions of food waste, it looks a bit undernourished. But what was there was promising, and I dont think it will take much to turn it into the powerhouse of free goodness for our plot.


So things to do this year:

 - Fill it up; make sure we use it. All kitchen waste, cardboard and paper, laddered tights, whatever will rot down is going to fill up the bin.
- Get a balance; Ensure that there is both 'Green' (fleshy stuff, clippings & peelings) and 'brown' (twigy things, cardboard, straw) - think this might have been a problem last year - it was mostly just grass and weeds

 - Water it; Our bin is plastic so it isn't going to get any moisture from the rain, which apparently slows down composting.

Also saw that a lot of the perennial weeds (like dandilion) were actually doing just fine and starting to grow in there. Have put them in a plastic bag to decompose before for a few weeks to make sure theyre double dead before they go in with the rest of the stuff.


Anyway, the bin was emptied out, given a nice airing and a good 'watering'. Will have to see how it is in a few months time.