NVS Meeting, Growing under Straw

Well the snow didn’t stay long, just a matter of a few hours, and the weather hasn’t been too bad since, although a bit cold. Sunday was spent in leading a combine archaeological and decontamination team in my home office. You can imagine Time Team in here – “Well Tony, in the third trench we’ve got through a mass of post-it notes and found the surface of a desk”

The good news is that the new propagator is holding up well. My digital maximum minimum thermometer gives me the figures for inside, which is in the greenhouse and outside, which is actually in the propagator. Despite some large drops in the greenhouse the temperature never fell below 15 degrees in the propagator.

Monday and Tuesday were spent returning the office to its normal state of disarray, a couple of times I thought of heading to the plot and just as if my mind was being read, the sky turned black and spat at me.

NVS Meeting

Tuesday evening was our NVS meeting. We had a talk from Dave Metcalfe on how he grows on his allotment with a few asides on his show growing. He’s won the nationals with his onions, which is no small achievement.

He does a lot of his growing under black plastic. For example, his chitted potatoes are laid on a thick bed of manure / compost and the plastic stretched over with slits cut to allow the foliage through.

Personally, I’m dead against this. Firstly, I think it looks horrible seeing a plot with masses of plastic all over it. I prefer things to at least look natural. Secondly, plastic is made from petrochemicals and doesn’t bio-degrade. Like those ubiquitous plastic bags from the supermarkets, they’ll be around for a thousand years. No use to anyone and harming wildlife.

I’ve seen this ‘under plastic’ method touted as being ‘organic’, which may be technically true but it’s hardly green. Still, in the greater scheme of things it probably isn’t that important but I’m still against it.

The other method he uses a lot is something I haven’t seen before. He uses a lot of straw as a mulch. I don’t just mean under his strawberries, he uses six inches or so under his brassicas, planting through the mulch.

I was a little concerned about nitrogen robbery from the decomposing straw but he mixes some sulphate of ammonia in with the straw which compensates and assists the straw to decompose, eventually adding humus to the soil.

The only other question in my mind was the problem of many farmers using selective herbicides on the wheat. Just as with the lawn mowings being toxic to broad leaved plants if you’ve used a lawn weedkiller. I didn’t get chance to ask him, but from the results he was getting that obviously wasn’t a problem.

He suffers from horsetail on his plot and I had to pass on the bad news that ammonium sulphamate is no longer on the approved list. I don’t know if that just applies to ‘domestic’ users or if it means those with a license to use chemicals can no longer get it. Luckily, I’ve still some on the shelf but technically I shouldn’t use it. So it has been disposed of as per regulation <cough>

I took along some books to sell at the meeting, since I don’t have to cover postage and packing etc I donated that to the association. Sold seven copies, which cheered me up. I had this horrible feeling nobody would want one, but that’s just me. Even Larry says it’s quite good in parts. I think he likes the cover!

Next month we’re off to visit FlavourFresh near Southport. They grow tomatoes for the supermarkets and I think it will be interesting. I’m not sure if we can take photos but I’ll be taking the camera and asking.