Soil Not Workable so Harvested Leeks

Back to the plot

Down to the plot around 4pm in the car. It’s not me being too lazy to walk a hundred yards, Val has been tidying the garden and I had two huge bags of compost material plus the absolutely full pedal bin bucket from the kitchen with the vegetable peelings, tea bags, torn up toilet roll inners and anything else we think will compost.

Leeks

The first job was to harvest some more leeks for our tea. I think they”re just about at the end of their standing life now – some had a rotted and were recycled. There?s still one patch of leeks and I think they will have to be frozen.

I always top and tail the leeks on the plot, which saves carting compost material back and forth.

Compost Heaps

Took a look at the compost heaps on plot 5.  One is full of wood chippings that I added some urea to, which makes them rot more quickly. Nearly ready to put onto the soil with quite a few worms in it. The other compost bin needs turning, which I will do when the chippings have been emptied. One bin to the other being the easiest way to do that task.

Turning the compost heap helps get more oxygen in allowing decomposition to continue. I added Val?s garden trimmings and moved up to the top of the plot.

Rotovating

The patch that I dug over and want to plant the rest of the garlic in looked dry enough to rotovate so out with the Merry Tiller.

Managed to go over it but the soil is too claggy. Now for those who have not heard the term, it means sticky. I believe it is related to clog, as in ‘clogged up? and actually a mining term originally. Being as our area used to have lots of coalmines, I suppose that is where it came from.

After a quick run over with the tiller, the soil was left too clumpy so I watered the garlic in pots and they?ll have to wait a bit longer.

I?m amazed how far behind things are this year. The weatherman is threatening more cold weather as well.

Comfrey

I noticed the comfrey is coming back to life at the bottom of the plot so gave it a good dose of pelleted chicken manure. This organic feed will help the comfrey on. Comfrey is such a greedy plant you can give it raw chicken manure and it laps it up. You don?t get something for nothing and if you want a good amount of leaves you need to give it a nitrogen boost.

I gave a few handfuls of the manure to the garlic on plot 29 as well. That all looks to be doing fine and fingers crossed for a good crop.

The Home Front

Back at home things aren?t doing quite so well either. The tomatoes don?t seem too healthy and all bar one of the halapeno peppers have died. Val?s had lots of problems with her seedlings as well. The only thing we can put it down to is the compost. Usually we use Humax but this year we tried the slightly more expensive Westlands. Well, you live and learn.