June update: Underground biscuits and the beans have gone nuts

I earthed-up my potatoes recently, to ensure a greater depth of soil directly over the plants. I used my azada to draw soil from the edge of the beds to the middle. After the first couple of scrapes I found a bit of plastic in the soil - no great surprise there, I often find buried rubbish - so, assuming it was an old compost bag I gave it a tug. Up came half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. I'm not sure if I can adequately describe my shock at that moment, since they were actually quite fresh, a good 4 months off their sell-by date. I went and showed them to my neighbour, who was equally bemused. I can only assume some animal (squirrel? fox? the beast of Wolverton? The Moog?) has buried them there for safe keeping and will be disappointed to come back and find my potatoes instead.

Overall the plot is looking very healthy at the moment. The broad beans, in the ground since last autumn, have been threatening to produce useable pods for some time now. I kept checking but they were always too small, until about the second week of June when they finally reached maturity - all at once. So I have a bit of a broad bean glut on my hands. Luckily they freeze well whilst I find things to do with them! You can see clearly in the picture below the notches on the edge of the leaves, this means the plants have suffered the attention of 'Pea and Bean Weevil' again. These little beetles' sole purpose in life is to eat peas and beans. I wonder what they ate before I started planting peas and beans on this plot?

I have been quite careful to defend my crops from attack this year, but have still made some mistakes. My kohl rabi has been decimated by something, all leaves stripped to stalks. I assumed slugs, and liberally applied pellets until the same thing happened (quite literally, overnight) to my nice row of radish seedlings. they were coming up well, after I companion-planted them inside a ring of garlic. I called in my neighbour John for his opinion, and  he suggested birds are to blame, probably pigeons. This makes sense, and on checking my reference books I drew the same conclusion. So, more netting and wire have been employed, plus my rather jolly scarecrow has been brought out of his winter hiding place to look after everything when I'm not there.

Easter update

I've just had a week off work and managed to get loads done on the plot. Spring has definitely kicked in, as the weeds have started growing  - neighbour John told me that's the best way to tell if it's time to plant you're own seeds.

The local farmer I mentioned in my previous post has turned up trumps. I phoned him on Monday morning and within the hour he turned up at the allotments in a big digger, with two tons of compost in the front bucket. A bargain at £25, it is composted green waste collected by the council and rotted down in huge, steaming silos on his farm.

It is a bit coarse, having bits of stick and branch in it, so I have been sorting it through an old shop bread crate before adding it to the beds. I've been adding about four wheelbarrow loads per bed, and I still think that I could probably add more, but that is about as much compost as I can stand to sort through the holes in a bread crate in one go.

The onions I planted have started to come up, and it turns out they are shallots. That's good because that is what I wanted to plant first. The rest of the onions went in last week, red and white. 

This evening I planted my first potatoes of the year, ones that survived The Moog's efforts to eat them raw, called Blue Danube. I also dug over another bed in less than 30 minutes, with my azada purchased from Get Digging. It would have taken me at least a couple of hours with a spade, and I would have aggravated my back too - no such problems with the new tool. I have yet to decide what to call it; one of my neighbours called it an axe-hoe, which I think suits it a bit better than azada.  Apparently there is an ex-Ghurka here who has one very similar, and he reputedly dug his whole plot barefoot using it, after turning down the loan of a British spade.

Digging it

I can't seem to bend in the middle these days. So, I've been looking at ways that I can still achieve what I want without hurting myself.

Normal spades and forks are just too short. So the first thing I tried was a long-handled shovel. I've seen these advertised as Irish or Cornish shovels, but I always think of them as American, the sort you see in the movies with a long handle. This is OK, but it's very heavy, and really isn't much use for proper digging, because the pointed, curved blade is the wrong shape. It is still great for shifting compost and, unsurprisingly, shovelling. The label on it said 'good for shovelling material.' clearly the person in charge of labelling had run out of ideas that day.

Second I considered the no-dig technique. This is more complicated than it sounds - it's described all over the web, so I won't repeat it here, if you're interested there are several good articles on Charles Dowding's website. I've discounted using the full version of this technique, mainly because of the huge volume of compost that seems to be needed for it to be really effective, but also because I'm not convinced that it's the best answer for my soil. I think, on reflection, I just haven't been adding enough compost, manure etc to my plot. The amounts described in the no-dig technique are massively higher than I've been using.

Finally, we come to my new friend, pictured above, the Azada, a tool imported from Spain by Get Digging.  The Get Digging website is well worth a look, there are literally hundreds of customer testimonials on there as well as descriptions of the tool itself, as well as lots of other backsaver tools. Intrigued, I ordered a heavy-medium azada a couple of weeks ago and waited anxiously for the snow to melt so I could see if it was all it was cracked up to be. Well. I don't like to speak too soon, but I think this could be what I've been waiting for. It's really easy to use, you chop into the ground with the heavy blade, and lever the soil up with the long handle, no bending required. You have to be quite energetic, but it doesn't put the stress directly on your spine like a spade. Brilliant! I've used it twice now, and so far, quite a lot of digging done and no bad back. I reserve my final judgement until I get the chance to do a bit more with it, but so far, I'm very impressed.