And We're Off!

I don't feel quite right these days when I'm not actively growing things; in winter my green fingers begin to itch, and boredom and frustration creep in, and it's a huge relief when February arrives and I can justify getting a few early seeds started. I used to wait until mid-Feb - Charles Dowding recommends this as there are ten hours of daylight or more from this time and seedlings are less likely to get leggy - but I sometimes feel that my chillies and things are a bit behind, so this year I started sowing slightly earlier; at Imbolc, which marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

So here we are; my first (slightly leggy) seedlings are tucked up in the heated propagator, the seed potatoes are chitting, and I've even treated myself to a nice new cloche to get some things started early outside in the raised bed.

Last year I vowed not to bother with peppers and chillies this year and concentrate on plants that would actually crop for me instead; they're a lovely idea but without a polytunnel or greenhouse they just don't seem to be worth it here, and end up a waste of space. Of course, when I actually got round to sowing it was hard to stick to that decision  - I just wanted to sow as many things as I could get away with, and I had to remind myself of those past failures! But I did allow myself two varieties: 'Basket of Fire' chillies, which I'll grow under a bell cloche to see if that helps them along, and some 'Ancho' chillies which I did really well with a couple of years ago. I also started some 'Bonica F1' aubergines, and two each of three early tomato varieties; 'Latah', 'Stupice' and 'Jen's Tangerine'. I'll sow some more when I sow the other tomatoes in March, and see if the early start really made any difference... Germination has been excellent, except from the 'Ancho' chilli seeds which are a bit old. I'll set the seedlings deeper when I pot them up, to counter the legginess.

I've also started some 'Monarch' celeriac, and some 'Golden Spartan' celery - a variety we saw looking particularly impressive at Wisley last autumn. (It's no guarantee we'll be able to replicate the success of the Wisley gardeners, of course!) We've never succeeded with celeriac yet, so let's hope it's third time lucky... These seeds are in an unheated propagator indoors on a windowsill.

Potato varieties chosen this year include 'Pentland Crown' and 'King Edward' which both did well for us previously, plus 'Desiree' on the recommendation of several Twitter friends. I've always steered clear of red-skinned potatoes, mostly due to a memory of eating them weirdly soaked in vinegar at a French friend's house as a child... But they've gotta be worth a try, right? For earlies to grow at home, I really wanted 'Accent' - we grow them at FoodSmiles and they produce extremely well and taste delicious - but couldn't seem to find them except by mail order, with a £5 delivery fee of course! So I settled on 'Home Guard'. Then, at Seedy Sunday in Brighton last weekend, there they were; I picked up not only six 'Accent' but six 'Yukon Gold' to try too! We certainly won't be short of potatoes this summer...

My new cloche is from Harrod Horticultural; a rigid plastic thing that slots together in sections, so I can extend it in future if I want, and it seems very sturdy indeed. It has indentations in the roof to collect rainwater and let it drip through tiny holes to water the plants, so it shouldn't dry out beneath and is easy to water, and it's so much simpler to handle than faffing about with fleece, which I detest. As soon as I've cleared space (the right space) on the raised bed, I'll get it in place, let the soil warm for a week or so, and then start sowing early carrots, spinach, lettuce, radishes, rocket and spring onions under it.

So off we go! Another growing season begins. Isn't it funny how every one is just as exciting as the last? :-)

Sowathon!

March has been a busy month for many reasons, and I've been way behind with seed-sowing for the new season, but in the last week I've squeezed in a few hours in the garden and taken the opportunity to catch up!

This time last week was the spring equinox, when the days become longer than the nights again (hurrah!), and it seemed like a good time to sow my tomato seeds. I potted up all the pepper, chilli and aubergine plants from the propagator - they're looking big and healthy and have been spending daytimes out in the plastic greenhouse (pic above) - and I sowed five varieties of tomatoes in their place: Amish Paste (a good cooking tomato, but tasty sliced as well), Dr Carolyn (delicious heritage variety!), Angelle (my favourite, from seeds saved from supermarket toms), Skykomish (a blight-resistant variety) and Indigo Rose (the 'black tomato', super-high in antioxidants). They all popped up in just four days and are growing away on the windowsill now. The electric propagator is a real help in getting warmth-loving seeds to germinate!

They look a bit leggy - I guess we've had some gloomy days lately - but they'll catch up with themselves and I'll plant them deep when I pot them up.

We spent a couple of hours topping up the big raised bed in the garden, with the last half-bag of the compost we bought for the purpose last year, plus a layer of new multi-purpose compost. I treated the bed with sulphur before sowing to try to begin lowering its high pH (see previous post), but I decided it might be overcautious to limit what I sow in it this year - after all, growth did seem to improve quite a lot during the course of last season, and the layer of fresh compost should help a bit too - so I'm trying a bigger variety of veg in it than I originally planned. It won't take long to see whether they grow well or not, and I can always resow something else later... The bed already contains some parsley, chives, garlic and perpetual spinach from last year, and I filled up the rest of the space with rows of carrots, turnips, lettuce, spring onions, komatsuna, watercress, spinach, kohlrabi, radishes and mustard.

I also sowed some more celeriac seeds. I had been hardening off my young celeriac plants, but then I read somewhere that if celeriac gets too cold in its first spring it can think it's in its second year, and go to flower rather than producing a good root. Last year's celeriac didn't actually go to flower, but it was a terrible failure and I wondered if my early-hardening-off could possibly be why... So this new set of seedlings will be coddled indoors until the temperatures are higher out there, and we'll see if it makes a difference!

The corner garden bed needed a good clear-up - it had quite a few weeds, last year's bean poles and old bean and pea plants, and some honeysuckle and snowberry invading fast. Once tidied, I sowed some peas and mangetout against the fence, and scattered mint leaves and chopped up dry mint stems over them to keep the mice away - it works a treat!

 

Finally, I sowed some chard, leaf celery and flowers (cerinthe and achillea) in cells in the plastic greenhouse, and planted some early 'Accent' potatoes in sacks. The potato shoots could be harmed by frost after they appear, so I'll need to keep an eye on them and keep earthing them up or throw fleece over them on cold nights. I've got six of these bags so I'll sow two more in two weeks, and two more two weeks later, to spread out my harvest a bit.

I'm nearly caught-up but there's still plenty more to do, and it'll be April in just a few days... In fact, I'd better get back out there!

More Geeky Soil Stuff: My Soil Analysis Results!

As I've mentioned before, I resolved to get a proper lab analysis done of my soil this year, to identify any deficiencies and attempt to bring it to - or close to - the ideal mineral balance described in Steve Solomon's book The Intelligent Gardener: Growing Nutrient-Dense Food.

I took not just one but four soil samples. The allotment is perhaps the most important, but I also wanted to test the raised bed soil which gave poor growth last year and the soil of my garden veg bed, which did very well last year but which I suspected of a boron deficiency due to some hollow courgettes. Finally, I thought I might as well send off a sample of FoodSmiles soil as well, mostly out of curiosity.

To take a sample, you're supposed to cut regular-sized-and-shaped slices of soil, six inches deep and an inch or so across each way, from several points on the plot, to get a mix representative of the whole area. Professional soil-testers have a tube-shaped device they use to get a perfect even core of soil each time. I was just working with a spade and trowel... but I think I did good enough for a first-timer! For each sample, I put all the soil 'slices' in a bucket or bowl and let them air-dry near a radiator for a few days, then broke up any big lumps, picked out stones and twigs, mixed it all up really well and bagged up two cups of the soil for sending off.

Sending it off was a faff as well! I could only find one lab in the UK that would do the soil test described in Solomon's book - what's called a Mehlich 3 extraction along with pH, organic matter, total cation exchange capacity and base saturation - and it cost three times more than what it costs in Solomon's recommended lab in the US... So I sent my samples off to the US! I felt a bit guilty about the air miles, but I couldn't have afforded to do it any other way. Samples had to be labelled and double bagged, sealed very securely in a strong envelope with all the seams taped up, and an import permit and special label attached to the outside of the package to declare what was inside and show that I was allowed to send foreign soil to this address!

It must have made it through, because two weeks later, my results came by email, and you can see the full report here if you like. But most of the numbers are fairly meaningless until you take a deeper look; everything swings on the TCEC, which indicates the amount of nutrition a soil can hold, so XX lbs per acre of a nutrient might be way too much for a soil with a low TCEC, but not nearly enough for a soil with a high TCEC. Solomon provides worksheets to help crunch the numbers and figure out exactly what your soil has and what it needs.

A Note on Organics...

The soil amendment 'prescriptions' mentioned here, involving measured amounts of all sorts of mineral compounds, might seem to go against the grain for someone who is concerned with gardening organically and sustainably, and have certainly given me cause to think a bit about 'organic' versus 'chemical' fertilisers. But there are plenty of mineral soil amendments approved for organic use where a need is identified, and just because it's not organic compost or manure, doesn't mean a substance is necessarily harmful in any way. Adding pure mineral supplements carefully chosen according to measured needs is a very far cry from routinely applying synthetic, high-nitrate, petroleum-based mixes (many of which contain heavy metals) at maximum application rates, as is much too often done in modern agriculture; these kinds of chemical fertilisers feed the plants but diminish soil fertility. In his book Solomon spends quite a lot of time discussing the sustainability and impacts of different amendments, and before buying I will check out each one and decide individually whether I want to use it - but even though Solomon's method isn't 100% 'organic' all the time, these amendments are all designed to help the soil and its microlife, which is of key importance in this soil health business!

Allotment

The allotment soil has a pH of 7.1 - just above neutral which is what most veg-growers will aim for, with a range of 6.0-7.5 commonly recommended. 6.5 might be nearer to ideal, but since different veggies like slightly different conditions it's certainly good enough.

It contains 7.6% organic matter, which will supply more than enough of nitrogen through the growing season as it is digested by soil organisms. 7% is plenty - 4% is about the minimum it needs and 10% is more than a soil can efficiently use. More good news! I'm actually surprised it's this high, since I've never been good at adding organic stuff to the soil. I compost allotment waste and return it to the soil as and when it's ready, but only once in eight years have I bought in manure and compost to spread, and I know some gardeners do it religiously every year.

The TCEC is 13.1, which indicates a good level of nutrient-holding clay and humus in our soil. TCECs in very rich clay soils might be as high as 40 or more, but for the purposes of the analysis it only matters whether our TCEC is below or above 10, and above is a good result.

The main purpose of this exercise is to make sure the major cations - calcium, magnesium, potassium and sodium - are in balance, and a good supply of sulphur, phosphorus and trace nutrients are available. 68% of the TCEC should be calcium, 12% should be magnesium, 3 or 4% percent potassium and 1 or 2% sodium. The allotment soil has an excess of calcium and potassium and a deficiency of magnesium and sodium - a balance of 81%, 10%, 4.5% and 0.3%, so I'll take some action to adjust this balance. It also has very significant sulphur deficiency. Phosphorus is very slightly low but not enough to worry about.

Trace minerals measured are boron, iron, manganese, copper and zinc. In the allotment soil, iron, copper and zinc are plentiful (with more than twice the iron needed and more than four times the zinc!) but boron and manganese are very low, so I'll aim to add more of these.

The prescription to amend this soil is to add, per 100 square feet, 225g manganese sulphate, 120g sea salt, 110g agricultural sulphur, 60g magnesium oxide and 20g borax.

Garden soil

It was extremely difficult to get an accurately representative sample of the garden veg bed as it comprises two very different layers: a few inches of old bagged compost and used growbags on top, and a hard clay just underneath at a depth that varies across the bed... So my confidence in the accuracy of these results is lacking slightly, but I was interested to see them anyway.

The pH is 6.8 - very slightly acid and pretty perfect for growing vegetables. The organic matter was very high - 38% - but perhaps not surprising given the thick layer of old compost. The TCEC is high too at 17.9, probably thanks to the heavy clay.

The cation balance is heavily weighted to calcium and magnesium, with potassium slightly low and sodium very low. Funny how we're told salt is terrible for soil - actually a small amount is very important, but it looks like most of our soils don't even have that much. Sulphur and phosphorus are both significantly low, as are boron, manganese, copper and zinc. The boron deficiency I suspected is shown, but actually it's only very slightly lower than any of the other soils I had tested.

The prescription for this soil is 760g monoammonium phosphate, 414g sea salt, 212g manganese sulphate, 110g sulphur, 40g zinc sulphate, 28g copper sulphate and 20g borax per 100 square feet. I think I might take a cautious approach to making the amendments, considering I'm not confident in the consistency of my soil sample, and just aim to fix the worst of it this time round.

Raised Beds

Now this one was interesting. As I described at length a few posts ago, this soil, bought in to fill my new raised beds about this time last year, gave extremely poor growth last season. I suspected an overabundance of potassium and perhaps a low pH, and added calcium and nitrogen to try to counter those things and help plant growth but it didn't really help.

In fact, this is a calcareous soil with an overabundance of free lime and a high pH which makes trace nutrients unavailable to plants. If I pour vinegar onto the soil, it actually fizzes! This means the test I ordered isn't accurate, as a Mehlich 3 extraction can't test accurately where high lime is present - I should have done the vinegar test first and ordered a different soil test... Doh!

The soil shows a pH of 7.7 but this is likely to be artificially low. There does indeed appear to be a high level of potassium, but the level of lime and high pH is clearly the bigger problem and, save ordering a new soil test and a whole load more mucking about, I think the easiest way forward is to address that first by applying sulphur, which is turned into sulphuric acid by soil bacteria and neutralises the surplus calcium carbonate, turning it into highly soluble gypsum which will then easily leach from the soil. This takes time; a year or more. So in the meantime it will be important to only grow what is happy in these beds; so far garlic, brassicas, lettuces, carrots and beets; and to feed plants with a foliar spray to ensure they get the trace elements they need.

I have real trouble understanding how a soil mix that was obviously so high in manure and woody waste can be so very high in lime, but I guess it looks like my lime application last year may have only made things worse - doh again!

FoodSmiles

The FoodSmiles soil has a pH of 7.3 - right at the high end of a good range - a TCEC of 15.2, and 7.6% organic matter. Its cation balance is not too far from the target, with small excesses of calcium, magnesium and potassium but a deficiency of sodium. Phosphorus and sulphur are both very low. Like the allotment, it has very high levels of iron and zinc, but it is low in boron, copper and manganese.

Amending this soil with mineral applications would be a whole different ball game, since it is Soil Association certified land and we'd have to show a clear need for every amendment and have it approved in advance - and we've got more than enough to do at the moment anyway! But it hasn't had a lot of organic matter added in recent years and I expect applying manure would bring a beneficial pH change. IF I was going to tackle anything else, the priority would be to amend the sulphur and phosphorus levels, but at the moment the soil is growing crops very well indeed.

Some Thoughts

As I write this, I'm wondering about those high levels of iron and zinc... Solomon warns that tiny flakes of rust or galvanizing from the tool used to take the samples can inflate these levels. I didn't have a steel tool I could do it with but I did clean my trowel thoroughly and make sure nothing looked like it was going to come off it... If I do this again in future I'll be sure to be prepared and use stainless steel instead just in case!

All the soils tested require, according to this method, a significant application of sea salt, which feels a bit wrong but I'm doing my best to trust the method and go with it!

I have high hopes that if I correct the sulphur level on the allotment, I might be able to grow onions and garlic there again; sulphur protects against fungus so perhaps the lack of it allows the white rot to thrive.

My next task, then, is to read up on and source the various minerals needed to amend the allotment soil and garden bed, and sulphur for the raised beds. It's quite a bit of work, all in all, but it's absolutely fascinating and I'm really looking forward to seeing the results!

A Tale of Three Raised Beds

When we first moved into the 'granny annex' at Mum and Dad's house I could only grow vegetables in pots and grow bags on and around the patio - their shrubby, woodlandy garden didn't have any space for vegetables and most of it was too shady anyway. That was okay by me - we had the allotment too, after all. But plant pots have a funny way of multiplying, don't they...? And with Mum and Dad moving toward organic food more and more (100% now I believe!), last year they gave me some more space to grow food for the whole family.

We planned three new veg-growing areas; one garden bed in a rare sunny spot where the shrubs weren't thriving any more, a large raised bed just in front of the patio which was occupied by a multitude of pots and tubs, and two smaller raised beds at the shadier end of the garden, where a small lawn was becoming overrun with moss and weeds and I had already put some moveable growbeds and containers for leafy crops (pic below). We decided against growing straight into the ground mostly because the garden soil is extremely heavy clay - not much fun to work with, but it'll make an excellent nutritious subsoil!

The timing was perfect; early spring when it warm enough to work outside but I'd still be able to sow everything in time. I cleared the garden bed, re-edged it to a slightly higher level and topped it off with the previous year's growbags and tubs. I hacked back the honeysuckle and snowberry that keep moving in from under the fence and planted strawberries round the edge, and it became a nursery bed for young plants for a while, while I worked on the other areas...

The big raised bed was to go on a slated area, so my first task was to scrape back all the slate chips.

We drew up some plans and ordered half sleepers (from UK Sleepers) cut from oak - a naturally long-lasting hardwood that doesn't need treating with chemicals to protect it.

I enlisted the help of my friend Dave (and his power tools!) to cut the wood to size and build the beds, using long outdoor-use 'green organic coated' timber drive screws from Wickes...

And a day and a half later all three were done and ready for filling!

 

I ordered the four tonnes of  'Veggie Gold' compost to fill them; a "ready-to-use" peat-free mix of compost, topsoil and manure, recommended for raised veg beds, which promised to be from sustainable sources with no added chemicals. I had to wait a while for it to arrive, which was a tad frustrating, but eventually it did...

...and the next two days were spent wheelbarrowing compost from the front of the house to the back (by myself, I'd like to add!). The larger bed has a weed membrane beneath it anyway, but in the two smaller beds I laid cardboard at the bottom to provide a barrier against weeds (until it rots, by which time they should have died from lack of light anyway).

 

Not a bad job, I think, and certainly a lot tidier than a jumble of containers. Hurrah! I got sowing right away, planning a row of peppers and chillies along the back of the big bed, some dwarf beans in front of them, and square-foot patches of different salad veg and small root crops along the front, with a few herbs and flowers dotted around as well. The two shady beds would take leafy greens - mostly kale and chard.

A few weeks in, I realised that all was not well... Things were growing rather strangely and inconsistently. Along a row of mustard seeds, the seedlings had grown large in patches and stalled at a tiny size in others. Some had bolted. A poached egg plant and some tiny spring onions I'd transplanted had yellowed very badly and become stunted. Spinach plants and radishes had bolted extremely prematurely, before reaching anything like a usable size.

A few weeks later still, little had changed. Those things that were growing were growing painfully slowly, or running straight to seed, while my crops on the allotment and in the garden bed in the corner were doing just fine. I began an experiment which confirmed my worst suspicions...

The two pots on the left contain the same 'Veggie Gold' compost that I filled the raised beds with; the two on the right contain old multipurpose compost out of one of the previous year's containers. The bottom two also have Complete Organic Fertiliser added. I sowed spinach seeds in all four pots at the same time, and thinned to three seedlings per pot after germination. The results are pretty clear I'd say - wouldn't you?

The company I had bought the stuff from - Compost Direct - didn't want to know. After three emails to them they finally replied to say that they only ever had good feedback about this compost and I should just add some more nitrogen or general-purpose fertiliser. I did, in the forms of chicken manure, chicken manure 'tea', and a commercial liquid feed. Nothing helped. I sent them the picture above. They didn't care. Just keep adding extra feed, they said. My blood boiled... All that sweat and hard work and money and anticipation and I couldn't even grow anything in my raised beds!

Luckily there were a few things that did seem to grow okay in the soil; little gem lettuces were slow but getting bigger, the carrots and beetroots didn't seem to mind, and the kale and chard down the garden was not too bad.

After giving it some thought, I suspected perhaps the problem was an excess of potassium; that would explain why adding more nitrogen hadn't helped leaf growth, as potassium blocks it. Potassium also encourages fruiting (perhaps hence the early bolting), and is prevalent in woody matter and straw - there had been loads of partially-composted woody stuff and strawy manure in the compost mix. I try not to consider myself a soil mineral expert after reading just one book but I still feel this is pretty likely the problem! And how do you get too much potassium out of soil? You wait for the rain to leach it out...

Growth improved very gradually throughout the year. I did get a couple of handfuls of beans even though the plants were more dwarf than ever, and the perpetual spinach got going after a while. I took to planting lots of spare plants and more lettuces in the bed - the more plants grow in it, the more potassium they use up, right? Nothing really thrived. I even let the weeds grow! I got a few nice peppers, though again the plants were small. The lettuces, it turned out, tasted starchy and bitter. My cucumbers, which I'd planted in a large container filled with the same compost, yellowed and died.

Happily, however, my bed in the corner of the garden was doing wonderfully! Two huge courgette plants gave us more than six of us could eat from June to September, and from all around them we had strawberries, lovage, tarragon, parsley, mangetout and drying beans. Calendula filled in all the gaps and brought bees buzzing to that corner of the garden. What a delight! I haven't grown courgettes at the allotment for years since we don't go there often enough to pick them, so I've made do with small courgette plants confined to pots and sulking. To see them going crazy like this - like they're meant to - was great!

The growth in the oak beds has continued to improve slowly and I am feeling quietly confident that I'll get better results this year. At the moment the large one has that same perpetual spinach (though it's rather slug-eaten just now!), some new and healthy garlic shoots, a tangle of old carrots and beetroots and a few sorry-looking herbs. The compost level has sunk a lot - nearly 25% - which will give me an opportunity to top it up with something better (though I still have nearly a half-ton of the 'Veggie Gold' sitting around...). I also plan to get the soil lab-tested at the same time as I get the allotment soil done - that'll be interesting... The kale in the bottom bed never really got very big - though caterpillars can be blamed for some of that - but it's okay, and I'm looking forward to a bit more growing success in the months ahead...