Gardening Blog
Allotment Diary
November 4, 2008: nothing went to waste
Terry Walton recalls how soot was used to make potash by gardeners and allotmenteers in days gone by
After being lulled in to a false sense of security during the pleasant September and early October weather, last week there was sharp reminder that winter is on its way. A sudden plunge in night temperatures to – three degrees Centigrade brought the garden plants to a sharp halt. Frequent hail and snow showers left the hilltops shrouded in snow and the reality of the season was restored.
We have heralded in another month and yes, November has quietly slipped in the door. This month to me signals the first of what I call the ‘colourless’ months as much of the views are drab and all that is left to brighten the bare countryside are the vibrant red berries adorning the rowan and Hawthorne trees.
The month starts with a loud bang as bonfire night is widely celebrated. The long, dark night of November the fifth is brought to life by an explosive crescendo of colour both in the sky and on the ground. The night sky is lit by the glow of many bonfires as that accumulated waste material is legitimately burnt.
As a lad and son of a watchful gardener, my father would make use of this spent bonfire a couple of days later. He would take me, metal pail in hand, and filled it with the burnt ash of red, black and gold. I would wonder what he is going to do with this on the allotment.
‘Son’ he would say ‘nature provides all the gardener’s needs if you look around you and nothing is wasted it only changes form’. This ash would then be ‘weathered during the cold, wet winter months and come spring would be sprinkled around his fruit bushes and strawberries. Later, as my gardening knowledge grew, I realised that this was a high concentration of potash and helped the fruit crops provide an abundance of tasty berries.
The element of fire has always been a good benefactor to the wise gardener and in the valleys of the 1950s and 1960s provided the allotments with many useful materials. The mining communities all had coal fires and much coal was burnt. This combustion provided many beneficial by-products.
Ash and clinker was produced in wide abundance and this used material was the perfect path builder. Spread over your pathway it provided a crunchy, non-slip path and its surface repelled the weeds. The other main benefit was that its coarseness deterred the slugs and protected your plot from those marauding menaces of the mountain.
The constant burning of coal also meant plenty of work for chimney sweeps. Bags and bags of this dirty, dusty soot were available to the canny gardener and the chimney sweep found the perfect outlet for his waste product.
Almost daily these bags would appear at the allotment gates and eager gardeners would cart them to their plots to be hidden away and again, allowed to weather. These bags of soot would then be used to enrich the soil where onions and beans were to be sown. These gave the soil a rich, black appearance and my father swore that it helped deter the black fly from his broad beans.
In addition to its undoubted feeding properties I believe that this darker soil absorbed the sun’s rays and heated up quicker which aided the germination of those young seeds.
Coal fires are now a thing of the past and this source of free gardening materials has gone. Still every cloud has a silver lining and there is no longer that acrid smell of smoke in the air and the air has that natural pure feeling again.
So progress moves on and as gardeners we have to adapt to these changes and find new materials to feed and nourish our soil. We are great inventors in the use of all types of waste material for this purpose and this is what makes us so versatile in the face of change.
More from Terry Walton
More on gardening
- The allotment section
- Visit our gardening channel
- The window box allotment
- How to grow your own salad leaves
- Chat about gardening at Saga Zone
My Life On A Hillside Allotment
Terry Walton is a regular contributor to The Jeremy Vine Show on BBC Radio 2 and has written a book called, My Life on a Hillside Allotment, published by Bantam Press. The book is available from Amazon
