Gardening Blog
Allotment Diary
September 2, 2008: autumn arrives
Terry Walton says the arrival of russet and gold leaves is your cue to prepare your plot for whatever winter can throw at it
It has arrived! September, the start of autumn. After the wettest summer on record what have we to look forward to? Is it going to be drier? Is the sun going to shine for long periods? So many questions. We will have to wait and see, as only Mother Nature is privy to that information.
Look around you what do you see? Yes those autumnal colours have crept up on us and are to be seen everywhere. The mountain side has gone from a sharp green to a boring brown as the bracken swaps its summer finery for its drab autumn overcoat. The one bright focus of our welsh hillsides is the hazy purple hue that adorns the rocky faces where the heathers are putting on a super autumn show. This contrast is spectacular and paints a pleasing picture for the eye.
The long shadows of the sun moving ever lower in the sky points out vividly the changing canopy of the surrounding trees. The wet summer allowed the trees to lap up the copious amounts of water that have fallen and form a dense green back drop to the allotment. Looking carefully, all that is changing as golden colours appear in the canopy, interspersing the dark green cover with yellow, russet and gold.
The plants have battled all summer long against daily adversities but in the main they have won the day. This titanic struggle has taken its toll and many of them are looking exhausted and are losing their healthy lustre.
So it is time to reward them harshly and remove this yellowing foliage and consign it to the compost heap. This bulky - but strangely dry, considering all the rain - foliage is the perfect straw-ey material to provide aeration to the heap. But as always check it is just tired but still healthy and free of disease before adding it to the ever-growing mound on the corner of the plot.
Soon there will be clear signs that the plentiful season is drawing to a close as large areas of drab earth appear erratically throughout the plot.
Not all the plot will be empty as the winter crops of parsnip, swede, leek, brussel sprouts and savoys still occupy some parts of the empting areas.
These large areas will however soon be transformed again and, with a little flexing of those back muscles, it can be turned over. In my case, I use a fork and break it down finely as I have not finished sowing just yet.
These areas are where I will sow my green manures of rye grasses and for the first time this year I am mixing it with vetches. Thus I am assured these will greatly improve the fertility of my soil by fixing nitrogen into their roots when dug back in later this winter. What clever habits and tricks some of these plants exhibit.
Sow now and a lush green pasture will protect your soil from the ravages of whatever the coming winter has to throw at it.
Now is a good time to return to that planting plan you drew up at the start of the season. Even though I religiously tried to stick to that planting plan to meet the needs of the various crops, I sometimes go astray and plant off plan in an effort to maximise the use of my plot.
I need to be reminded where these plants were before they disappear from my memory cells.
I don’t know about you but age has some affect on my brain power and I have to work harder at recalling what was planted where, after I have removed it. Age dims the memory a little and time seems to move much quicker.
Still the benefits of being this age group is that we do not have the urge of youth to do everything in a instant so we can do things in a leisurely planned manner.
Ah! The wisdom of age and time.
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
