Page 24 - ALG Issue 2 2023

on the...
Late November 2022 to mid-February 2023
Kings plot
Every year in mid-November, I take a week’s holiday, not to go away but to use the time digging my allotment. Over the years, as I have got older,
I have found I can no longer dig all day, so by taking a week off I can pace myself. I usually try to dig for three to four hours per day, which I find is enough time to dig my pieces of ground that are divided up into sections of about 5m x 6m square.
I always put down a string line to divide the plot into two or three sections.
I then dig out a trench first, putting that soil in 2 barrows. Then, I chip the already spread mushroom compost, and any annual weeds, into the bottom of the trench and gradually work backwards, turning the soil over into the trench, followed by chipping more compost and weeds into the next trench and so on. The last trench, once I have gone up and down the plot, is filled with the soil from the barrows of the first. Then the dug area is edged up from the path and the grass edges neatly clipped, before moving onto the next piece of ground.
Seeing a neatly dug piece of ground
I always find very satisfying, and
you know you will have a good clean start the following spring. Luckily the
weather was good that week and I dug all the spare ground, only leaving the areas where winter greens, leeks, parsnips, and late carrots were still in the ground for later harvesting.
From late November to early February, the weather was either wet or very cold; we even had a sprinkle of snow and some penetrating frosts every day for
a couple of weeks with temperatures down to -6°C at night, and not above
Seeing
a neatly dug piece of ground I always find very satisfying, and you know you will have a good clean start the following spring.
freezing in the day. These conditions were ideal for breaking the soil down and adding welcome moisture to the soil that will be stored below ground ready for this year’s crops to tap into. That moisture is lost when some of my fellow (fine weather) plotholders wait and dig when the weather is warmer in March and April; as digging so late, they are losing all that stored moisture below, and then they wonder why their crops and the soil are drying out so
24 Allotment and Leisure Gardener