Page 5 - ALG Issue 2 2022

Chairman’s
comments
“Blow, blow thou winter wind,” he’s usually right is our Bill, but this time the relatives came along as well, Uncle Dudley, Aunty Eunice and their kid Franklin, between the three of them they made a right mess.
We’ve had metal sheds flipped over, polytunnels flying over fences, apple trees, and next doors allotment to land hundreds of feet away. But let’s bring this into reality; some people have lost their lives, and others have had major structural damage to their homes. A few incidents on allotments are not really that serious in retrospect.
What is serious is the continuation
of aminopyralid chemical herbicides appearing in the horse manure you have just brought into your allotment. I seem to recall that this type of soil poisoning was first reported from the West Midlands some years ago. Perhaps a member, who experienced this, can correct the details. Well, seemingly
it’s back, possibly in another form but with the same effect, stunted growth
in plants and little can be done about
it. I think the affected soil has to be replaced. As a beekeeper, I am not keen on the indiscriminate use of herbicides, and I never use them on my own plot.
A sharp hoe and the adage “Never let a weed see Sunday” usually works.
According to the weathermen, it was a very dry January, but cold, and now we have a wet February. Yes, I know here in East Manchester it is always wet,
but not this wet. I heard from my wife that one of her Facebook friends has frogspawn in her pond. We still have ice early in the morning, although the frogs are warming up their chorus under my shed, so spring is coming.
Allotments are havens for all sorts of wildlife, most of it welcome, some not so much. To date I have had weasels, foxes, badgers, frogs, toads and newts, mice field, hedgerow, and wood, rats, hedgehogs, and we think that pipistrelle bats flying overhead, all types of common and not so common garden birds including an American Falcon with jesses on, had escaped from somewhere.
Surveys are often done in house gardens, but I wonder if a survey of allotments would show a greater
or lesser variety of species. The contribution to biodiversity made by allotments must be enormous in my opinion. We have had articles in the
We still have ice early in the morning, although the frogs are warming up their chorus under my shed, so spring is coming.
magazine in the past which mention the number and variety of hover flies seen on an allotment. Perhaps other people could contribute observations of another species.
Many weeks ago, I heard the last five minutes of a programme on Radio 4 about the earthworm; now this creature really does need our recognition, from the brandling worms in the compost heap to the deep earthmovers at the bottom of the potato trench. Without
the earthworm and its attendant soil recyclers, we would be knee deep in bits of dinosaur! The one thing that really stuck with me was that the more worms your allotment has, then the more fertile your soil is.
John Irwin
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Allotment and Leisure Gardener 5