The Nearly Good Life

I cut down my autumn raspberry stems yesterday, even though there were enough berries for a good bowl each after dinner. I also dug up all my remaining potatoes and left them to dry under a row of glass cloches.
In the poly tunnel, the old hands were discussing the gardening habits of the younger generation. The newer and younger allotters subscribe to the no-digging and raised bed view of life. I'm a digger, not from a love of hard work, but from conviction based on rigorous consideration.
The depth to which plant roots extend is often more than we suppose, since unless great care is taken fine roots are broken when a plant is lifted. The roots of Liatris pycnocephala penetrate to a depth of sixteen feet in its North American home, and I have seen Jacob pursuing Bindweed roots to a depth of seven feet.
All roots need to breathe, for which air is essential. In the process oxygen is absorbed and carbon-dioxide evolved. The latter, being heavier, tends to diffuse down between the soil particles, and the same gas is being costantly formed by the breathing of the billions of organisms which inhabit the soil. The soil thus has an atmosphere which is richer in carbon-dioxide and poorer in oxygen than the open air we breathe. The looser the texture of the soil, the more readily the soil atmosphere mixes with the open air above; and the converse is also true.
By digging, the gardener increases the ease with which the roots can penetrate to deeper levels, stabilising the plant and allowing access to usefull minerals. Further when the land is turned the soil atmosphere is mixed with the surrounding air, so that in every way the conditions for deep and healthy roots are improved.
When the no-digger spreads manure on the surface it is acted upon by multitudes of bacteria, which in their turn form the food of numberless protozoa, both of which add to the carbon-dioxide production, tending to replace the air. This is one of the reasons why some plants are intolerant of fresh manure, because it interferes with good aeration of the soil.
Most of the year I use a small cultivator in the top few inches of the soil, but once a year the plot is dug and the lower level broken up with a fork. This is the traditional method and I think it was evolved through many generations of acute observation by better gardeners than I.

Posted by Tony at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My leeks are good this year; they seem to be free of the usual rust which spoils their appearance as well as stunting growth. They are one of my favourite winter vegetables, either sauteed in butter or in a soup with potatoes. Jacob grows them in deep holes which he drives with a metal spike but I just grow them in a shallow trench and earth them up a few inches. He gets longer blanched stems and I get thicker ones. You takes your pick. I don't mean the tool of course, that would result in curved holes.
The scuttlebutt in the polytunnel was about environmental matters and in particular on the need to increase petrol tax to restrict greenhouse gasses. It always amazes me how the, usually, left wing True Believers get away with their constant attacks on the simple pleasures of the poor. The middle class environmental activists can well afford a pound or two extra on a gallon of petrol, but that increase would price many marginal drivers off the road. Not that that would concern the True Believer. The same applies to the critiscism levelled by the Politically Correct at cheap flights; they don't use them so it's an easy sacrifice to make. Let others suffer to assuage their own guilt complex
I rejigged a well known aphorism and defined political correctness as the tribute payed to compassion by hypocracy; which was a kind of apercu for Jacob and Arthur. By the way I can't find the cedilla on this anti EU computer. It will probably be illegal next year.
Apropos of greenhouse gasses; we haven't heard much of the ozone layer hole recently. This, of course, is because the hole is now smaller than it was and closing fast. Very bad news for the doomdeviners.

Posted by Tony at 7:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I dug up a row of potatoes this week to make room for a double row of broad beans. I use The Sutton for overwintering as it is short and stands up well enough in our windy conditions. I also surround my double row with some plastic mesh that I liberated from a skip; this should protect them a little more.
I only planted a short row because I am the only member of my family who eats them. But I like them either hot, or better still, cold with olive oil. It just shows how my tastes have changed over time; when I was young, the only shop that stocked olive oil was the chemist; for pouring in your ear.
After that exertion I joined the chatterers in Jim's polytunnel. They were arguing about the North Korean bomb test and the opinion seemed to be that if a country didn't want to be regime changed then it had better get a bomb. And anyway, what right have we to dictate when we've got one thankyou very much. I told them the parable of The Whittling Neighbour.
There was once a man who peered over his garden wall and saw his neighbour whittling a large piece of wood, I believe treen is the technical term. "Hello neighbour, what are you making?" he said. "I'm making a club, neighbour, and when I have completed it I'm going to come round and hit you with it very hard,", replied the whittler. What is the man to do, for even if he is a convinced peacenik and paid up member of the Guardianista, he has his wife and helpless children to consider. After meditating he realised that he must immediately take his own club, ideally the one with the big nail through it, and smite his neighbour hip and thigh.
Jacob said that I could put my raspberry prunings on his growing bonfire heap if I liked. We are only allowed one bonfire a year and we wouldn't get that if it wasn't for a remote Catholic terrorist. We must all be thankful for small mercies. Jacob is an expert fire starter as he used to be a forestry worker, so I thanked him for his offer, which will save me from failing to get mine going like last year.

Posted by Tony at 8:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jacob is a lifelong Labour supporter, while I tend to the Conservative furrow. He often harangues me therefore, but I am unlikely to vote for any of the big three next time. They never discuss anything that I am concerned about! On the whole the economy is not too bad and the NHS is probably as good as we deserve. The things I am interested in are: Europe and its increasing reach; law and order and finally immigration.
A young Lithuanian family work one of our allotments and the man's name is Mishi. He's a good fellow and works hard and so you might wonder what problem there can be from the arrival of 400,000 or so Mishis over the last few years and the further arrivals that are forcast from Rumania etc.
For the Chattering Classes that that are said to form opinion, there is no problem whatever. One of their major costs, which is the price of menial labour, has been reduced at a stroke. It is a bit different for those at the other end of the spectrum of power. What of the armies of people that worked in hotels, who did the cleaning in offices or looked after children? Quite simply they have been priced out of the market.
I myself am a parttime gardner for a busy man who owns a large garden that he has no time to look after, and I suppose it is only a matter of time before some young Lith or Latvian undercuts me. It all reminds me of the Anglo-Saxon invasion. This was not so much an invasion as a mass movement into Britain when the Romans withdrew in the 5th century. Britons, long under the protection of Rome, hired Saxons and Angles to protect themselves from even more undesirable attacks from the sea. Like Polish Plumbers, Saxon Sworders brought their families and eked out a marginal existence on the land down by the marsh. In time they got fed up with that and merely pushed the Britons out of the Big House and supplanted them. The Britons who survived walked to Wales and lived in the hills waiting for some Normans to attack.
I hope Mishi hasn't got his eye on my plot, but if he has and I have to walk to Wales, I bet the chattering classes splash me with mud as they overtake me in their Chelsea tractors.

Posted by Tony at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)