A perfect weekend – for the office, and with great good luck I was dispensing gardening advice to the multitudes at Wisley this weekend as the wintry showers swept across Surrey.  Usually, days are balmy when I am working.

The rotovator got its first outing a week ago.  Where big plastic sheets had kept the rain off, all went fairly well with the soil dryish and all the weeds killed by smothering.  But where manure had been spread the rotovator struggled.  The truth is I had been too previous and the soil was too wet for effective cultivation where soggy lumps of dung were present - I had expected it to be difficult, but it was in fact impossible.  The manure was very lumpy and also had blocks of silage mixed it.  The best that could be said is that the manure was very well chopped up and mixed into the top 10cm of the soil.  The rotovator would not go deeper.  This leaves me in a dilemma.  Do I make the best of a poor job; or should I finish the job off with hand tools or come back in April when the manure has rotted more and risk losing valuable growing time and soil moisture?  Go back in April I expect.  At least the base dressing of poultry pellets were spread at a 200g every square metre (half this where manure has been applied or where carrots and peas are to be grown) and 20g of sulphate of potash per square metre.  Almost complete lack of wind made spreading very easy.

Cultivation time approaches – but the soil was a tad too wet after rain on Friday to rotovate this weekend.  No matter; plenty of time yet.

Dry soil halves the work and a recent run of dry weather has left the ground easily workable.  The remnants of last year’s sweet corn were carefully hand dug incorporating a light sprinkling of compost.  This is for a planting of raspberries, but as the raspberries will take a year to reach a sensible size, there is scope for a crop of March planted onion sets between them and the nearby row of loganberries. Leaves, weeds and other debris from beneath the soft fruit were raked out and incorporated while digging to add organic matter and save the trouble of conveying them to the compost pit.

As the days grow longer the cold grows stronger as we allotment growers say and so it has been recently with vicious frosts overnight that make the broad bean and onion plants look a little sick.  However they soon bounce back as the sun comes up.

A good freeze at last. With the ground solid, the black polythene sheets keeping rain off the manure heap, were pulled off the manure heap and used to cover the 120 most weed infested square metres of the plot. The weeds should now begin to rot beneath the polythene and rain will be excluded so that rotovating can soon begin. Conditions could not have been better; all the water and manure-derived slime on the sheets had frozen solid and either fell off or added enough weight to stop the sheets flapping in the slight breeze. Logs and blocks were used to anchor the sheets in case of any more gales.

Ah, muck spreading; staggering along with a creaking barrow of heavy manure on wet, slippery soil. There is nothing quite like it. The manure is rotting well and full of brandling worms. The local robin follows me round with great enthusiasm.

I have taken a break from the allotment for a few weeks, except for harvesting. Winter veg are still in full swing, with very satisfactory Brussels sprouts and Savoy cabbages.

Here we go again. The last of the autumn planting is done with garlic and shallots joining broad beans, onions and peas in a broad expanse of crops that will grow over winter for early summer harvest. These will be quickly followed by a second crop thereby fulfilling my aspiration to grow three crops every two years. The cropping plan for 2008 is under way.

After a week of frosts the summer crops are finally finished. Last weekend I picked a whole carrier bag of runner beans, from the July sowing, in top conditions, but this weekend I pulled up the entire browned, frosted row, consigned the haulm to the compost pit and recovered the canes for use next year.

Perfect autumn weather of sun, light rains and breezes left the soil in perfect condition for sowing peas and beans to grow over-winter.

This is a curious time of year when summer crops still produce, although much singed by recent over-night frosts and winter crops, their flavour enhanced by the cold, are ready to gather. 

Three pumpkins remain to be gathered, but all the squashes are safely in store.

The great autumn clear-up begins.  French and runner beans are largely gone now.  Pumpkins and squash are spent and the fruit gathered in.  The haulms, as the stems are officially called, have been  raked up along with the weeds that have begun to thrive as the haulm dies back letting in light to the enfeebled weeds. 

I want thieves, robbers and crooks, - in a word, weeds.  With the warm moist soil rich in plant foods the greedy, grasping roots of weeds will gather these costly materials and store them as plant matter.  Unlike the soluble soil nutrients, plant matter won’t be washed, by winter rains, out of my thin sandy soil into the ground water and rivers.  I am pleased to say that cleared areas of the plot are greening up fast with a massive flush of weeds.  Naturally, I don’t want to let them set seed but with winter just round the corner there is little chance of that.

The last of the potatoes are gathered in.  ‘Fleur Pecher’, a French maincrop with pink-red skin gave a fair yield of blemish free tubers.  Slugs seem to have left it alone and there were no rots.

Haricot beans ‘Brown Dutch’ were dry and ‘strawy’ enough to pull up by the roots and take home to hang on a string in the sun.  Here they will dry and ripen protected from birds and squirrels by the watchful local moggies until ready to thresh out the seeds for storing for winter soups and stews.

Gathering potatoes

Vegetables have been taking a backseat this week, while I deal with fruit.  Gathering apples, pears, raspberries and plums, collecting wild blackberries and cutting back strawberries and raspberries, and winkling bindweed out of currant and gooseberry plantations are very pleasant summer tasks.