I admit it, I am still digging potatoes. My allotment spud crop last year outgrew my storage facilities. Fortunately with a mild autumn and on my sandy soil the spuds are in good condition. Surprisingly the slugs have left them alone.  Possibly the very dry summer conditions prevented slugs breeding.

I saw no slugs when I raked up the haulm, but I did see a few tubers, not quite covered in soil, green and signs of rotting from potato blight.  The spores obviously washed down from affected foliage and infected those tubers at the surface and not covered with a protective layer of soil.

The diseased tubers could affect next year's crop. In fact surviving tubers from the previous year are easily the most damaging source of infection for potatoes and tomatoes.  With the wind blowing away from the nearby school and housing estate and towards the business park deserted for the weekend, it was a good time for a bonfire.

With some fallen twigs from the storms last week as kindling, a fierce blaze soon consumed the potatoes. Allotment bonfires are frowned upon if they are used to burn domestic rubbish and plastics, but ones for garden hygiene purposes are allowed.

While I was in clearing-up mode I raked up and burnt the tomato stalks, also affected with blight.  Although it is infected tubers that are the most potent source of infection there is some, but not much risk, of infection from diseased stalks as well.

>Other wastes were consigned to the compost pits. Where the soil is light and sandy compost can be made in pits.  These keep the compost moist in summer and prevent it chilling in winter.  During the summer wastes rise 1.5m above the 0.75m deep pits but by winter the wastes have rotted down until the level is flush with the soil and the pits are full of compost.

Winter weeds are too contaminated with soil and too watery to make good compost.  They are either incorporated during digging or covered with black groundcover plastic until they can be dug.  It is surprising how quickly annual meadow grass and chickweed grow once the weather warms up, and you can be faced with an intractable carpet in March. Already, after such mild weather weeds are getting ahead of me. I resorted to Weedol 2 this weekend. This weedkiller works in cold weather, even if it rains, and saves a lot of time later.  However now, as the digging season for sandy soils begins there will be plenty of opportunity to bury weeds that appear in the next six weeks.

Although I do most cultivation with a rotovator, I have to get some ground ready for early crops.  The soil is still too wet for rotovating.  Rotovators turn wet soil into ‘porridge’ so hand digging is the safest option for early sowings. Parsnips can be sown in my district in late February so the first digging job is the parsnip bed.

Normally I would have done this several weeks ago, but the land in question was sown with endives, radicchio and sugarloaf chicory in August and I have been eating them since October and with such a mild autumn they are still in just usable condition. However, you cannot spoil 2007 crops for the sake of a few salads, so they had to go. The dug soil was then raked level and covered with clear polythene laid tight against the soil.  This will warm the soil up and in about six weeks it will be ideal for sowing parsnips.  I will know when to sow because weed seeds will begin to germinate under the plastic. Weeds have their uses.