These are blog posts that Guy Barter has made.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Perfect autumn weather of sun, light rains and breezes left the soil in perfect condition for sowing peas and beans to grow over-winter
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