Allotment update

Well, thanks to some extreme digging from Stephen and some early morning allotment visits by me, we now have the main crop potatoes in the ground.

It has taken longer than anticipated to clear the section of the plot we ear-marked for spuds due to the huge amount of ‘horse tail‘.
Before Christmas, some old geezer came up to me and started giving me unasked for advice. One of the things he said (and he said a lot) was - “Do you know what horse tail looks like?”

I should have taken this as a warning that he knew something about our plot that I didn’t. He pulled out a small shrivelled root and said, “This is horse tail - but don’t worry about it. It doesn’t take any of the soil nutrients.” So I didn’t worry.

At that time I foolishly thought that horsetail (or mares tail as it is also called) would be a bit like some kind of grass or something. There wasn’t anything to see in December anyway.

How wrong I was. I have since discovered that horsetail is a prehistoric plant that can grow from the tiniest section of root and is almost impossible to erradicate (especially if you don’t want to use chemicals). The roots, which are now like spaghetti (and the soil is like a thin smearing of bolognese sauce) go down 2 metres and cannot be fully removed.

So we have spent an extra 2 weeks painstakingly removing a huge mess of deep rooted weeds from a relatively small section of plot - plus watching horse tail coming up all over the rest of the plot.

I have it on (relatively) good authority, that if you continually cut the tops off horse tail it will eventually die. After two years. Clearing the ground nicely for the bind weed.

Anyway…. Here’s a list of what’s growing so far:
Garlic, onions, challottes, broad beans, runner beans, sweetcorn, mixed leaf salad, early (new) potatoes, main crop potatoes, spinach, carrots, purple sprouting broccolii, tomatos (two varieties), basil, coriander, chillis, sweet peppers, thyme, parsley, courgettes, squash, radish and jerusalem artichoke. Oh yes, and horse tail.

Written by exmonkey on May 16th, 2006 with 3 comments.
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