I have been reading the war time leaflets
http://www.earthlypursuits.com/AllotGuide/AllotGuide1_4.htm
Page 4 of January 1945 is fascinating especially the breakdown of how much fertilizer to use and which crops to give extra.
I am not sure that everyone realises that a 10 rod allotment needs the equivalent of 42lb of Growmore. I am very interested in the amount they recommend for spring cabbages.
Yes they did recommended growmore...but during wartime,the farmers did lot of damage to the soil too, as they were encouraged to ditch using traditional 'methods' and the soil wasn't enriched with manure anymore. It was start of 'modern' intensive farming methods.
This was mentioned in 'wartime farm' program little while ago.
As there was shortage of food during war and imports were next to nothing, country was forced to become self sufficient with food production..modern fertilizers were answer for the problems..with them bigger crops were possible with less labour and effort.
But without building the soil structure up by adding organic material, growmore (and other inorganic fertilizers) is only able to increase the yields so far..when the soil become 'poor', plants don't benefit from all the feed as there is no 'sustenance' in the soil to deliver the food in the first place.
Growmore is not cheap fertilizer anymore neither...it used to be. Chicken manure pellets are quite close to what growmore offers..and the benefit with c.pellets is that being poo..it actually does good for the soil and the little 'critters' (if used sensibly)
I find these 'wartime' leaflets and programs very interesting..not necessary the way I like to grow..but there is so many lessons to learn, good and bad.
I am not a great growmore fan. Tend to use BFB. And now getting good results with the chicken. What interested me was the amounts of fertilizer they recommend.
The leaflets do recommend manure and making compost and which crops will benefit most. They also recommend mulching, hoeing, crop rotation and all sorts of other useful techniques.
Too many people on our site take their weeds home and put them in the green council bins, :BangHead: and I am sure there is a huge lack of any kind of fertilisation at all.
I am really impressed by the quality of the leaflets.
Yunno.... I find it a bit odd that, when people get an allotment they immediately start to make it look like their grandparents' allotment did. Notwithstanding the 42lbs of non-organic fertiliser needed for that kind of pack-'em-in gardening.
My allotment is somewhat different to most. I tend to allow room for hoeing and weeding. Not many straight lines. My 'shed' is a workman's tent with a hazel frame covering it....( Next year I hope to thatch it with nettles, if I can.)
I find growmore useful for onions which I don't find grow well enough on my thin soil without a bot of help. I'm not surprised that chemical fertilisers were recommended in the war because of the need to produce as much produce as possible from a given space, but I'm surprised it was available - wouldn't it have been imported, from South America?
http://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php?action=post;quote=317175;topic=31919.0;last_msg=320382
Try that Unwashed....