Summer is now over and the plot is becoming bare of produce. The winter crops are starting to provide us with most of our fresh vegetables. The courgettes (Defender), calabrese (Chevalier) and summer cabbage (Minicole) will very soon be finished.

Stored potatoes have been checked a couple of times and blight infected tubers discarded. The skins of harvested potatoes toughen up so that there isn't much cross infection in store. I'll check again at least once. The first early potatoes lifted before the end of July were almost free of blight. Most other varieties had at least some infection with Kestrel being worst.

Sarpo Mira is claimed to be a blight resistant potato. I did try it once but there was very little blight that year so it wasn't a good test. It did have a couple of disadvantages so I haven't grown it again. The shaws are very long and sprawl over adjacent crops and it matures too late to allow Crimson Clover to be sown.

The club root infected brassicas that I dug out earlier were replaced with later sown plants. But it was too late in the season for them to come to anything. There may also have been some residual club root although I did remove a lot of the soil immediately round the roots. When the brassicas come round to this section in four years time I'm hoping that a heavy application of lime will clean the soil. Next year I'll raise the plants using a different brand of general purpose compost that doesn't contain "recycled materials" as that was probably the source of the infection.

It's becoming increasingly difficult to obtain good organic manure in Edinburgh. My main load of dung used to come from the three cattle markets near Slateford Station. They have now all closed. I then bought from a local farmer. His last load of dung was contaminated with Aminopyralid. This selective herbicide caused serious problems for my potatoes. My source is now old mushroom compost.

As a supplement I've been using "Green Manure" for many years. The seed catalogue that I use lists twelve different types. My choice is "Crimson Clover". The seed packet says to sow broadcast. My way is to sow, with a small seed sower, in rows one foot apart. This makes weeding and hoeing easier. It's also more economical with seed. The whole potato section is sown in August as soon as the potatoes have been lifted.

The clover is left to grow right through the winter. Brassicas follow the potatoes so a first application of lime is made between the rows of clover in January and hoed in. In early April a sharp hoe is used to cut off the top growth just below soil level. This growth goes on the compost heap. The roots, with their nitrogen rich nodules, are left in the ground. The ground cover provided by the clover helps to prevent winter rain from leeching out soil nutrients. A second application of lime is made in late April and hoed in. Brassicas like firm ground so no digging is done. The section is now ready for planting out but further hoeing may be needed depending on weed growth.

In addition I sow a few rows in other sections as the summer crops are lifted. The clover compost adds valuable humus to the soil but, apart from the nitrogen, not much nutrient. Fish, Blood & Bone fertiliser is used to add plant food for the crops. The whole plot benefits from the resulting good soil structure and cropping is well above average.

B. A. Plotter.