Todays visit to the allotment was very brief and rushed due to time pressures and mainly consisted of planting out the majority of the remaining crops grown from seed at our home. Before this was begun however we treated ourselves to the first of the ripe and uneaten strawberries our plant had produced this season which were utterly delicious.
'Summer is here'
Plants settled into thier final positions included pupkins, squashes, tomatoes, chillies, dwarf and runner beans, celery and celeriac. These were planted with the usual handful of shredderd paper for moisture conservatino and some organic chicken manure pellets, they were then thoroughly watered in and some of the covered to protect them from marauding winged fiends.
'Celery and pumpkins go in'
On the topic of avian pests, despite our substantial efforts last weekend to protect our brussels and sprouting broccoli frm thier vile habits, we have once again fallen victim to thier incessant search for easy food. Some of the nettings placed over them last week had moved slightly due to the heavy wind we experienced shortly after thier installation and unfortunately allowed them access to the brussels seedlings. When we arrived only 4 plants our of the dozen we had housed beneath the protective strucure had escaped without being totally destroyed.
'This is WAR!!!!'
This left us incredibly annoyed and disheartened and wondered what had changed in comparison to last year resulting in the pigeons wanting to eat everything that was not covered over by fleece or net on our plot this year. Luckily however, we had some more, less well developed seedlings in reserve and were able to plant them in place of the destroyed specimines and we hope desperately that these will escape without damage. To help ensure this, some more protection over the crops seemed to be required. The philosophy behind this most recent addition is that what they cannot see they cannot eat, as such the tops of the netting were also covered with horticultural fleece to try and obscure the plants appearance slightly.
Final insurance against vandalism came in the form of some bird scaring devices we had put together and placed on the plot this week. This took the form of a small reflective windmill, purchased at a recent garden show, along with small foil cake pots saved from our weekend munchings and attached with peices of string to certain features around the plot. Finallty a loved on bought us some comedy "Beware Men Cooking" tape, the type you see around crime scenes etc which we cut lengths of and tied around the plot to flap about in the wind. The purpose of these items is to create some movement and sound throuought the plot and hopefully put off the pigeons as much as possbile, we will let you know how effective this is and if we ever win the battle against the pigeons to protect our brassicas.
'Scare them away'
There is some good news from the site this week however, despite the sparadic germination and other bird damage we have been chronichling over the past few weeks the salads, swedes, beets, cabbages, potatoes and cauliflowers are all growing well and enjoying the belated sunshine. We are also seeing some more encouraging signs on our seed onions, carrots meaning we can now boast something green growing in almost every seed bed.
'Massive onions, and ready to eat salad'
All that was then left to do today was to have a general scout around the plot ensuring all the rabbit proof fence was upright and intact. We noticed some more colonies of blackfly on our broad beans which we pinched out again and tried our experimental method of repelling them via the use of incredibly stinky rhubarb waters being sprayed all over the plants. After this we watered everywhere and re-covered the plants we had removed the fleece and protection from for planting purposes to prevent further losses via the birds and called it a day.