Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Chatting => Chatting on the Plot => Topic started by: al78 on June 03, 2018, 00:23
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Where my effort is not rewarded? Thanks to autumn, winter and early Spring being cool, damp and cloudy I got behind on my cultivation. Once we got past mid April, the weather improved significantly, and May has been fantastic. My allotment had been colonised by a lot of creeping buttercup (heavy clay soil which stays damp in the cooler months, and when it feels like we have had less winter sunshine than the Shetland islands!), so decided with the improving weather to get down there frequently and put the hours in to get it into a state where I can plant out my crops I have been growing in pots at home. By using the weekends, and, with the longer Spring daylight, using the evenings as well, I have mostly now got on top of it, still a bit to do but I am planting things out, the worst of the weeds have been cleared, and I have been collecting and spreading well rotted horse manure.
Over the last couple of weeks, I applied slug nematodes, shortly followed by planting out brassicas in two cleared beds. They have lasted a week before something has stripped the leaves. I have copper rings around them, and the French beans have not been touched so I think it is pigeons. Oh dear, I should have immediately covered them with veggiemesh (although I have not had them ravaged that quickly by pigeons before). I have covered them not and hope that they have the strength to recover (the heart of the plants looks intact). In another bed, I dug out some of the clay, filled back with multipurpose compost and sowed carrots. After two weeks, some of them have germinated, which is an improvement on previous years. Unfortunately, some animal has been digging in the compost and destroyed most of the germinated seedlings, possibly a cat from one of the neighbouring housing estates.
It is times like this I wonder why I bother. Spending hours of time and effort only to see it wrecked after a week :mad:. I'm just glad I am not a subsistence farmer, I would starve to death within a couple of years at this rate.
Just needed to let off some steam. I feel much better now. :lol:
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Last year was my first growing brassicas, I had the same experience with pigeons, if it's any consolation mine recovered fully and produced a good crop, as you say cover them straight away to keep the blighters off!
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Pigeons got mine this year too, the bleepers also had my kohl rabi, despite the fact they didn't look twice at them last year.
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al78, I feel your pain ::)
There are lots of crops I now cover as soon as they are planted/sown, in a effort to defeat the resident wildlife, which seem determined to foil our efforts to feed ourselves: leeks, any brassicas, even kale although I have been told pigeons don't touch this (No-one told the pigeons), peas and mangetout, carrots of course, spinach, lettuce...and any sort of soft fruit, you get the picture!!!
But it does mean we get to eatmost of what we grow, even if it does look a bit odd on the plot