Friday 20 July 2012

Allotment report or Weeds R Us.. with a bit of hedgehog

All this rain is good for weeds. And slugs. And snails. Wellies are good for rain. And for killing slugs. And for killing snails!

Hedgehogs are also good for getting rid of slugs but we've not had much luck with hedgehog survival in the allotment over the past few years. We had two drown in the sunken bath before we meshed it over, and one we tried to look after with a nice pile of weeds and twigs and grass, milk on a dish and meat fat, which also promptly died, but it did have some kind of growth on it, so it probably wasn't well anyway.

Why am I on about hedgehogs? Well I am now reading (now that my wife has finished it..) "A Prickly Affair" by Hugh Warwick, a self confessed hedgehog enthusiast, and - for balance - an ecologist.

A Prickly Affair: My Life with Hedgehogs

Now onto the allotment.

What's doing well:
Potatoes
Blackcurrants ( I have now spent several hours picking them...)
Raspberries
Parsnips (not ready yet but flourishing)
Onions
Garlic
The damson and apple trees
Weeds
Slugs
Snails

What's not doing well:

Strawberries
Sweetcorn
Beetroot

What's got eaten
Lettuce
Cosmos plants
Many seedlings...





Office veg!

My office at work, as I may have mentioned before, is often like a greenhouse, being so hot at times.

So, a couple of years ago I started to use it as one!

It is a talking point, and staff and visitors are quite impressed! I think I also might be contributing to work's green strategy....

This year it's cherry tomatoes and a pepper plant and I have been bringing home cherry tomatoes all this week.