Early February - Blustery & Grey

Early February - Blustery & Grey
Newly dug over square beds 07/02/11

Thursday 22 September 2011

Starship Trooper

My leek crop has been completed decimated in just over a week. What I initially thought was just a few outside leaves drying and turning brown, quickly escalated into a full scale attack of what - on the surface - looked like the dreaded rust.

But rust is not the culprit.

On Tuesday's school run I bumped into Rachel - fellow novice plot holder, whose plot is diagonally across from my SE corner - and after telling her of my leek woes she told me that there was big sign up at the allotment entrance warning allotmenteers about "some sort of leek-munching creepycrawlie".

So off I headed last night to remove my leek crop from the ground and deliver it home to a fiery death in our 'not to be used as a garden incinerator' chiminaya. And lo-and-behold Rachel was right: a huge sign warning of the deadly Brown Leek Moth - a little blighter from Bulgaria that is apparently marching inland from the Eastern and Southern coasts of Britain, devouring and deep-mining the innards of many a leek crop. They lay their eggs, eggs sprout caterpillars, caterpillars bore down into leaves and flesh, damaged flesh rots, game over.

I snapped a couple of my sorry alliums in two and their weeping bodies told testament to the destructive power of the Leek Moth wrigglers: great slimy bore holes driven right down the shaft of each vegetable, rendering them all completely inedible and only fit for burning.

The bucket of pulled leeks sat sadly in the boot, fragrancing the car with the delicious scent of cheese & onion crisps for the trip home. Which only made the whole evening feel even more tragic.

And I still stink of smoke from the burning :(

Friday 2 September 2011

Le Canny French!

We had our family holiday in Saint Jean de Monts (in the Vendee region of France) this year. It was very reminiscent of Cornwall in that it lashed down with rain half the time and was full of British campers and number plates. We made the best of it - I dragged the kids to the beach in the gloom and gales, and whilst we enjoyed a paddle and a sand castle construction session, my good wife sat huddled in jeans, jumper and multiple towels in our little beach tent complaining that we weren't in Spain.

Since we've had the allotment I've taken to noticing what is growing in country properties, farmers fields and gardens a lot more. The Vendee is an extremely agricultural region - apart from the campsites that string the coastline, farming seems to be the only local industry - and the fields are wholly populated with either beef and diary cattle or sweetcorn. The amount of maize growing was fantastic*.

The number of village and suburban properties with their own little vegetable plots was far higher than anything I've ever seen in Britain. Although we only saw a handful of proper allotment plots, almost all of the non-holiday let houses seemed to have a section of garden assigned to growing vegetables, the most obvious and popular being tomatoes - more on this in a second.

What was really noticable though was the height of these plots - apart from a single line of French climbing beans spied on one of the allotments, almost everything was grown below waist height. Presumably the sea winds coming in off the Atlantic are so strong and destructive that nothing grows above the low garden walls that offer protection against the lashing horizontal gales**.

The other object that kept cropping up in these garden plots were old wooden crates, masterfully recycled by the canny French as tomato plant supports. For smaller plants, said boxes seemed to be positioned behind the plants to offer wind protection as well as supporting the fruit - popped on the top of the box the fruit was in the ideal position to ripen in the sun. Larger plants (Marmande?) were interspersed in their lines with boxes either side of them, giving less wind protection but additional support for the heavier fruits. Tres simple mais ingenious, non?! To illustrate, I enclose a doodle:


Le Canny French Box Trick Blueprints

* See now restrained I was there not saying "amazing"?!
** One night I failed to get any sleep in our Villagrand hut as I genuinely thought the corrugated roof was about to blow off!

Sow By Packets

Finished stock-taking my seed packets last night - ahead of nailing down a shopping list with the new Kings seed catalogue - and managed to throw out 20 odd packets of seeds from my old biscuit tin. A few of them were unopened, but after experiencing some difficulties and frustration with low germination rates of 'close to their end of life' seeds this summer, I decided to clear things out and make sure next years plantings are from seeds that are as fresh as possible.

Although I do feel I bit wasteful, it is a timely reminder [to echo Eric's warning to me last year at seed catalogue time] "not to over-order on packets", but as a lot of the junked items were inherited from my father-in-law after one of his own biscuit tin clear-outs ["sow by 2009"!!!], I don't feel too bad about it.

Clean slate achieved, now I can concentrate on planning for next year and filling the gaps in my seed box with some different, but recommended, varieties - I'm looking to supplement the usual core crops with some exciting variety. For example, I've already highlighted Crystal Lemon cucumbers to grow alongside the usual Burpless and a couple of unusual, but apparently very tasty and flavoursome, squash: Uchiki Kuri & Crown Prince