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 :(

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

Hercules v Sturons

A slightly disappointing onion crop. Although they all looked great on the surface, a significant number of onions had rotted in the ground - 42 of the 200 (so 20% of the crop) have been chucked away. The vast majority of these are the Hercules variety, which although having produced some real monsters, have not matched the Sturon for reliability and quality. The Sturons, although not as good as last year's crop, look pretty uniform and solid.

So I declare Sturon the winner!

They will get grown for a third year running next season and go up against a different variety. If this was Onion Pop Idol, I'd be Simon Trowel.

Thieving magpies

Popped up the allotment last night to deliver an old bookcase for storage use in the shed to discover some thieving **** has stolen a dozen brand new patio slabs that I had nestled against the shed. They were acting as weights to prevent said shed from taking off in the wind and the plan was to lay them as a path this Autumn. That's £40-50 worth shipped off-site I suspect, as my plot is right next to one of the carpark areas, meaning it would be very easy for somone to back their car up near my shed and quickly wang the slabs in the boot without too much attention.

The offenders were good enough though to leave one of the slabs behind to prop the shed door shut. How kind!

This week's top job is to harvest our white onion crop - I have about 200 Centurion and Sturon awaiting lifting. If it's not raining this evening I plan to get them up, out and drying.

Question: What can I pop in the gap they will leave? Anything that might still give me an Autumn crop? Chard? Beetroot? Turnips? Salad onions, radishes & leaves?

It will all bee alright in the end

The absence of any allotment blog updates reflects the inactivity on the allotment – our June ‘jumbo month of planting’ was disrupted by two weeks of family holiday and then two weeks where I was good for nothing. What I thought was a recurring chest infection & asthma has been diagnosed as a hyper-sensitive allergic reaction to a fungus called Aspergillus… a fungus that is commonly found in soil, compost heaps and on rotting vegetation! During a two week period - when I thought I might expire – I had to rest up and recuperate and therefore weeding and sowing at the plot was out of the question. As a result of the sabbatical the plot was so overrun with weeds that my dad helpfully suggested that I give it up and we entered July well behind on our planting and sowing schedules.
The good news though is that I’m much improved health-wise and the surge of energy that oral steroids can provide a man have allowed me and my little band of allotmenteers swoop down upon the plot with gusto. Just cutting the grass and ripping up the weeds immediately made it look like a proper and respectable plot again. The gaps given up by the weeding then gobbled up the trays of unplanted leeks, purple sprouting, parsley, chives, sweetcorn, courgettes and squashes. Only the tray of rocket plants didn’t make it – the monkeys bolting a couple of days before our mass planting visit.
On top of the plant plugs we’ve managed to sow a host of last minute crops: carrots, a few peas for the kids, golden and bolthardy beetroots, fennel, little gem lettuces, spring onions, runner and bolotti beans, kohl rabi and turnips. Some further sowings of chard and bits & bobs is on the cards for this weekend.
Add all this to the bonus row of parsnips that successfully germinated at the second attempt, a full row of decent carrots, a mass of flatleaf giant Italian parsley, two rows of peas and sugarsnaps, a half sack of brilliant new potatoes, a bumper crop of garlic and 200+ white onions awaiting harvest, things aren’t half as bad as I thought when laying on my near-death bed!
The brilliant orange blooms of the marigolds, the sweetpeas and a surprise last hurrah of alliums have added some spectacular colour to the plot and cheered up not just me but the bees too.
There’s no way I’m giving the plot up dad!

Snug as a bug in a rug

As UB40 might say:

There's a rat in my compost and I don't know what to do!
There's a rat in my compost and I don't know what to do!

Before planting a half row of baby and rainbow mixed Nantes carrots yesterday evening I was forced to investigate my compost heap, after my plot neighbour informed me that he had a rat in his compost bin. Said rat had apparently been attracted by the warmth offered by a piece of carpet he had placed over his bin (in order to promote decomposition). He spotted that my palette compost bin also had a cosy covering of carpet and suggested that I might want to take a peek under it.

He was right - a homely little rat bunker had been constructed, complete with half-eaten carrots and oranges. The critter would be as snug as a bug in a rug, nestled in there. A good forking has now rid the bin of Roland's safe house, but I'm concerned about him coming back and the associated risks of rat urine and excremant. I'm going to have to do some anti-rat research.

Any suggestions would be welcome.