Digging & Dreaming

Squrriel Rampage

Fresh sweetcorn is pretty much my favourite crop off the allotment. I love getting a pot of water boiling on my little gas stove in the shed to drop the cobs into the minute that they've been picked. This year they were a bit slow to get started because the weather has been so unpredictable but finally, over the last couple of weeks, they've put on enough growth to make my mouth water at the thought of eating them. Then it all went wrong...

This is what a corn cob looks like after a squirrel has eaten it. The annoying thing about squirrels is that they don't just take one cob - they eat them all. Every single last one. Very, very annoying! It's going to be a long cold winter ahead planning how to protect my precious corn next year. Any suggestions how to keep the squirrels at bay?

It Isn't All Good News You Know...

Sometimes looking at this blog and others that cover similar ground you could be fooled into believing that nothing ever goes wrong on allotments and gardens all over the country. I'd like to be able to say this was true but have to confess that I as much as the next blogger could be accused of missing out the gory bits, and only sharing my successes with the outside world. Okay, so I have shared with you snippets of information on the pests and diseases that I have encountered but, on the whole, the news has tended to be mainly good...

Well now, it's time to get a bit nasty and I want to share with you the brutal truth of this evening's visit to the plot. Firstly the resident rabbit has been munching his or her way through my parsnips seedlings that, until this point were doing pretty well. I wouldn't be so offended if he actually ate the leaves but the fact that he chews them up then spits them out really infuriates me. Then my squash plants that I promised myself would pick up when the weather got better still look dull and depressed, and the celery that I was so proud of a matter of weeks ago looks like it's giving up the ghost. Finally, and most annoyingly, I spotted the first signs of blight on my precious tomatoes in the greenhouse. I have pulled out the offending plants and hope that I've got in there early enough but I'm not holding up much hope because blight tends to be so persistent once it rears its ugly head.

I'm sure that all you growers out there can relate to the feeling of the visit to your plot when it feels like it's just one bad thing after the other. Fortunately my flower bed is thriving in the heat so I was able to pick this glorious little posy of flowers to console myself in the face of so much bad news. Lovely aren't they?

Garlic Harvest

Our garlic has all been picked at the allotment this week. It may be slightly early by a week or two but the leaves were starting to go yellow which is usually the first hint that they're ready to be picked. Also, some bulbs were showing signs of the dreaded white rot so I wanted to get them out of the ground as soon as possible. If any of your healthy garlic or onions suddenly keel over the chances are this is what the problem is. The other tell tale signs are stunted growth and a nasty, white, fluffy mould on the bulb and roots when you pick them.

One of the main problems with white rot is that it may be present in the bulbs that aren't exhibiting any symptoms. This will cause them to rot in storage which is a real pest in a plant that we mainly grow to store over the winter months. Another thing that makes it tricky to deal with is that once it's in the soil it's virtually impossible to get rid of. The best estimates I've seen in books is not to plant alliums for seven years. The worst estimate? 20 years! This kind of soil infestation can be a real problem when veg is grown year after year, like on allotments. Especially when people don't rotate their crops!

I only have a 4 year rotation on my allotment which does stop it becoming totally rampant but I don't have enough space, or the impetus, to stop growing in the infected areas - I love fresh garlic! So I take the risk every year and this time the weather has been on my side and it hasn't affected the crop too badly.

Uninvited Guests

Now that the weather is warming up there are loads more snails and slugs appearing on the plot and for an organic gardener they can be a real pain to deal with. The ice and snow in winter normally kills a lot of the eggs that will have been brought to the surface by digging in autumn, but I'm a bit worried this year because it just doesn't seem to have been cold enough. I've got a terrible feeling that as it gets warmer I'm going to be absolutely swamped.

Both snails and slugs can be terribly destructive but I've got a real soft spot for snails and can't stand to kill them even if I find them munching through some prize produce. So what's my answer? My plot backs onto some woods so I just collect them all in a bucket as I find them and put them over the fence to fend for themselves. I have to admit that I'm not so fond of slugs but even they just get evicted rather than exterminated and, as they make a juicy snack for the toads and newts who inhabit my plot, I've got to leave a few hanging around to keep them happy.

I've come to accept that slugs and snails mean that there are some things that I just can't grow at the allotment. They love salad leaves so they've been shifted to the back garden where I can keep a closer eye on them - they're better closer to the kitchen anyway so that we can pick them when we want them and they're fresh as possible. Spinach is a no go as well and I tend not to plant anything straight into the ground but I've found that if plants are big enough and strong enough when they're put outside they can usually put up with a certain amount of nibbling.

Problem Parsnips

We've had real problems with parsnip canker this year - as illustrated in the rather "Prime Suspect" / forensic style picture. It's actually not as bad as it looks but it makes storing the parsnips impossible - you have to cut out the cankered area as soon as possible or it spreads throughout the root. Apart from that though, they're perfectly edible. It's just such a disappointment when you pull a seemingly perfect parsnip out of the ground and turn it round to see a monstrosity like this.

Canker is a fungi which gets into the crown when it is cracked or damaged by pests. Apparently it's most likely to occur in drought and highly fertile soil and this would make sense as it was so horribly dry last summer. In areas where canker is common it's recommended to use resistant cultivars or make later sowings. I'm going to try growing Turga again next year which is what I grew this year, as it looks such a lovely  parsnip, but I'm also going to try a shorter root as short rooted, smaller parsnips are supposed to be more resistant.

It seems quite common on my allotments that certain diseases are virtually impossible to avoid, especially where people haven't done any kind of crop rotation on their plot. I'm hoping that as we rotate our crops over the next couple of years it should start to reduce some of the nasties that are hanging around in the soil. Fingers crossed.