Infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure

That's going to be my mantra for the rest of this winter and into the next growing season. I had naively thought that I might get away without netting the broccoli and spring greens/cabbages since there was no actual broccoli in evidence yet. When I popped along to the allotment today with the kitchen waste I was horrified to see the plants almost stripped to skeletons in some cases. Much tangling and soft cursing later I had rigged up netting over a cobbled-together arrangement of canes and climbing frame poles. It'll do for now, but I hanker after a rod and ball cage with more robust netting, one that would fit together each year with a minimum of make-do. It would very definitely be an 'investment', but at the moment I feel I'm investing time in bringing on plants and not getting the full crop from them that I could if they were better protected.

Broccoli frustration

It's just as well that I over-planted with purple sprouting broccoli. In the week since planting the snails and slugs have had a merry time with the soft new growth. I'm assuming it was mollusc damage rather than pigeons at this early stage in the autumn, but all the same we're researching a frame for a netting cage over the winter. Last year as a frame for netting we used lengths of aluminium tubing cut down from the children's old climbing frame, but there won't be enough of it to cover what we've planted this year. Somehow it feels like a betrayal of the whole recycling ethos of allotment gardening, but since we're in this for the long haul it's equipment that will be used again and again.

Strangely the spring cabbages weren't as badly affected. Fingers crossed that it wasn't just because the munching hordes hadn't worked their way round to them yet.