Dodging showers

I heard on a TV weather forecast this week that Edinburgh has only had 1.5 hours of sunshine so far this July.  It certainly feels like it.  We have almost given up expecting anything of this summer.  Getting any work done at the allotment has been a struggle:  June is always a busy month for us, and this year with the end of our daughter's schooldays it's been especially hectic.  But constant rain, particularly at weekends, has held us back even more.

The arrival of an order of brassica plants this week from Delfland Nurseries meant that rain or not we had to get to the plot at the weekend.  I expected that the soil would be waterlogged, but wasn't prepared for the depth to which my foot sank into the soil when I stepped on to the strawberry bed.  Actually it wasn't so much soil as liquid mud.


Still, a few strawberries had ripened despite the lack of sun.

A very kind work colleague who keeps horses supplied me with several leaves of hay to spread around my strawberries.  It was fun getting the hay home on the bus.  Of course I now realise after reading Monty Don's 'Ivington Diaries' that it would have been smart to put organic slug pellets down before I spread the hay.  So I may have created a snug home for slugs and snails, but at least the berries are raised off the soil mud.

Ideally we would have  moved the netting cage that is over the broad beans, peas and French beans, but the chances of being able to fix the poles in the liquid mud made us abandon that idea.  A floating fleece protection against pigeon attach was the best we could do, but we'll have to loosen it as soon as we can.  We're away from Edinburgh at the moment, so the plants will have to survive until next weekend.  Two types of sprouting broccoli, calabrese, two types of kale, spring cabbage and winter cauliflower.  Planting into liquid mud was a horrendous experience.  I'm not sure what the plants will make of it.  All instructions to 'firm the plants well into the soil, drawing it up round the stem' had to go by the board as I inserted them into the mud as best I could.
 

Otherwise, not a lot is happening.  One of the garlic varieties has rust.  The shallots, seen behind it, are rather thin and weedy and I can only hope for some sun to plump them up.
 

The broad beans, alas, are what we call 'couped' (pronounced 'cow'pd') in Scots, i.e. fallen over.  They were supported by twine, but since I only had metal poles to hand (ex-children's climbing frame) the twine has slid down the metal with the pressure of the bean stalks.  We had no time on Sunday to put things to rights, so this may be another casualty of weather and lack of time.  The beans on the lower part of the stalks are forming well, but higher up the pods have all shrivelled away into little black remnants.  Advice please, from any experienced broad bean growers!
 

For the moment we are up on Speyside, where conditions are pretty much the same as in Edinburgh.  Perhaps slightly drier, as there hasn't been the absolutely constant rain we've had, but everything in the garden is very backward and shrunk in on itself.  I have the left overs from my brassica order up with me to plant out in my Dad's garden.  The soil here is lighter, since it's on a river plain and was once good arable land rather than inner city goodness-knows-what.  It will be interesting to compare the fortunes of the two brassica plantings.

Finished

We had to admit defeat on Sunday. During the week the broccoli and kale had been stripped bare by the pigeons. The netting had pulled free of its pegs at one side of the frame, leaving a big, inviting gap. At that point I lost heart completely and decided just to take the plants out and get the ground ready for something else.

The winter netting has been a big disappointment given the investment in a 'proper' cage and heavy duty netting. We think that the netting is too heavy for the pretty lightweight aluminium poles. It offers a good surface for the wind to catch, and it's so heavy that once it's in motion it drags out the steel pegs from the soil. On the build-a-ball cage this also knocks over the supports. On the recycled climbing frame there's no such problem, but the netting just lifts free from its moorings leaving a doorway that basically says 'pigeons: this way'.

We'll try again but with lighter netting. Meantime, any suggestions for what to do with yards of heavy-duty netting, apart from a good bonfire?

Plot in the snow

Since this photo was taken on Sunday it has snowed, and snowed and snowed. Goodness knows what state the brassica cage is in now, even after being tightened up and the snow knocked off.


Perhaps the snow will stop whatever mollusc has been chomping on this broccoli plant.


I'm concerned about the fox in this weather. Last night we parted the living room curtains to look out at the falling snow and saw a fox trotting down the pavement a few yards from us. I don't know if it was 'our' allotment fox, but it certainly looked very thin.

Eeeew!

is the correct horticultural term, I believe, to describe the state of my potato crop this year. Nearly every tattie dug up is like this. Wormy, rotting, weevily, cracking leathery skins. The yield per plant is small, thankfully, because I have to dispose of this lot. This is the total from three plants:


The variety is Red Duke of York. I also planted Charlotte as a waxy salad potato, which has been nothing of the sort. The potatoes boil into soup before they're fully cooked.

Right now I'm in the huff with potatoes. Last year we planted Pink Fir Apple, which turned out to be a 'never again' variety. Fine if you have the endless time of the gourmet cook to negotiate the bumps and carbuncles when peeling. Not so fine that very many were rotten at one end, but subtly, below the skin, so that when you took hold of a potato it turned to liquid between your fingers.

So I'm giving myself a potato holiday next year. There's no law of allotment life that says you have to grow potatoes. When we took on the plot we decided at once that we would liberate ourselves from what seems to be an allotment law in these parts: thou shalt grow whopping cabbages that no-one is going to want to eat. Now we're going to enjoy potato freedom for a bit.

On a less curmudgeonly note: good luck to Michelle today in the Federation of Edinburgh and District Allotments and Gardens Associations annual produce show.

Found

And indeed it is.


After taking these shots I put my camera in my pocket and forgot to take it out again as we worked at the plot this afternoon. The grass just keeps growing, so there was a major strimming session. I weeded the strawberry bed, which was being invaded by couch grass. All around, leaves were falling from the ash trees that border the site. When we're next back - which will be in a couple of weeks now - I'll rake them up and bag them for leaf-mould.

We agreed that we needed to use the winter to get the borders of the plot under control, and to reclaim more ground from grass. That depends on having a relatively snow and frost-free winter. The Winter Olympics might be crossing fingers for snow, but we're not.

Naughty

Bad enough, but when it comes to holes dug in the middle of newly planted overwintering onions...



I've been unable to visit other blogs much lately. Hope to emerge from this busy spell soon and see what's happening elsewhere.

Raspberry removal

The raspberry situation has been going from bad to worse. Plentiful berries, but malformed, scabby fruit, fruit withering before it can ripen, dry and brittle canes, wilting top-growth, yellow-mottled leaves, this season's green canes snapping, and the biggest yuck factor, pale wriggly larvae in the berries. Any unaffected berries we've been able to find have been delicious and sweet, so it took us a while to accept that the canes had to come out.

Researching the cause has thrown up a nexus of ghastly possibilities. Ken Muir's 'Grow Your Own Fruit' has a lurid 20 page section on pests and diseases, with the sort of photos of bugs and beasties that when I was young made me try to turn the page of National Geographic magazine without touching the technicolour specimens displayed for my education.

By the time I'd finished with Ken's pests and diseases, I'd turned into a raspberry hypochondriac. It seems that our canes have not just one, but several afflictions, each more horrible than the last. Raspberry beetle: that's obvious because of the larvae, which as Ken says more graphically than is perhaps necessary, "can often be seen crawling around the punnet after the fruits have been picked." "Ultimately, there will be many small malformed fruits and heavy crop losses...Attacked drupelets turn brown and hard...The presence of the grub inside the fruit renders (for most people) the fruit inedible." We're definitely in the 'most people' category here, and we've got all these symptoms.

But wait! There's also raspberry leaf and bud mite. "The feeding on the leaves gives rise to distortion and irregular yellow blotching on the upper surface of leaves which to the inexperienced observer can be confused with virus infection. Apical buds of young canes are sometimes killed, leading to the development of weak lateral shoots. Attacks on fruits cause irregular drupelet development, uneven ripening and malformation." Yes, yes and yes.

Here's raspberry cane midge: "The failure of canes to break into leaf at the end of the winter and the wilting of the fruiting canes at any time between bud burst and picking are the obvious signs that has been an infestation by cane midge during the previous summer."


We've got the lot - larvae, blotching, wilting, distortion, the failure of the other row to break into leaf at all. Ken notes again and again, with some regret, "There are no label approved chemicals available to the amateur gardener for this pest." So we followed one of his solutions, which was to cut off all growth at ground level, to be followed by cultivation of the ground around the stools over the winter to expose overwintering bugs to the birds.


Taking a chance because they've outgrown their temporary pot, I put in the six new canes of Tulameen into the row we'd dug out earlier. I realise now that I left them with too much top growth, but I'll cut them back next visit, so that they're encouraged to throw out more growth from the root.


Beyond the new row of rasps the strawberry bed is all vigorous green leaf. Time for that to come off, now that fruiting is over. The season is turning.

Guilty

Or if not this pigeon, at least one of its relatives feasted on my kale. You would think the pigeon equivalent of butter wouldn't melt in its mouth, tho. "Who, me?" it seems to be saying. I caught this one peering in through our kitchen window - presumably to see if any tasty greens were available. Still, they are rather beautiful birds.

Gone

That's the end of the kale, then. I'd been working at the plot last weekend for some time before I noticed that the kale had been stripped to a skeleton by the pigeons over the past week of icy weather. I think in that moment I gave up on it for this season, just as I'm giving up on the spring cabbage and broccoli that has never come back since their early season stripping. It's my own fault for not protecting it better, but in a way I don't grudge the pigeons their bit of tasty green during such a hard frost. And as the only member of the family who really appreciates kale, I'm flagging somewhat in eating it all myself.

There's also a sense that we've turned a corner in the season and that spring might just be a possibility before too long. For the first time since the robin's autumn song, the air was filled with birdsong while I was at the plot - mostly chaffinches at that time in the middle of the day. At home the blackbird starts an experimental, single voice dawn chorus sometime after 5 a.m. So my thoughts are moving away from winter vegetables and towards sowing and planting. A bit more digging to do first, so I'd better get off the computer, as my daughter has just reminded me, and get along to the plot.

Quick foray

Busy busy weekend, so again just time for a quick foray. Ghastly photo quality here, but perhaps just enough to see that the broccoli is recovering from pigeon attack and putting forth new leaves.

The Pink Fir Apple potatoes which we are all spurning are still in the ground, but amazingly resisting the frost. I dug four shaws to give to a work colleague who will appreciate them. In doing so I turned up some slug eggs, which I took a guilty pleasure in squashing. A few less of the little blighters for next summer. The macro setting on my wee camera has decided not to be available, so the detail in this photo is poor. But the general idea of lurking threat is there.



The weeds are still growing, imperceptibly but strongly. Oh for some snow to cover the ground. We may have a mild Gulf Stream-influenced climate, but it's definitely milder than it was, and winter mildness = carpets of weeds. Yet it's not mild enough to start indoor sowing.

Destroy if found

Apologies - photo quality in today's post is even hazier than usual. I had to brace myself against the gale to take these shots. However much I tried I couldn't get this first shot centred. But after reading Rafael's post about earthworms at Un jardin potager en Languedoc, this notice in the glass case at the entrance to the site struck me afresh today. It was such a dismal, dark day that I felt sure I would encounter the dreaded flatworm, and even worse, have to deal with it. However, no worms at all, not even benign ones. Have they all gone deeper into the soil with the recent cold weather, or is our plot sadly lacking in nutrients?

Despite the weather, I dug. We have so much to get weed-free before sowing and planting start in the spring that I thought even a little ground cleared would be better than nothing. The part I was digging is nearest to the sycamore trees just over the access road, and the soil was full of the keys.



I know I should have picked them out, one by one, but I didn't have the energy. The rain was coming down more and more heavily, until I had to admit that it was too wet to dig. By that time everything I touched was covered in glaur (pronounced 'glor': sticky, semi-liquid mud, a feature of Scottish farmyards). Still, it was a small gain, and my feeling of virtue was increased by the fact that I was the only person mad enough to be out allotmenteering in that weather.

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.

Brassica tidy-up

In the three hour stint that I put in on Sunday before the rain came on it was difficult to know what to do first. So much needed doing, but the ground is still so wet that I had to give up on digging as preparation for putting in the spring cabbage and broccoli that I'd sown (late) in August. The kale and broccoli planted in the spring are now well established, but under attack by snails.


I'd put netting over the plants to protect them from pigeons, but since there are no broccoli spears yet I figured an attack on the snails was timely. It turned out that the plastic bottle ends that were holding the netting over the canes were acting as snail nurseries.


As I weeded around the stems 'our' robin appeared to take advantage of whatever beasties I was turning up.

Sawfly

For a while I hoped that the newly planted blackcurrant bushes would stay pest-free. No such luck. A few weeks ago the leaves took on a lacy look, and I realised that the dreaded sawfly had struck. Finding the little blighters took a bit of detective work until I sussed out where the tiny caterpillars were hiding. Look for a crinkled up bit of leaf, seemingly welded together. Prize it open to reveal a wooly nest. Squish the wriggling green caterpillar firmly. The squishing produces a virulent, alien-green blood. Well, it was either squishing or using some chemical which has probably been banned by the EU, which I'm still determined not to do. But no matter how much I squish the leaves are still being eaten. Perhaps there are actual sawflies now, which flit away at my approach. My father still laments the battery of powders and sprays he used to deploy in the garden, until they were banned by Brussels bureaucrats. I'm holding firm, but I can see what he means.

Soggy

'Soggy' makes a change from 'wet'. I pulled onions and shallots at the weekend. 'Lift onions and shallots and leave them on top of the ground in the sun until they have dried off', say the books. Not this ground.





Isn't that just disgusting? Wet and weedy.
Nevertheless, I lifted the rest of the shallots
and most of the onions.
We've run out of space at home to dry off
the oniony harvest, so I laid the shallots on a former
IKEA shoe rack in the shed, and took the onions home
to dry in the porch. Ideally they should all dry in the shed
and be stored there too, so that they don't begin to sprout
in the dark. As it is we'll just have to use them quickly.
The onions and shallots will get used up long before the
garlic - there's only so much garlic a Scottish family can eat.

We used to have a window in our shed, but we boarded it up after the first break-in, and after a second break-in we have no intention of replacing it. There's nothing of value in the shed any more, but I think the board is there to stay. The joys of city gardening. If we DID have a window, this is the sort of set-up we would have (perhaps without the Tibetan prayer flags).





I love this - it's so...'allotment'. Often I'll down tools and wander off round the site to see what's new, what's quirky, what's growing.















The ground still wasn't fit to be stood on, much less dug or weeded.

There are a couple of miniscule yellow courgettes just
peeking through. Normally by this time we would be
putting a brave face on yet another meal featuring courgettes, but this year I think we've picked four so far.
















One crop that is doing well is the slug. The little horrors were feasting on every head of shallots I lifted. Some were the fat little pink-ish cream beasts as here, others were vast, bilious khaki green tiger slugs.








Thank goodness for dahlias.