I hate those meeces to pieces

There’s almost nothing that can be done on the allotments right now. On 201 we can’t paint fences because the wood is too wet, we can’t dig because the soil is too wet. On 235 we were chagrined today to discover that something (mice?) has been along and eaten several of the broad beans we carefully protected with double-glazing panels just a week ago.

So we had a mystery: mice, birds, some kind of insect or monopod? We think it’s mice and there’s not a great deal to be done about that, except that June, our neighbour at the other end of the site, when we’re working on 201, gave us a tip. If you grow your beans and peas in pots, when they’ve got a good root system you can just lift off the pea or bean from which they grew and which is what attracts the mice to the plants. So when we plant our spring broad beans in the greenhouse, that’s what we will do. For now, on plot 235, we’ve simply put some more twiggy branches around the plants in case it’s birds, and stuck some bamboo canes that were dipped in Jeyes Fluid around the perimeter of the plants, in the hope that it will confuse the noses of the mice.

And Sunday is Seedy Sunday here in Hove actually, so I hope to find some seeds to swap/buy and I’ll tell you all about it next time!

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-mice, allotment-peas, allotment-pests, allotment-seedy-sunday

Allotment Bird Scarers

Not the best photograph in the world, but you can see the problem. At this time of year, when food is scarce, the disgruntled allotment-holder finds him or herself fighting with birds.

Now the crow, bless him, is really not the problem. He turns up from time to time and will hop down ponderously to snaffle a bit of bacon sandwich, but really he’s not that interested in pecking our broad beans, that’s the pigeons.

And this is the scaraweb!

I ‘scored’ this off freecycle at the end of last year, and while it looks like a crash-landing by Santa, it does seem to be working – also, it’s biodegradable.

The problem with any bird scarer is that birds soon get used to it. You can try:




• Toy snakes (should be more than two feet long)
• Toy cats
• CDs on strings
• Bottles on canes
• Bunting
• Windmills
• Plastic shopping bags tied to string


But any and all of these only work because the birds are surprised and uncertain. As soon as they get used to the whatever-it-is then they’ll be back, pecking the tops out of beans and peas and taking the sprouts off Brussels. So what you have to do, apparently, is change your bird scarer system every couple of days so that there’s a constant novelty to the process. I assume this means that by the end of the week your resident birds will have forgotten what they saw on your plot at the beginning of the week, so they have a longer memory than goldfish, but not by much. Our fellow allotment-holders have a plethora of devices, so I’m going to photograph them and share them with you over the weeks ahead …

Labels: allotment-bird-scarers, allotment-birds, allotment-brassicas, allotment-broad-beans, allotment-pests

Allotment pests

I was reading The Cottage Smallholder yesterday and noted that Fiona has to net her fruit not just to keep the birds (and her dogs) from eating the ripe fruit, but because the birds (but not the dogs) eat the unripe fruit too!

We certainly have problems at our allotments, but this isn’t one of them and I’ve devoted most of today, while I’ve been pottering around, to working out why. And I think I’ve found the answer. It’s seagulls!

Yes, while they can be a real pest, I suspect that the seagull behaviour over our allotments keeps the fruit-hunting birds away; they certainly like to land in the mornings and poke around in turned soil, but if they see smaller birds congregating on the site they tend to fly down and scare them off so that they can try and grab whatever the little birds were finding. Of course they aren’t equipped to peck fruit from bushes though. Finally, a use for the pestilential things! One person on our allotments actually has a pet seagull that he feeds with cat food on a fork – rather him than me: they have vicious beaks and always look to me like homicidal maniacs who are trying to remember where they left their axes.

We also have a rat problem, and I’m not sure what to do about it. Rats will, I’m told, dig up my root crops and eat my peas and beans, but putting down poison is a no-brainer (a) because I know it builds resistance in the intended victims and (b) there are too many dogs, cats and children on the site for bait to be safe. So, short of taking the dog up with me whenever possible, I’m not sure what to do. So far the only thing the rat has done is tunnel under the compost bin and eat some of the scraps we put in there, but I wonder what it will do next …

Labels: allotment-birds, allotment-fruit, allotment-pests

Allotment problems

We have an invasion!

Not bodysnatchers, not even ground elder, simply cats.

I think, without any evidence, that one of the allotment cats has had kittens and now those dear little things are old enough to be out and about and what they’re out and about for is their lovely little kitten deposits which are turning up on several plots round and about. It’s a difficult one, because you need allotment cats or you have allotment mice, and any allotment holder knows that once you get mice, you’ve got problems. But nobody wants cat ‘doings’ in their vegetables, and so you have to find ways to discourage the cat, without harming it, or driving it off your plot entirely.

So what are the options?

There’s the encourage/discourage route: growing catnip and having a bowl of nice clean drinking water in an area of the allotment that’s an acceptable cat toilet as a kind of a carrot, while in areas that you want to exclude the cat from, you can grow mint – the really strong, square stemmed kind, in buckets, and cut it hard back every three or four weeks to keep the odour strong – peppermint and eucalyptus oils are really good cat deterrents so if you get a few offcuts of wood, even just small blocks, and you scatter them around the cat toilet area, with a few drops of peppermint and eucalyptus oil on them, you’ll find your cat problem evaporates – but so does the oil, so you need to keep renewing it or the cat will return!

Then there’s the physical barrier route – if there is a place that the cats are using constantly, cut some brambles or rose suckers and lay them across that spot so the cat would have a prickly toilet! It will soon be discouraged from that particular spot.

Cat courtesy of photogirl17

Labels: allotment-cats, allotment-deterrents, allotment-pests

Companion planting

I’m in two minds about this. I do undertake some companion planting: mainly things I remember my granddad doing such as plant French marigolds between tomato plants to deter aphids, growing carrots and leeks together (I think the leeks smell strongly enough to confuse carrot fly, although it could just be that he liked the look of carrots and leeks together, isn’t it odd how we pick up habits without really thinking about them?) and using nasturtiums as a sacrifice crop for cabbages – because the caterpillars eat the nasturtiums and leave the cabbages alone.

But can it really be true that those same marigolds can smother bindweed? I don’t think so. Not on any allotment I’ve come across, anyway. And does celery really deter cabbage white caterpillars from brassicas – I’d love to believe so, but I don’t think I’ve come across anything, except horticultural mesh, that really keeps the caterpillars off. Or rather, keeps the butterfly from laying the eggs that hatch on the plant and become voracious eating machines aka cabbage white caterpillars.

But I’m prepared to be convinced. Especially if it reduces the need to weed between rows and pick or wash off pests. So tell me - do you companion plant, and if so, what works for you?

Marigold by *micky

Labels: allotment-companion-planting, allotment-flowers, allotment-pests, allotment-vegetables

More slugs

Gardener’s Question Time on Radio Four this week dealt with the pestiferous question of slugs (after I had, which suggests to me that they are nicking my material!) and they came up with a very interesting suggestion – throw out grain for your slugs!

The way this was discovered by the reader who wrote in, apparently, was that she would throw down corn for the ground-feeding birds, and if she went out after fifteen minutes or so, she found the slugs were converging on the grain at a rapid (for them) rate. Apparently slugs love grain! And this greed gives two opportunities for slug disposal – you can either gather them up (or tread on them with your nice thick wellies) and dispose of them yourself, or you can wait for the more predatory birds to realise that once their grain-eating cousins have had breakfast, their own food turns up and can be picked off!

Then there’s that microscopic nematode or eelwom that is watered into the soil. The nematodes (Phasmarhabditis hermaphrodita) enter slugs' bodies and infect them with bacteria that cause a fatal disease. I’ve never managed this myself, but other people swear by this approach – I think there’s a real issue about nematodes which is that you do need clement weather and for the past three years my watering in has been followed by either unseasonal hard frost (a guaranteed nematode killer) or torrential floods.

I also use copper bands around my most beloved plants – sometimes you have to buy these, but I’ve gained most of mine by skip diving and stripping the copper component out of electric cabling. Costs nothing but time, and can be wrapped around any kind of pot, or even twined around the base of plants with a single stem like globe artichokes or sunflowers – believe me, slugs will not cross copper if they can avoid it.

Labels: allotment-pests, slug-control