Some of you may remember the vicissitudes with ducks when I was still regularly visiting the allotment a few weeks ago. When I ended up fencing and covering in net my little pond supposedly to avoid damage to my neighbours’ tasty (for the ducks that is) seedlings. With the result that no frogs have probably taken residence there (unlike at home where I now have 3).

I may also have mentioned the b****y buckets that someone had placed on the path in front of my allotment and the water tank. The ones that were in the way most of the time. And that – filled with stagnant water – were very likely to breed stinging insects of the mosquito family. The same buckets that have been smashed by vandals and nobody is throwing away, so I will have to do it next time I leave the allotment empty-handed.

Well, an email exchange with the allotment manager revealed that the above-mentioned buckets were placed conveniently in the way – obviously by some well-meaning naturalist – when the ducks were there. In fact I cannot but derive that they were FOR the ducks, rather than against them (unless anyone knows that buckets of water scare ducks away).

Fuming!

I was fuming for a handful of minutes. What was the point of complaining (albeit indirectly) about my pond’s luring attraction to ducks and then having b****y buckets in the way!

Well, auntie always says that every head makes a little world of its own. And I am probably too eager to please, from my outsider’s, immigrant position.

However, being now thoroughly Anglicized, or just too busy with my uni project, I calmed down pretty quickly and forgot about it.

Except now I’ve learnt, and will know better what to do with my pond next year! 🙂

— Post From My iPhone

It said on the packet that it was an annual, but it turns out it might end up a weed.

Some say its beautiful flowers are among the few blue comestibles in nature.

Borage oil is supposed to be good for PMS, skin diseases and a wealth of other ailments, as it is an excellent sources of gamma-linolenic acid (GLA).

Wikipedia
Garden Organic
Thompson & Morgan
BBC Gardeners’s World
Botanical.com

Leaves (although they contain a mildly toxic source) can be used in salads and soups, flowers also decorate salads (or Pimm’s), and the plant in proximity of tomatoes improves their taste (but I have planted it in the asparagus bed, one of the few that were empty at the time…)

It is also called starflower, and it’s growing beautifully… I do hope it’s attracting insects (and not spoiling the asparagus) as I myself am not enjoying it at all, given that I barely had time to take this picture! It’s one of the first things I will have to sort out once I’m back.

After full 4 days, I got to water the tomatoes just in time before they keeled over. Looking at the bright side, I picked my fist cucumber ever, and my first courgette of the year.

Another blitz to water the tomatoes in the greenhouse has confirmed much depression, as weeds have won back all the ground they had lost through my painstaking work over the months.

I had to pick onions that were rotting because of the endless rain (must be a good 40 days now with little respite) and pull some mint and fennel (herb – spectacular bronze leaves and delicate flavour of aniseed, excellent with white meat fish, just dry and drop in the sizzling oil in the pan when needed) which were invading the path.

Tomatoes look fine though, and so does celery (and the weird garlic plant, but still have no pics). But my beautiful pumpkin plantlets have disappeared altogether…

Just over two weeks to my final uni project, then I will be back to my hobby, hopefully…

One of my pre-exam blitzs last night, it was so depressing to see the amount of weeds, slugs of all sizes, fading crops and very little to replace them – as you know I have not been sowing a lot lately and most of what I did sow was exterminated by draughts, slugs and earwigs.

But the courgettes are growing and so are cucumbers, tomatoes and sweet corns. Tomatoes I actually found in a better state than last time I saw them, and I got 6 plants of pumpkin that I managed to transplant.

And – there was another surprise, how amazing I always find the vegetable world… Garlic picking was long overdue, so I braced myself and stated digging wherever I saw a stump. Being tired and in a hurry I hadn’t even changed so I was wearing cream trousers and shoes and was not in a position to do serious digging. I am sure I left something and hope I manage some time this weekend to check.

Anyway, I was digging underneath the wilted, rotting stumps, pulling them at the same time, when I saw something unexpected: looked like a bluebells seedhead but very close to the ground. Curious but not very patient I digged it out to check. It was just another garlic!

Above the head, squeezed out of it and just over the soil surface, a short plant made of little garlic cloves had developed. Last year most of the garlic plants had flowered, so I thought that seeds was the way garlic reproduced, but obviously not only that: if you leave your garlic too long it won’t just go on growing underground: apparently it grows out of the soil again.

Writing about it it seems even more strange, maybe I dreamt about it, but I found other little cloves lying around… Will try to take a picture of the curious specimen which I re-planted.

P.S. far from perfect, as I just had my mobile with me, but there you go…

— Post From My iPhone

It has been raining for a whole week, and I have been studying, so no allotment really, but I popped in tonight to water the tomatoes in the greenhouse.

I was in a hurry and went straight to the water butt; while I was waiting for the trickle of water to fill the can, I had a look behind the shed where I keep the rat trap as I do out of habit… to my amazament, there was something in it: a little blackbird. I had to look twice as my brain did not process that straight away. Anyway, I opened the cage and it was gone in no time, so I am pretty sure it was all right.

Quite how he managed to jump into the cage through the wire funnel at the entrance of the first chamber, and then jump on the flap that leads to the second chamber I cannot figure out, nor can I think of another reason why it went through all that rigmarole that is not curiosity – I have now left the cage open just in case…

On another note, you should have seen the amount and size of slugs on the plot today. I am sorry to say I am going to give up and start using pellets, albeit organic: the ferric phosphate ones. I do not particularly like the idea, and I will use them sparingly and in addition to other organic methods, but I have spent £60 in nematodes already – supposing it is any better to release in nature a parasite in big quantities than it is to use a chemical – and my investigations did not give me any reasons to think they are especially dangerous to any other form of wildlife than the target.

If you know of any fact-based reasons not to use them, please let me know, but I would like to eat some of my brassicas this year…

I had to pull the broadbeans out as they were wilting and anyway the season was over: I have made some 5kg which is less than last year despite planting double the amount, but still not a bad crop overall.

Some peas were also ready: it is such a pity I am not having time to plant beans as well…