Tag: l’orto

My potato picking technique must be rubbish. Either that or potato is such a terrible weed that it is difficult to imagine how famine may ever have occured. Or both. This I say because I have potato shoots sprouting up everywhere, among strawberries, broadbeans, garlic and even cardoon, in the greenhouse and outside. I also…

After two years and a half on the allotment I have just realised in a frightening eureka moment that I have been killing my best friends: ground beetle larvae – notorious slug predators – because I was not sure whether they might be chafer grubs. Well, they are not! How could I be so silly?!?

As I was digging a little space for my courgettes & pumpkins I found a lovely moth that I had never seen before and goes by the intriguing name “ruby tiger” (Phragmatobia fuliginosa). It was very friendly indeed, climbing on my glove to be moved away, and I discovered later that my patch must be…

There is an online Flash video that my husband used to find amusing, and that I was reminded of last night when I thought back at what had happened. The relentless pace of the season’s rhythms, and the sudden, unexpected (both good and bad, although it feels mostly bad) popping up here & there when…

If I thought it was time to store away the March & April sowing seeds I was in for a surprise. Arriving at the allotment yeasterday I saw the leaves of some self- seeded potatoes were dark green, dehydrated and flat on the ground: my brain started computing on such new evidence: herbicide maybe? A…