Tag: l’orto

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…

The damselflies are out (although I found 2 dead in the water and only one drying out on a grass blade – it must be a very delicate phase emerging from the nymph body) and there are tadpoles some 2 cm long! By the end of the day I found four damselflies alive, at different…

… that I am in desperate need of a massive sowing session, but instead I spent my time today clearing out weeds and any overgrown grass, so that the allotment looks spotless. I haven’t even had time to plant my newly arrived organic plants (the ones I ordered when I decided to support organic growers more). So, nothing…

I am back after a week or so and all the celery that I planted out is gone, all but one (ONE) seedling – no remains whatsoever so it was slugs, the mean slimy creatures – regret saying that their activity was less than usual… I have also lost all my tomatillos in the greenhouse to…

As I am not very good at potting on, and I have a bit of time pressure, I went for the planting out option. I started with celery, possibly the tiniest seedlings. It feels like yesterday that I was doing this before, but it is actually over a year: it did work – except that…

Fancy nettles being all the rage this year! There is a special on the May issue of Gardener’s World, saying that they are not only useful for attracting ladybirds but also to distract caterpillars of several butterflies from your plants, besides being a nutritious food, a compost heap starter and an effective soil test (some…

I was pulling weeds here and there – a lot of grass tufts around – wondering why my barba di frate never got to come out (ok that it is a low germination seed, but…) when I realised that what I was pulling might well not have been a tiny tiny tuft of grass but…