Oh dear. I've been so busy trying to keep the allotment reined in that I haven't been updating this blog as much as I would like. There is such a lot to say!
The chippings have really helped me define the beds and keep the weeds down. I've covered the paths with them and weighed down the sides of the netting. I suspect the rough dry texture repels slugs, as they haven't been so much of a problem this year. I thought they would crawl under the netting, but they haven't. There was some initial baby slug activity on the broad beans, but organic pellets were the answer.
I like the look of these paths as well. Medieval gardeners made paths of sand in their gardens and around their vegetable beds, and the colour and function of my chipping paths is similar.
I'd like to experiment with beer traps, which would be fenced off from hedgehogs under the netting. I haven't wanted to risk drowning baby hedgehogs.
I now have carrots, broad beans, parsnips, radish, leeks and potatoes flourishing in the long allotment. I thought I'd lost the parsnips seeds in a heavy period of rain, but was most surprised today to see tiny seedlings. I'd given up, and was hoeing the area in preparation to try again, so I may have destroyed some of them by accident. Sometimes I think it must be quite amusing to the birds when I am working on the land, as one minute I am groaning ruefully over some mistake I have made, and the next I am exclaiming in surprise at some miraculous survival.
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