An army of ants on the Allotment.
May is the busiest month on the allotment with so much sowing and planting to be done as well as keeping up with the weeding and grass cutting.
Tramping down the soil.
Today the Brussel sprouts and late cabbages were moved from the nursery bed to their final positions, with compost added to the planting holes and then the ground thoroughly tramped down to firm up the soil, something the sprouts really need to produce tight buttons. The stems had collars put round them at the base to help prevent cabbage root fly laying their eggs there. And then, of course, they were watered well and netted against the pigeons.
Putting collars around the sprouts.
Next week the courgettes, squashes and sweetcorn will be planted out. These have been grown on at home and are currently being hardened off, but we shall cover them with fleece for a couple of weeks on our more exposed site at Bridgend.
We enjoyed a little nature study today of ants. We took one of the plastic compost bins off and exposed an ant colony with an array of little white grubs. Within a few minutes the ants had carried off the grubs and hidden them in the remaining compost, not that it did them much good since we carried off the compost to use on the beds.
Some of the early growth in our potato trial.
Jobs for next week
- Plant out the sweetcorn, courgettes, squashes
- Sowing of peas, beans, carrots
- Cut the grass
