Allotmenteers and gardeners can be a disputatious and even dogmatic lot, and like many religions and political parties the smaller the points of difference the more formidable the firepower directed on dissenters. Dig/no dig; raised beds or footpaths, Glyphosate or hitting your own fingers with a lump hammer (I made that one up); and the matter of timber borders around beds is another such choice that has passionate advocates and detractors.
We use gravel boards as bed dividers for several reasons, but in particular because our plots are inclined to waterlogging, being at the bottom of a valley through which the river Avon passes and occasionally floods to within ten vertical feet of the plots, raising the water table with it. So some of our paths are dug almost two feet deep and filled with wood chip to help drain away the water. It’s not as effective as proper field drains or gravel, but it’s free because our wood chip is delivered to the site by the council.
A second reason for timber frameworks is that on a slope, all our beds are effectively terraced and the soil needs to be contained to prevent it being washed off. The third and least convincing reason is that I’ve got a tidy mind, but I’m working on that one. The naysayers will shake their heads and tell me that wooden boards harbour slugs and that’s certainly true. Occasionally the slugs will lay waste to row of seedlings – except knowing that means we can take precautions. Unlike our rat traps which the rats have learned to spring without harm to themselves, slugs fare less well with the beer traps and we protect our vulnerable seedlings with them. Sadly the slugs are much more partial to rich malty and expensive brews than they are to Aldi’s cheapest. Yes wooden boards provide an ideal overwintering spot for slugs – you almost always find their pearly globular eggs somewhere there if you have a poke about.
But we don’t have a massive problem at all and the reason is almost certainly because slugs have their predators apart from humans. We’ve been puzzled in recent weeks by the fact that something has been systematically working its way along the borders, digging down into the wood chip alongside the gravel boards so neatly that it looks like they’d been hand weeded with a penknife. Each bed is 12′ x 4’6″ – so that’s 33 ‘ of board per bed and we have about twenty of them across the two half-plots. We had no idea what was doing it – rats and mice were among the suspects, until Madame spotted the culprit – a very tame first year (male) blackbird scratching down into the path and greedily eating slugs and their eggs. It’s just another bit of evidence that encouraging wildlife into the garden works wonders – toads, hedgehogs, birds, even foxes and (less helpfully) badgers, will all eat pests like slugs and snails – so slug pellets really aren’t as effective as the wildlife who come to the plot and work tirelessly and for free to clear our pests for us. Hoverflies, ladybirds and all the other invited guests pollinate our crops and decimate the opposition and, in the case of the blackbird, sit high in the trees and sing songs so beautiful it makes you want to weep. It’s just a matter of accepting that nature is a shared space and the less we muck about with it the happier we’ll all be. This will be the first year of the new pond which, without even touching it, is showing signs of coming to life with a bit of algae forming on the shallow surfaces. We’ve redesigned the beds and the planting plan to introduce many more tall, insect attracting perennials; and built a very safe hidden area under the water butts where a toad or a hedgehog might take up residence. There will be more flowers than ever, using vertical planting and interplanting to increase the diversity.
Beyond the allotment, our walks have been curtailed again by the new lockdown and so Mendip is off limits once more; but locally we’ve spotted a flock of long tailed tits in the trees near Sainsbury’s car park. Who says there’s no wildlife in the city? In the last few days we seen the herons, three or four cormorants who are immediately recognisable as they swim, because most of them is kept underwater, with just their long black necks and heads visible. They like to sit on the chimney pots of a converted grain store on the river and air their wings. I like to think of them warming their armpits in the hot air from the chimneys. There are wagtails, robins, blue tits and great tits – all common as muck just like us. The mallard are beginning to pair up and the several pairs of swans along the river and the canal are still together. We’ve got three kinds of gull – black headed, herring and lesser black backed; and there are kingfishers and even a pair of peregrines. We met a fellow member of the Bath Nats last week who has been watching them and he caught them in the midst of a mating display, plunging towards the ground together and breaking out like a red arrows display. Lucky man! Then there are sparrows – much rarer than they used to be – and many more. You could spend a happy day birdwatching within sight of the Abbey.
Then there are the otters. We’re desperate to see them but we haven’t been lucky. That will be a very special day indeed.
On the allotment today I finished building the experimental vegetarian hotbed (no shit!) , capped it off with compost and shoved a thermometer into the middle to keep an eye on the temperature. The ambient temperature is around 3C max at the moment and when I pulled the thermometer out of the oldest compost bin I was surprised to see that it’s still 9C – six degrees above ambient – and it looks very good, with plenty of worms and a lovely sweet smell. The last of the seed orders are trickling in along with warnings that it has become illegal to ship to Northern Ireland and the rest of Europe. Apparently DEFRA have no idea whether the exports will be allowed to re-start any time soon, but the big worry is that imports will be affected and the seed trade sources many varieties from European countries. Yet another reason to think seriously about seed sharing of local and traditional vegetable varieties. We noticed today that John Harrison – big time allotment blogger – has published a book on heritage varieties based around the wartime “dig for victory” theme. The writing’s on the wall!
