I started off yesterday doing a really gross job. At home, on a windowsill, I have lemon plant which I bought at about the same time as I took on the allotment. When I bought it, it had lots of leaves and some fruit. It went downhill last year (all its leaves dropped off) and I assumed that it was just not happy here and was about to kick the bucket. I kept watering and feeding it though in case it had some life left in it. Lo and behold, in the New Year just gone, it grew 5 or 6 leaves giving me some hope for it. However, more recently it was looking decidedly poorly again. Closer inspection, well overdue, showed that some kind of scaly insect thing has invaded it and was leaving horrible sticky stuff behind it on the plant and on the window next to the plant - see the badly focused (thankfully) piccie below. Yuk!
So, yesterday morning I took the bull by the horns. I removed the plant from the pot and found that it was actually two plants, one of which was dead so I started by chucking the dead one away. I then gave the pot and the plant (as well as the window of course) a good clean with soapy water and a sponge. I re-potted the plant in clean peat-free compost and watered it with some Summer feed. Hopefully, it will recover but given my lack of experience with citrus plants together with my ability to kill off houseplants soon as look at them, its chances may not be good. I will track its progress here.
Don't worry, things are a lot less gross in the rest of this post but a lot more twee...unless you don't even like cute insects...
Yesterday, I focused on weeding the onion-and-garlic bed as parts of it were getting a bit overgrown. I understand that onions and garlic don't like to compete with weeds. As I was weeding, I noticed that there were ladybirds about. Lots of them. I guess there must be a nest of some kind on the left-hand side of the plot half-way down (as you view it from the main path). As I was kneeling down weeding, there was a pair going at it hammer and tongs so they are obviously quite happy there. I also saw what must be young ladybirds. They are essentially red but you can just see where the spots will appear. I forgot to take my camera yesterday but took some piccies today.
In the piccie below, there are three in quite close proximity. There were groups of 3, 4 and 5 like this all over the place. I was chatting to a fellow allotmenteer about it and he said that he had seen the odd 1 or 2 but not as many as there were on my plot.
I was trying to put a net up over the onions (they had been nibbled by something) and the bugs were not making it easy...
In the piccie below, you can see young ladybirds (nymphs?) next to an adult near the broad beans (which are, since you ask, seen to be flowering nicely in the photo below that).
It is great to see so many ladybirds about particularly as I worry about black fly. Hey ho, time to move on to non-ladybird related topics.
I was very pleased to see that one of the rhubarb crowns I planted has not completely given up. I planted two: one earlier in the year which was quite mature and which came in a pot and one which came as a bulb type thing and which came in a packet. I planted the the more mature plant earlier in the New Year and covered it over with a terracota pot which was weighed down with a chunk of paving slab. Forcing seemed to work and it grew rapidly. A week or two afterwards (in pre-blogging days), I was worried that it might outgrow the pot so I planned to visit the allotment to take a look. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to the allotment for a further week, but which time the rhubard seemed to have wilted to nothing. Perhaps it did hit the top of the pot and ended up bending and breaking. Perhaps it got too wet - I watered it well before covering it with the pot. I may never know. I'll try not to plant anything over the top of it in case it come back from the dead.
I planted the immature rhubarb on the end of a line of fruit (gooseberry, blackberry and redcurrant) but I hadn't seen any sign of it until this week. It is small but it looks healthy enough. It may be too late to get a harvest this year though I am not sure.
The peas I sowed two weeks ago look to be coming through ok. Hopefully, most of them will be showing in another couple of weeks. Then I can think about putting supports up.
As well as taking photos today, I did manage to put netting over the chard and perpetual spinach patch (as well as some of the nibbled onions mentioned earlier). I also dug up some potato plants that I could see emerging from those that had grown last year. Dammit - I dug over the ground at least twice to check for leftover spuds! Some of the tubers looked quite healthy and I considered replanting them, but given the blight problems of last year, I decided not to. This seems a little wasteful to me but I do have lots of new, healthy main crop seed potatoes waiting to be planted. I also planted out three globe artichoke plants. I must remember to sow some more to join them ready for a harvest (hopefully) next year. They can be seen near the middle of the piccie below.
Anyway, it started raining a bit at 1200 so I went home for lunch. I was hoping to get out again, perhaps to broadcast some carrots and beetroot, but the rain (and a touch of thunder and lightning) have put a dampener on that. I'll just have to wait until next time...
