Wildlife friendly allotment

[Mercadante]

Susie wrote:jerusalem artichokes, goodness knows what I am going to do with them because I haven't found a good recipe yet!

Just peel them and roast them, they're gorgeous.

[Susie]

I cooked the jerusalem artichokes in a creamy sauce in the end (before I saw your post about roasting them - I will try that next time).

The allotment is coming on well with leeks, onions, mange tout, oregano, sweetcorn, pumpkin and rhubarb so far.

It is proving interesting keeping the pigeons off because they like to pull my onions up (and just leave them lying on top of the soil for me to replant). I've covered the whole lot in fleece now so hopefully that will do the trick.

The allotment was alive with solitary and bumble bees today, it was hard to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing.

How is everyone elses' plots coming along?

[smartie]

We're still eating last year's leeks and kale, and we managed to grow a few cauliflowers, which demonstrate the poverty of the soil we took over - they have only grown to about the size of a tennis ball. Delicious though. We lost a fair amount of cabbage to the pigeons when the netting blew off. Lesson learned.

Onions, shallots and garlic doing well, and the new rhubarb crown and gooseberry bush are in. The asparagus crowns arrived yesterday and will go in this week. Derek has finished his bean trench, full of well-rotted manure, so when the weather is warm enough we'll be off and running.

We've got some early potatoes in now and the new greenhouse is full of seedlings of all sorts of goodies to plant out when we're relatively safe from frost. I'm starting some of the beans indoors and will also start some more outside when I plant them out. The idea is to get a succession, though the old lags tell me the ones I plant outside will catch up with the earlier ones. We'll see.

I got a bit over-excited with the tomatoes, and I've now got over 40 little plants of seven varieties growing on. My problem is I can't bear to throw them away once I have encouraged them to germinate. I've only got room for about half of them so I'll be hawking tomato plants round all my friends and neighbours.

Sorry - I've gone on a bit. But you did ask

[gillwrig]

Hi Susie

My allotment is going to be wildlife friendly - I've gone for the approach of half fruit veg and half flowers.

I've been planting teasels, foxgloves, sunflowers and echinaceas for the insects but also some soft fruit to encourage finches and blackbirds. Not too bothered wether I get much produce of it for myself.

I was hoping to harvest the sunflower heads and hang them in the garden for the birds to pick at and the teasels should prove popular with the goldfinches.

Hung a couple of bird feeders up and have already got LT tits, chaffies, blue tits and plenty of robins. Next thing to do is start a woodpile and geta small pond in there.

Not sure how popular I will be with the other owners but I've kept it quite traditional round the edges and then much more wildlifey in teh middle ... hopefully they won't be able to see in