A list of things I hate

Part of growing in an organic system is that you wait to see if you have a problem before dealing with it. So I have a problem. Or two.

Some people say this is fascinating animal behaviour, I say it's creepy

Ants

I knew we had ants nests on the allotment but I assumed that the disruption of digging the things over would have disrupted them enough for them to get the hell out. No. I still have ants. I hate them.

Yeah, just creepy

There where way more ants then we thought and even though I've personally put an end to three queens there are still far to many to grow successfully. They disrupt my seedlings, they eat my strawberries. They must be stopped. We're looking into traps.

Also evil, they are my favorites

Slugs

Just... carnage

My usual slug prevention method is to over plant and remove them as I see them. Possibly because so much of the allotment still counts as wilderness we're still getting a lot of slugs. Too many places to hide. again they are decimating my crops and stopping any seedlings from getting past the adorable baby stage. We may have to take drastic action here.

Even the nasturtiums? It's so ON.

Somebody has been eating my lettuce

I went out on the balcony to pick some lettuce to top a veggie burger. It's the kind of thing I do often. But this time I had a bit of a shock. Where had all my lettuce gone? It was there yesterday. And why is there a green leaf underneath the red... oh wait.

The Big Guy

This is what happened to my lettuce, and the leaves on my kholrabi. This tiny little caterpillar, bright green and jewel like. So cute you could cuddle it. If you weren't a gardener and it wasn't eating your crops. I guess I'm just a soppy fool though, I moved the little things where they can't harm my edibles. Am I far too soft?

And his brother

Glorious Greenfly

When I first started the balcony garden I was horrified with bugs. Horrified. I squished and squashed, I washed away, I bought a biological control. And none of it worked. I had greenfly, I still get greenfly. I might have even made the problem worse. Now the greenfly come. I let them. I wash them off anything I'm about to eat and occasionally get freaked out by the entire 'born pregnant' thing but I generally let them live. The good thing about nature is that eventually the predator with catch up with the prey. And then I get ladybirds.

Love Hate: the greenfly

Ready for the kill...

This post is probably the most icky thing I have ever written. It is not catching me at my most charitable moment or my most vegetarian.

I'm really quite ready to kill now.

All winter we have been dealing with fungus gnats. Which was all fine whatever when they where just hanging around the chilli (of chilli oil fame) that I was about to cut down. but when you attack my gorgeous, beautifully promising crocus bulbs it's time to get angry. And of course it doesn't help that they are in our bedroom now.

One of the most annoying qualities of these gnats is there lack of survival instincts. As in I'm boiling water for pasta and one flies in. Or a drink left on the side. Or mung beans sprouting. Which means a lot of waisted water, pulled faces and general shouts of 'ewwww'.

Summer numbers where kept low by a sticky sunflower on the window. In autumn I snapped and went mad with a can of fly spray. And as much as I love spreading poison around the house it's got to stop. And my current method of waiting till my skin is crawling and then snapping them out of the air is... well leaving me with messy hands.

Stephen has been making noises about carnivorous plants and I've seen this. I guess someone must find them yummy. And if they stay away from my seedlings well then...

Wild Outside

This week's Wild Wednesday is straight from the balcony. I'm feeling rather proud as my hard work from earlier seasons is paying off now. I find each and every flower so exciting. What was a building site a year ago is now home to bees, butterflies, moths, spiders, flies, ladybirds and yes, even aphids. Yay.

Space and aliens

All is not well on the balcony. Since noticing the first lot of greenfly we've found quite a few more. The mint has recovered from it's infestation but now I have aubergine, pot marigolds, strawberries and borage full of them.

I've been manually removing them and giving them a good spray with a mix of washing up liquid (of the environmentally friendly variety) but now I'm sticking to just manually removing them at the moment because we have some lacewing larvae coming. They were kind of pricey (we could have bought a Girlguiding UK centenary rose for that!) so I'm hoping to encourage the adults to hang around and lay (?) more without our intervention. We have an insect house set up for them. But what else would they like? What do they eat?

Until then our plants are over here in the naughty corner. I'm hoping they don't pass the green fly on.

In other news we where so incredibly lucky yesterday. Walking back from a trip to Cockington we found a skip. It was time for a good root. We where soon joined by another bloke who filled us in. From the 'for sale' sign we'd already guessed that this was a house clear out and we where right. The lady who lived their has left. There was plenty of good, almost new furniture in there. Like an almost new (still had it's energy efficiency sticker on it) washing machine.

We took two shelf unit things. I'm guessing they where shoe racks. Thinking they would also make good veg racks we carried them home. After a scrub with some soapy water and drying off in the Devonian sun we fitted them into one of our cupboards.

This rather large cupboard gets no heating, and there is no window. It was put on the plans to conceal the water pipes (which had to be re-routed at the last minute) Right now it's around 12°, the rest of the flat being 20°. We've kept our potatoes in it for a while but the shelving makes it a proper pantry. Well... if we took the coats out.

Right now the bottom shelf is the gardening shelf (it's perfect to keep seeds in) and the top three are for food. I know it's a little empty. We aren't due another box until thursday.

Going to war

This is not a good news post. It is the story of the first disaster on the balcony. And it involves crawly things. We'll start with the story of our Eau de Cologne mint (also known as orange or bergamot but in Latin Mentha x piperita f. citara).

I was quite proud when I brought it home for the Torre Abbey plant sale. I was intending to let it grow a while and then start using it for cosmetic things. Foot baths and the like.

While our primrose was too shocked to live long after we brought it home (a victim of a poor root system and our over enthusiastic desire to save it) our mint soon perked up and run rampant in the way only mints can.

Just after we returned from Chester we found this yucky yellow thing on it. Being new to this I was only able to reason that it was either some form of larvae or some form of mould. We took pictures and sent them off to Stephen's Dad. along with a begging note (as Stephen's Dad reads this blog I feel compelled to point out that Stephen wrote the note so if it wasn't sufficiently begging I apologise)


Anyway he told us that it was probably some form of yucky insect. Not the type of thing I want swimming around my feet in any case. He suggested removing it, washing it and/or cutting the damn thing back and hoping for the best. As it's a mint I thought it wouldn't hate me too much for cutting it back to soil level and begging it to grow again.

The only good part to the story is that I was able to bring it inside to treat it. There is a vicious wind out there right now and I've not been able to do anything on the balcony but tie things down for the last couple of days. So long live container gardening.

I inspected the entire plant. The two main parts both has the yellow yuck. I tried to remove it but it just caused the plant more harm. Then I spotted the green fly. Appalling little things but they seem to like the wind less then I do. The two main parts both got cut to the soil.

The lonely little baby though was free of both yellow and green yuckies. To be on the safe side I gave it a shower. The fast moving water should dislodge anything I've missed. I'll be keeping an eye on it over the next few days and keep a spray bottle of washing up liquid and water handy.

So far none of the other plants have been affected. Happily our jasmine and strawberries are in flower. I don't think it's the time of year for jasmine but I'm not going to argue. And yes that is my hand holding them still for the pictures. It's damn windy out there.

Ethical dilemma

Do you remember me talking about how stunning my coriander was looking? No? Here is a picture to refresh your memory.
Beautiful, if I do say so myself. But look at it now! It's practically bald. And the culprit is not my own culinary adventures but the bunny! She even looks evil. I guess all I can say is oh well.

Fun at the farm

Courtesy of my friend Louise, two lovely stories about how our government is embracing GM crops. Joy. We're both wondering if this is a result of the Bush visit.

First up Brown pushes the EU to allow GM animal feed. Because the UK has such good a record when it comes to animal feed.

"Gordon Brown is calling on the European Union to relax its rules on importing genetically modified animal feed in a further sign of the Government's willingness to embrace the controversial technology. Mr Brown believes GM crops are vital to the attempt to cut spiralling food prices." From The Independent

And people should be eating the stuff too.

"Ministers have told The Independent that rocketing food prices and food shortages in the world's poorest countries mean the time is right to relax Britain's policy on use of GM crops." Also courtesy of The Independent

Now I have no fear of GM crops on the basis that they will turn me green and my grandchildren will have seven eyes. I admit that there is no scientific basis for thinking that. But that doesn't mean GM crops are a good idea.

They contaminate the environment. GM crops are made to grow and grow and grow. Through cross pollination and invasive growing habits they squeeze out local wild life. Plants are not able to grow and crops are covered with pesticides leaving the numerous wild flowers, insects, birds and mammals with... nothing. The increased pesticide use on GM crops leads to more pesticide resistant crops which don't stop growing on the farm. They take over the surrounding countryside altering the local ecosystem.

All this would created the interesting situation where wildlife would only be seen in cities and ornamental wildflower gardens. Both of which I heartily encourage but I'd like to have some countryside left too.

But will they save the world? Will we be able to feed more people with GM crops? Not according to Friends of The Earth (PDF)

"Despite more than a decade of hype and failed promises, the biotechnology industry has not introduced a single GM crop with increased yield, enhanced nutrition, drought-tolerance or salt-tolerance. Disease-tolerant GM crops are practically nonexistent. In fact, biotech companies have made a commercial success of GM crops with just two traits – herbicide tolerance and insect resistance –which offer no advantages to consumers or the environment."

In fact conventionally grown crops have better chances of increasing yield.

So what about farmers? Well I wouldn't like to say as I'm not one but from the outside it doesn't look good. With uniform seeds coming from a large agricultural firm prices are going up (that Friends of The Earth PDF again) These being the GM crops that will bring prices down. And with those wonderful patents of seeds companies can now go after farmers who save seeds. Making sure they get their wallets out every year. Home growers too. Monsanto is rather aggressive about it.

But what does it matter to me? I'm a vegetarian, does it matter what animals are fed? Yes, yes it bloody well does. From a vegetable lovers standpoint an acceptance of GM animal feed marks a growing acceptance of GM crops. Once GM crops are grown here well then we are in a pickle. The ecosystem will be altered and our food... well considering the contamination from GM crops in non-GM food that already goes on consumer choice will be rather dead.

An almost instant rain forest

About the time I started the URBIS sunflower I planted up some coriander and basil. The basil has been around for a few days and the coriander has just poked up. The seed packet said to densely sew the seeds to encourage growth. So I tipped the entire packet into a little dip. I've never been one for subtlety.

Now they are coming up they look like a tiny rain forest and everyday another millimeter or three is added onto their hight. I'm hoping to persuade someone for a lift to the garden center this weekend for a larger container so I can make a little herb garden with the coriander and basils. Until then they are in the recycled supermarket pot.

While outside I checked on the baby mixed wild flowers. They are already bunny nibbled! And most of them bunny sat on too. Naughty bunny.

Welcome home

I spent the weekend by the sea and by my boyfriend. I drooled over his Dad's strawberry patch, a local organic garden, mocked his gardening efforts, saw penguins and went in a hot air balloon.

At 9am on Sunday morning I woke my Dad with watering instructions.

I came home to see stuff in the pots doing well. Everything is pretty much how it was. The lavender and dahlias have grown a little. The chives have grown a lot. I'm really, really, really pleased with them. The seeds haven't popped up yet; no sunflower, basil or coriander.

Out in the back some of the wildflowers are starting to poke up and the pink is getting stronger. The bunny has nibbled a few leaves. She also tried to tunnel to next door. The daft rabbit.