Produce!

We went up to the allotment to find that some things were flourishing (broad beans), some had been eaten (borlotti plants), but mainly a forest of lush green weeds had appeared amongst various young plants. We spent three hours drudging away; the petit pois were particularly time-consuming. D planted out the remaining squash/courgette/cucumber plants from the windowsill, but they were still very wee - I don't hold out much hope. Apart from the weeds, I dug up some of the garlic since I'd seen word from Eco Dad that his was starting to rot and of course, so was ours. So shall have to eat it fresh...it smells very good though.

A welcome interlude was provided by a visit from our allotment neighbour StevieFish who was trying to entertain young Nina and stop her grizzling. She's still cute, though! This is her slightly quizzical look. I gave him one of the garlic heads and some rocket that I'd found amongst the weeds.

Luckily it's Clark and Kit's allotment in the background of this - it's much tidier than ours. But you can see how green everything is; we may not have had much sunshine but my goodness there's been plenty of moisture. We've been using nematodes to stop the slugs successfully for about five years and this is the first year we've seen any slugs; I think the weather has been so great for the slugs that the nematodes just can't keep up. Interesting point about the garlic; over half the plants I dug up had an attendant earthworm. We don't see a great many earthworms on the allotment, so the more the merrier, but I didn't realise that they like garlic! Perhaps it repels some predator for them.....