Bugger it!

It’s terminal ! Defeat has been admitted! The white flag of surrender has been raised! They have ceased to be! It is an ex-long carrot bed! My first sowing in April failed because of cold. The 2nd sowing in May struggled due to heat but eventually got away. Then the slugs and snails moved in and devoured most of the tops off so that I am now left with about a dozen stations only. But these seem to be the weakest looking specimens that the snails found unpalatable!


It was my own stupid fault. Despite growing them in drums of sand that the organic brigade say slugs don’t like I’ve always found that to be complete and utter bollocks and have suffered in the past, so always put a scattering of pellets on the surface…..but alas not this year! As soon as we had a bit of rain they slimed their way up the sides of the drums and onto the damp sand to munch away at my prize carrots. Hopefully, I’ll be able to exhibit carrots at Sutton Bonington where I only need a set of two but they won’t be as big as they should be.

Having said all that I’m quite happy with just about everything else on the plot, and everything is pretty much planted now apart from my caulis which have just been pricked out and my french beans and peas which were both sown yesterday.

All my shallots (in pots) were lifted last week and spent a few days in the greenhouse drying out. They’re now in my garage (still in their pots) as it was getting a little hot in the greenhouse and I didn’t want them to overheat and shrink. I’ll let the foliage die back a bit then empty out the pots and store the shallots but I won’t ‘top and tail’ as I said in a previous posting. Instead I’m going to follow Liam’s method and leave the foliage on so that it dies back into the bulb and hopefully ‘rounds up’ the bulb where there are any flat surfaces which occur when two bulbs have been growing against each other.