It’s the end of the season. Almost. It pretty much is for us as everything is either dead or dying and we’re looking forward to next year. Hurrah.
Twenty minutes into the hand scything I realised it was a lost cause. Sweating profusely I went into the nearest garden shop to buy a petrol strimmer. £150 for the cheapest ‘oooh you don’t want that sir, it’ll break immediately’. Hmmm…
So today I hired a nice big strimmer from mark1hire (must be more environmentally friendly to share) and set about our much neglected allotment with vengeance. After a tank of petrol I’d cleared the whole site and had a fairly large pile of debris behind me which will become in time some decent compost or so I hope. I burnt a good measure to provide me with some ash for the heap.
What amazes me is the number of small hopefully slug unfriendly creatures we now have living on the allotment. All my neighbours have ridiculously neat allotments covered in produce and no sign of pests. The main reason must be chemicals. That and I think they snigger as they toss them onto my plot. Seriously though, did anyone know slugs can grow a foot long and arm wrestle a man to the ground? No? Oh.
Our allotment is literally teeming with small lizards (which I’ve never seen in my life except this year in tenerife where the place was infested with them, and no I didn’t bring them back with me…). I’ve also found frogs have found my pond. Actually I first found two or three huge drowned slugs with heads sucked off. Then I noticed the frogs – at least they’re doing their jobs, so next year I must make the pond bigger for the wonderful amphibians.
So ok, I’ve not had the best year in allotmenteering, but at least where my plot was an empty desolate patch, it is now covered in wildlife, the odd useful plant, less couch grass and has potential for next!
And if anyone is interested, whilst clearing the site I fell down a bit of uneven ground and twisted my ankle quite badly but still worked through the day and be damned with the consequences.