Pig Sty Avenue

The problem with tweeting about one's allotment adventures in an hour or so after they occur, is that if you've made a proper Charlie of yourself, for example by crushing a blameless leech beneath your Dr Marten's boot, you're revealed to the entire twitter-sphere - in particular your fellow allotment tweeters - as the aforesaid proper Charlie. This afternoon, with a combined sense of contrition and curiosity, I've been researching this whole flatworm and leech business. It's now pretty clear to me that this was a leech, more of which in a moment. But I have learned this about flatworms, there's no evidence that they are causing damage to earthworm populations in the UK. Fear of them appears to be another aspect of the hysteria regarding almost any "invasive" and "non-native" species. Grey squirrels and their persecutors are perhaps the sharpest example of the phenomenon in the UK . A whole host of beasts prey on earthworms in ad...

For the 2nd time in a week or so, (1st time regarding dwarf beans ), I'm following Alys Fowler's advice, this time with regard to Swiss chard .  Long story short, after midsummer plants which often bolt if planted in spring will resist the impulse to do so, probably because of shortening days; (I say shortening, but in Glasgow, in July, we're still getting 18 hours of daylight).   I got a packet of Bright Lights , at a good price, (another reason to wait until July before sowing, lots of bargains, I've noticed). But where to sow them? Most of the 2nd bed is under a tarpaulin, but it wasn't quite big enough to cover the whole bed, so the last 5ft or so went under a sheet of plastic, (in the background of the photo in this post, here .) Transparent plastic was a foolish idea, weeds were growing underneath it, so I covered most of it with sheets of metal from the old shed. I decided to leave the tarp, but use the area beneath the plastic for the chard. Who-ah there...