More munching

Two days of sun and heat, and now we’re back to more rain.  And the molluscs are still eating; a row of seedling lettuces in the veg plot, to replace the first planting that is now starting to bolt, disappeared virtually overnight.  I had also cleared out a long plastic trough that contained nothing but weeds, and replanted it with some of the same batch of lettuces; they were munched a bit (I found and evicted two snails and a large slug found hiding under the lip of the trough), but a line of Vaseline laced with salt around the top put paid to that, and they’re now recovering.  The brassica seedlings - broccoli and cabbages - have been planted out under netting, and are mostly surviving so far, although the netting is obviously not slug-proof!

Scrump-able raspberries

The blackbirds have taken the gooseberries (I made no attempt to stop them), but interestingly don’t seem to have made much attempt to steal raspberries.  The raspberry bed is a mess, frankly, and needs overhauling this winter, but usually I have to net the plants to get anything off them.  This year I’ve done nothing, and the rasps are fruiting freely with very little bird damage – although there are slug/snail trails over some of the fruits!  The plants have suckered into the near end of the veg plot and into the blackcurrants (which have no fruit worth mentioning, and also no bird protection), as raspberries tend to do.  Sometimes I think those plants have the best-tasting fruit.  When I was a child, there was a piece of waste ground running along behind some nearby gardens, and raspberry plants had suckered out of the gardens into the edges; I used to enjoy scrumping for raspberries there, which were often small but wonderfully sweet (and, although nobody objected, there was the allure of forbidden fruit).  I still like searching in the long grass and weeds for the unintended fruit, although I really ought to dig the plants out.

Alpine strawberries

On a warm afternoon a couple of days back, I noticed a flock of sparrows quartering the corner of the veg plot.  My first thought was that they were after the alpine strawberries – there had been minor signs of bird damage – and then that they were picking flowers off the row of peas.  But then I noticed a blackbird pecking at the edges of the septic tank in the lawn, and realised that the garden’s ants nests had broken open and the ants were flying out – there’s often one or more nests in the veg patch paths.  The greenhouse was also crawling with them, and the sparrows were sitting on the roof picking them off as they flew out.  Better that than going for my strawberries and peas!

Peas, in flower