Saturday 5 January 2013

Blank Canvas and Mouse Attack

As one of my fellow (experienced!) allotment bloggers kindly commented:  in 2013, the first full year at the allotment, we will have a blank canvas at the plot to fill as we wish.  We can decide what we want to plant and where, we can dream and plan! This is very exciting, but, I hope sensibly, tempered with the knowledge that a full size plot is a large area to initially fill, keep weed and pest free, productive and enjoyable.

Here we are assessing some of the space! Actually it's where we put the fruit bushes, so it won't look like blank space once the leaves are out in the Spring.

We had some fantastic allotment themed presents at Christmas (I'll write more about these later) and one was a bundle of seeds, some of which are not bog standard varieties, so they are food for thought and will definitely form part of blank canvas in-filling! 

Mouse food

And talking of food you may remember that the mice had a good old go at the peas in the greenhouse, and a pot of bulbs I'd left in there. (They also demolished the broad bean seedlings some time ago- see the picture above).  It's an instructive early warning of pests to come I reckon. I have taken the advice of another (experienced!) fellow allotment blogger (and thanks for the comments I have received so far they are really helpful and encouraging) and sprayed a little WD-40 around the pea plants-  it seemed to work and stopped the mice- hurray! Spurred on by this I got a bit carried away the next time I was at the plot and sprayed it liberally in the greenhouse in my excitement, over some of the plants themselves, so next time I go down I'll have to see if the mice have killed the plants or my foolishly over-zealous attack methods have! Oops!  I will be keeping that can handy for the time being though.....

5 comments:

  1. Allotment related parcel in the post as I type - hope you haven't already got one :)

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  2. Plenty of time to sow more peas and broadies! Happy New Year to you & L, M&N x

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  3. Allotments do tend to be fairly blank canvases at this time of year compared with the lush growth in summer.

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  4. We loved our paper plant potter (see Allotment Presents entry)!

    We'll be sowing more peas and beans! WD-40 sprayed around them seems to work well! HNY!

    I am loving the blank canvas of winter, it has made it so much easier to see what we have to do, and to get to know the plot. (The snow is even better!)

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  5. WD-40? I'm on a fat-free diet! ;) We start ours off in modules, peas & broadies (we grow snap peas). The broadies have started to germinate, the leeks & onion seeds are about 1-2" high...
    Next the chillies! :D

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