Beer traps

It popped into my head the other day that one of the very first Crinklybee posts concerned my frustrated efforts to convert a six-foot-square backyard into Levenshulme's answer to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, so it is perhaps surprising that it has taken a week short of seven years for this latent turf-bothering obsession to properly take root, and for these once eclectic pages to turn into The Confessions Of An Allotment Gardener. I'm sure that normal service will be resumed eventually, but in the meantime I feel duty-bound to inform you of the latest developments on Plot 23, which are as follows:

Leeks. In accordance with advice imparted by a visiting allotment society chairman (AKA my dad) the non-functioning Spring Onions have been shown no pity, and have instead been dug up and replaced by approximately a dozen straggly looking plants, which actually look like fully-grown spring onions but to the eyes of seasoned horticulturalists such as ourselves will be immediately recognisable as embryonic leeks. Half of this new crop were procured,at what the visiting Chairman subsequently informed me was the outrageous price of £1.50 for six , from a semi-secret and rather bijou nursery squirrelled away behind a street of 1930s semis in Chorlton-cum-Hardy. The other half came for the rather more reasonable price of nothing whatsoever, from a bloke called Jimmy who I got talking to while he was passing by the fence with an armful of dahlias. These homegrown efforts are altogether more spindly- malnourished looking, even- but I have a sneaking suspicion that over the course of the English season they will run rings round their exotically-purchased cousins, like so many sinewy and knock-kneed Peter Beardsleys comprehensively wrongfooting a phalanx of expensively imported Arsenal centre-halfs.

Lettuces. We have no end of lettuces. Or at least we did have, for about ten minutes, until the slugs got wind of this crop of delicacies, and (quite belying their reputation for sluggishness) stormed the plot in a daring postdusk mission and reduced the first three rows to tattered shreds. Thankfully all is not lost, as a belated consultation of the 'Beginners Guide To Allotment Gardening' book that Charlotte bought me two years ago reveals extensive passages devoted to the various means by which war may be waged on slugs, without inadvertently either causing undue harm to hedgehogs or breaching the Geneva convention. Techniques suggested included the manufacture of jagged six-inch high collars fashioned from plastic lemonade bottles, the liberal spraying of the threatened ground with eggshells, and the use of double agents to infiltrate the enemy's network of interconnected cells with a view to obliterating them using unmanned nuclear submarines. In the end I've gone for something slightly more straightforward, namely the planting of 'beer traps'. Apparently (the theory goes) slugs are without exception hopeless alcoholics and will be diverted from their path towards even the most delectable rocket lettuce seedling by the competing attraction of a plastic mineral water bottle containing a very small amount of stale bitter. This unlikely-sounding thesis turns out to be true- although it does turn out that the slugs (our ones anyway) are more discerning than the bad press accorded to them would have us believe, and that their teetotal resolve will not be weakened by the allure of Tescos Value Beer at 25p a can. An upgrade to Stones Bitter has proved altogether more succesful, with the result that over the course of the last week the corpses of no less than nine fatally-pickled creatures have been thrown onto the compost heap. Leaving only nine hundred and ninety nine of their vengeful cousins to contend with, I imagine- but for now I am revelling in this small victory, especially since it has led to the harvest of two rows of only-slightly-pre-nibbled rocket, which subsequently served as an ideal accompaniment to slices of pastrami in my lunch-hour sandwiches.

Potatoes. We've got no potatoes yet, largely because we have not planted any. However this is soon to change as a parcel arrived via the Queen's Mails yesterday with a Newcastle postmark, containing no less than a half-dozen seed potatoes, which my sister advises have been procured with the aid of subterfuge from the Top Secret Strictly Members Only Allotment Shop at my dad's site, which opens (although don't be telling anyone this, it's Top Secret) for two hours only on Sunday Mornings. I've got no idea whatsoever how to proceed with this unexpected windfall, a predicament which will no doubt be resolved at my very next encounter with any one of the several old Irishmen who happen past Plot 23 at intervals (I think they have set up some sort of rota) in order to proffer unsolicited advice, more often than not concerning the perennial advisability of 'big fucking bonfires'.

So as you can see I've got a busy weekend ahead, and some of it might even involve digging (which unlike raking and hoeing I have as yet developed no expertise at, largely because I've avoided tackling anything really scary-looking from Day One, preferring to elect for the judicial application of 24 square feet of heavy tarpaulin). So- given as we have reached a rather unfarmerlike hour of a Friday evening I'd better go to bed and get some sleep (read: I had better go to the fridge for one more can of Boddingtons and to check out some of the blogs that I haven't read for a week or so on account of how I have been otherwise engaged in the forced inebriation of slugs and other wholesome pursuits).

Further updates to follow, possibly including radishes and even parsley. Now come on and admit it, you really can't wait, can you?

Comments

[MQ]

I turn my back for a few minutes and you go and get an allotment. Well, you might wonder what I was doing with my back turned. Looking at my own Moss Side 10 ft square of concrete, as it happens. I offered it to any of the Moss Side horticulturalists who wanted to take me under their wing and show me how to redeem it, but before they could even get their gloves on, my lodger went and cleared the weeds from the tubs and planted a range of salad vegetables, herbs and wild flowers. He will be delighted to learn of your beer technique, since his first lot of lettuces vanished without trace shortly after sprouting... the tomatoes are soon to go outside, so we'll see how long that lasts. I've already been given radishes from the community veg patch: my reward for a little bit of digging done back last autumn I think. Just a shame I can't stand the things.

There's a lot of this gardening lark about at the moment. Not sure if it will catch on, though. Illogically (when you think about it), it's far easier to trust a standard shaped and evenly coloured object from Asda's veg aisle than anything grown out of next to nothing in one's own backyard. How sad.

[looby]

Well, I never knew slugs were such discerning drinkers. Or maybe that's just Levenshulme slugs. Maybe in Paisley and New Cross they're happy enough with Tesco Econo-Lager.

Good luck with the radish (is the plural "radish"?). They are a fiery delight when homegrown.

[abby]

I hope the tatties are doing well and haven't been approached by the dreaded eel pustule worm (or something like that) that I heard about yesterday while down on our uncle mark's plot. In the midst of lovely healthy looking potato plants were 2 horribly withered ones that had apparently succumbed all of a sudden, falling next to their comrades as if picked off by trained assassins.

And can't wait to hear about your radishes!