Sunday, February 10, 2013

A beginning and an end

Potato chitting time has arrived again! My Apache potatoes arrived in the post yesterday, so I got them straight into egg boxes and into the cool spare room. These are a maincrop potato variety with attractive red markings. We've been buying them from our local supermarket for mini roasties, so thought I might as well try growing my own. I grew Ulster Classic last year and while they were lovely in taste, they were a bit too floury for my preference - fine if you want mash all the time, but pretty useless for anything else.



This weekend I also need to redo my planting plans for the year. Maybe it was the cold weather and snow cover, but our garden in December and January was suddenly inundated by some very hungry pigeons. There have always been pigeons in the large trees surrounding the suburban veg plot and there have always been winter brassicas in the plot, but this was my first experience of the 2 meeting... And suffice to say, the brassicas came off worse.
The tuscan kale, the early sprouting broccoli, the cauliflowers bought as plug plants, the savoy cabbages - all of it, gone. This is probably gardener's karma for forgetting about them as seedlings in the autumn (see post here). I managed to net the brussels sprouts before Christmas, so saved some of those but the rest was wholly decimated. Were it not for the fact I am vegetarian, there may have been some pigeon pie served up for dinner!


12 comments:

  1. Oh dear that was a blow. The pigeons do seem to have been voracious this year, They usually leave mature plants over winter but not this year!

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    1. It really took me by surprise to be honest, never having suffered in previous years. Ho, hum, back to the potting bench...

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  2. You sound very calm about the carnage in your veg plot - I think I would alternating between fuming and frustrated! I learned the hard way with leaving my beds open so that foxes and cats could create havoc; now they're all netted off but perhaps the fox's presence keeps the pigeons at bay?

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    1. I'm fuming and simmering inside Caro. From the north you see, we don't like to show our emotions... Revenge is a dish best served cold and all that. Let's just say Pesky Pigeon will rue the day he/she decided to mess with my brassicas.

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  3. Pesky pigeons. I learned the hard way a couple of years ago when they ate the contents of my brassica bed. Being nearly surrounded by fields we get inundated with them. My netting goes up as soon as the plants are in the ground.

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    1. I think netting will have to become my new best friend. The pigeons keep sitting on a metal arch just outside the veg plot - maybe waiting for me to plant something else tasty for them?

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  4. Potatoes chitting - a new year begin :) I have the potatoes (well a few) but need some egg boxes so I think that there will be a few omlettes, scrambled eggs etc. on the menu soon. Sorry to read about the fate of your winter brassicas.

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    1. I have a lot of egg boxes as our neighbours donate them for our chickens' eggs. Unfortunately, our feathery friends all took 2 months off laying over Dec/Jan so we built up a surplus. We didn't have time for pancakes yesterday, so will be making up for it today and using a few eggs in the process.

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  5. My mum is chitting my potatoes for me, it's like some form of tradition we have going on, I'll be visiting her soon to collect them and carry them on at my home. It's such a cool thing to do I feel, having these weird living and growing potatoes sprouting away on the windowsill! Sorry to hear about the pigeons. I think you need some net-boxes!!!

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    1. That's a lovely tradition. My mother and I have one in a similar vein where I grow her a courgette plant and some hanging basket toms from seed each year and pass them onto her in May/June. Now that she's got a greenhouse, I'm hoping for some seed-raised herbaceous perennials in return!

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  6. Oh that is so annoying. I think the 'flying rats' monkier is about right sometimes.

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    1. I shall be a lot more protective of my veg plants in the future Liz. I think I got complacent after a few years of no flying pests...

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