Report from Pest Control

The yellow sticky papers have arrived and OH fixed them to the worst-affected brassica bed. When we packed up at the end of the day, we counted about a dozen flea beetles. Gotcha.

I had prepared two spray bottles of onion juice. Because I wanted to use some of it as cough medicine, I put sugar in it. I sprayed each of the infested brassicas with the pungent solution, and initially the flea beetles duly scarpered. But as soon as I wandered off to do other things, they came back! Nevermind that our entire allotment was by now smelling like Panagiotis' Gyros Grill -- the flea beetles thought it was excellent.

I can only hope our plants will outgrow the beasties. Or that maybe they don't like garlic, which I'll try next.

Felt very much under the weather because of the cough and couldn't really do very much today apart from using our new hedge shears to try and get on top of the nettles, ground elder and sticky willy in the far corner.

As I was working underneath OH's wind-driven styrofoam guillotine (passim), this upcycled piece of cobwebby loft insulation actually went, dipped and bonked me on the head. Cue enraged shouting on my part -- this contraption is meant for pigeons, and I may sometimes look like one, or move like one, or eat like one, or stare like one, but I am NOT a pigeon, and I will not yield. Either I go, or the Pigeon Scarer goes. Of course the Pigeon Scarer goes.

OH tried to mollify me by pointing to the sky where a few pigeons circled randomly, like fat motorcyclists in a coastal town on a Saturday night. "Look," he said, "it's working. They're not coming anywhere near our plot."


OH planted out the rest of the red onions and filled up the fourth onion bed. Not taking any chances there!

Having taken a break, I set upon planting out the rest of the cauliflowers -- Purple Cape this lot is called. They'll be growing alongside Cauliflower Snowball. A fellow allotmenteer, whose plot is very organised and who routinely wears marigolds when gardening, told me last year that the reason my cauliflowers didn't form a head was because I probably didn't manure them enough. Learnt something there!

More scrapwood pulled together from our pile to make a new cage. OH had kindly organised more netting.

Relatively early night tonight -- feeling very rough.