School Loses Staff

Some people never learn.  A year ago the 'grow your own loaf" project failed when the wheat crop was mysteriously flattened.  Could it have been sabotage or was it the birds?  So we tried again this year, with rattly bottles and string stretched between posts that needed to be raised higher and higher as the crop grew.  All was well until the crop started ripening.  The height in the top picture is about 6 inches below the peak a week or so earlier and the grains have been stripped:

I have the evidence that it wasn't crop failure:

 Without the intervention of human force (The school hasn't had pupils since March) those birds have just been waiting.  The jackdaws are top of my list of culprits.  They also love horticultural fleece which they shred and presumably use for nesting material.  Here's one I caught on camera with a beakfull:

They also view labels and leeks and any new planting really,  as a challenge to be tugged out of the ground and discarded.  Oddly the allotments don't suffer from the same birds - It's pigeons there.

At any rate the staff of life will have to wait for another year - and high security.

Rolling Stones permitting, here is the only song to match this campaign:

Time to Face The Music

Clearing the decks for spring I have to record that the cut and come again trays in the greenhouse and on the kitchen windowsill failed to deliver.  They stalled at the microgreen size and proceeded no further.  Whether it was cold, lack of nutrition or lack of sunlight is academic.  The yield did not justify the effort

Another failure has been my attempt to overwinter broad beans at the plot.  I thought my fleece tent would shelter them.

Maybe it did help,  but some agency has still uprooted any plants that survived into the new year:

Move on please - Nothing to see here

A combination of frost action and mice I would guess.  On the plus side my Malwina strawberries delivered to late for planting out look quite happy in their temporary greenhouse residence

Also getting greenhouse space are these violas

Holding on for spring is this bedraggled parsley plant

On the plus side too is the clamped carrots

Despite my best efforts we are only three quarters of the way through the crop.  BTW  I have added carrot cake to my limited baking repertoire.

One more admission.  The pigeons discovered the purple sprouting broccoli was get attable through the net, and get at this one they did. 

Skeletalised PSB

Fortunately one robust plant is taller than all the others and so they couldn't get at the shorter ones.  Talk about taking one for the team!

Facing Up To The Enemy...

Today I managed to capture my enemy - but only on camera:

Cabbage Root Fly

I was on the lookout because last time I was weeding the brassicas (Radishes and Swedes) the seedlings looked like this:

My first suspicion was Flea Beetle so I made up the contraption below.  It is a spare length of grease band taped to the underside of a cardboard sheet with flappy bits to brush across the top of the seedlings. This is based on the idea that flea beetles jump up when disturbed (?).

Result...

Null Points

Sadly the result was non existent.  Answer: it's not primarily flea beetle. Having seen flies on my last visit I took my camera along (as well as my Weapon of Minimal Destruction) to help identify the culprit.  Massively blown up it is the first picture. Cabbage Root Fly (CRF). It seems there are at least three generations of CRF each year and these are the parents who lay their eggs in the ground near brassicas.  The emerging grubs then tunnel into the stems and roots of brassicas.  That's why brassicas collars were invented: to stop access to the stem at soil level.   I'm not sure which manifestation of the CRF is eating the seedling leaves but I do know there are plenty of these small housefly-like  flies active around the seedlings. They are clearly too clever to fall for my flea beetle trap. I did manage to squish a few at ground level with my fingers.  Now that's what I call organic gardening!

For good measure I've added my best shot of a flea beetle taken on the same day. These are smaller than the CRF so harder to capture.  The give away for identification is the lines on the abdomen (and they are black).