The great, good and not so good bits about growing your own dinner 2017

Saturday had me so excited.
I practically skipped myself an my granny trolley packed with lunch, tools and seeds down one hill and up the other side to get to the allotment(DH wasnt feeling generous enough to give me a lift) at 8am.

Took two, yes TWO steps onto the plot and rolled my ankle over and back on itself (so I put all my weight on the bridge whilst going sideways! It must have looked awful too as when I limped myself over to my chair, one of the old boys was doing his level best to run along the path to check I was alright.
I spent 20 mins resting it, refusing to take my shoe off for it to swell and then it felt painful but manageable, Mum called round with some pain meds and I lasted up there till 5:30 when I walked myself 3 miles back home.

Through saturday night into sunday it woke me up in discomfort and sunday morning I could barely walk. DH was going on at me to get it checked (despite me knowing it was just "hurt") so trotted off to a&e instead of the plot.
Cant fault that process apart from a 55 min wait in awaiting room by myself at minor injuries after xray to be told it was "soft tissue damage and ligament strain".
Pain meds for 5 days, rest, ice, elevation and all that jazz. Then the NP remarked I was rather young looking given his knowledge of allotmenteers all being 'old boys'. Then said the one thing I was dreading 'no allotmenting for 5 days whilst you're on meds, Dr's orders!'

Nooooooooooooo!

I'm up this morning and only feeling a twinge if I attempt to twist it or point my toes too far.

But, on a positive note, I did get my onions in! HURRAH!

I plan on placating myself by a trip to the garden centre for compost and possibly some herb plants/seeds to make my herb garden at the plot

Hope everyone is having a top BH weekend

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

I'll swap your moles in the garden for the rats that appear to have moved in under the shed. If nothing else, molehill mounds make great soil for pots. And moles definitely aerate the soil and keep it free draining, plus there's no chance of the !!!!!!s coming into the house and spreading disease or costing me £120 at the vets for inflicting bite wounds on the cat.


I'll have to establish for certain it's rats rather than mice tomorrow, as it was only a glimpse at it pelted back under there as the cat launched himself at it. But I'm pretty certain it was a pale tail. I hate the idea of poisoning anything, especially if the cat finds it before me, but I don't think principles count much where Weil's Disease or bites are concerned. My incredibly scientific method will be pointing the hosepipe directly into the gap under the shed from a distance and seeing if I can flush anything out. Or drown it. And then stumping up about seventy quid for the bloke from the council to turn up.

Not sure about trying to flush them out. They are excellent swimmers and many of their chosen nests are located in river-banks and sidings.

We had rats in our old straw thatch in 2009, which was a very wet winter. We obtained rat boxes (essential to conceal the bait from the pets) and bought the green blocks of (apparently) chocolate-tasting poison, combined with another bait method for concealed areas where the pets don't go. We managed to get rid of them and DS (who was small enough and lithe enough to get up in the loft) broke up the nest in the loft with his hockey stick, to make sure we had got rid of all of them. Our Council did away with the rodent officer here, but when I lived in SW London with a railway at the bottom of the garden, the local chap was always busy when the railway maintenance took place as they used to come back up the old runs because of the disturbance.

On the gardening front our onions are growing well, with 5/6 shallots for every one planted and potatoes all surviving the frosts last week. There are masses of plums - hope they survive the "June falls", and everything in seed trays is sprouting in the greenhouse. Very impressed with the dwarf French Bean "speedy"! I just wish the melons and cucumbers would show signs of life.

Just three things to pot on today and then I need to get my nursery beds weeded and the new border tidied up, ooh and a dump-run, ooh and some nettle-eradication if it does not rain again. I am not planning the much-needed compost heaps dive-lift-shift.

Sorry to hear of the problems CAFCGirl and Jojo - we should form a club! I'm still in a knee strap and can't walk and I also have a rat problem.
The only thing I can do is get a lift in the car to the allotment and point a lot. But it's early on in the year so as long as you can sow and pot up - you can always plant out later CAFCGirl.
One year when the household was poorly I did most of the planting out in late June. Amazingly I got quite a lot of produce. So time to do the planning.
Rats are horrible - they are always around here as I live on a riverbank where there are nests. But at the mo one seems to have taken up residence by the compost bins - I'm afraid I have used bait in the bait boxes you can by. Usually they take it back to there nests and die there. I also try to be extra vigilant and search around for any dead ones as the cats or chickens would go for them but I've never found a dead one.
Let's hope for better news. Have a good day everyone.

Panic over, I think.

The Idiot Cat is looking rather pleased with himself and there is a exceptionally large (well fed) but very dead Wood Mouse on the floor of the downstairs bathroom after he wandered out for a brief cat toilet break.

He's only ever got babies before now, no bigger than my thumb but this must have been a relatively smart one, going by how big it was. I didn't think his teeth were up to it - he's so useless generally, he's chipped the points off all of them by repeatedly smacking his face into the windows when attempting to jump up - and last year's baby mice were all squished and gummed, rather than bitten to death. But he's managed the proper bite to the back of the neck, so I don't think it suffered much, either.

Meh, mice I'm not too worried about. And whilst I get mice, rats are still far less likely. I'll still backfill the gap under the shed - it'll make it easier for him to pick them off before they can get under there again.


It's rained a fair old bit today and the sun has come out, so everything looks like it's about to explode into life with a couple of warmer days.


Himself will be sowing his sunflowers today or tomorrow. I suspect he'll get rather carried away with this, as he's never had an entire garden to indulge himself with before. And I did mention the year I accidentally dropped some and ended up with a lawn that turned into a sunflower field - he definitely liked that idea...

Rats, - I really dislike them but when you have chickens it's not long before the rats appear. I like to keep them well fed with Jaguar bait. Rats are very inquisitive and an old farmer told me to put bait inside pieces of drainpipe that are about 3'long It's cheaper than rat boxes and the chickens, cats, birds and my JRT can't get to it. I find it very effective. I regularly test to see if they are there by leaving a bowl of layers pellets near the pipes overnight. If the pellets have been eaten I increase the number of rat blocks. I always wear disposable (surgical) gloves when dealing with them - just in case. Like Fruittea I have never seen a dead one.

Wet day today but I managed to weed off the last bed in the tunnel and add more muck to it. Dug up a few more early potatoes, the crop isn't huge but very welcome and the space left behind is to be used for mangetout.

The overwintering garlic has kicked into life and is looking promising, so do the Autumn sown onions. I've still got a few more outdoor beds to deal with and loads of tidying up but I'm cautiously optimistic about this years growing.