This week in allotment adventures the broad beans have blackfly. I can cope with having to cover all the beds because otherwise the foxes dig them up, I can more or less handle the foxes trying to treat my raised beds as toilets and the birds trying to use my chard, kale and soft fruit as an all you can eat salad and desert bar but aphids do nothing and the ants that farm the buggers really get on my wick, the little bitey buggers. Actually that’s not fair, the red ants are bitey and the black ants are the aphid farmers.

Anyway, the broad beans have aphids. We cut off the tops of the plants, we squished all the blackfly we could find and I sprayed them with a peppermint tea and fairy liquid. I’ve read that cinnamon deters ants so I’m going to try that but we’ll be squishing and spraying them every time we are on the plot for the next month or so.In other news, we topped up some of the potato bags (the sharpes express are really living up to their names!) all in we used 99 litres of compost and we have more topping up to do. Ma weeded because the weeds offend her. We had tea. I took up some of the chard. We were going to sow the french beans in that bed when the chard was done but given that it’s right next door to the broad beans, we aren’t going to do that now. We’ll sow them in another bed and put something else there.

The beetroot, peas, carrots and spring onions, peas and salad all seems to be doing well all of it under netting, and we put net over the gooseberries because Ma is very worried about her gooseberries and really doesn’t want to share with the birds (actually I’m not sure she’s going to share with me!)

Then is started raining so we went home! Although we did work hard, the list I made last week, looks untouched. I think most of this is going to get done over the Bank Holiday.

• Fill the three new beds with compost
• Pot on seedlings (kale, basil, tomatoes, cucumbers, cuacamelons, summer and winter squash) – I’m doing some every evening so should be done with this by the weekend
• Start to harden off seedlings (aka leave in the cloche!)
• Pot on the lavender
• Sow dill, coriander, marigold and calendula
• More weeding and raspberry destroying
• Empty wooden compost bin, see if there is actual compost worth using.
• Clear chard bed
• Sow french beans
• Sow sweetcorn
• plant out all courgettes, crookneck squash, tomatoes and some basil
• Paint the shed
• If there is any, woodchip the top of the plot