Butterfly protection working

My butterfly protection is working like a charm. I've spotted several butterflies fluttering all round it looking for a way in. They're so hell bent on finding a way in some will even tolerate me taking photos of them. I haven't seen any sign of butterfly eggs or caterpillars inside it yet though. It doesn't seem to matter that the butterflies can now land on the tops of the leaves through the netting, they only want to lay their eggs on the under sides of the leaves, so it's still effective.

A Cabbage White desperately trying to get to my cabbages

It's a different matter with slugs, mind. They'll happily crawl up on top of the netting (I've seen their slime trails over the high parts of the net, suspended above the plants, but I haven't caught any at it yet). I suspect they're chomping the leaves through the holes.

The bean is back

I was right, it was still alive. The slug ring has worked and it's managed to grow some more leaves.

I think losing those big leaves and taking almost a week to grow more have probably set it back a lot, so together with the fact I've managed to plant it in a spot that seems to be permanently in the shade, I'm not sure I'm going to get any beans this year, but I have learnt for next year to whack slug rings on the runner beans while they're still diddy.

Rocket, radishes and recipes

I've been harvesting more stuff from the garden. I got some more radishes a couple of days ago, which I put into a ham hock and lentil salad. They weren't really big enough, but I needed 8 radishes, so I pulled the 8 largest ones.

Ham hock and lentil salad recipe:

Ingredients: 400g tin of Puy lentils, 1 tbsp of balsamic vinegar, 2 tsp of olive oil, 30 g of dried cranberries, 8 radishes (sliced into half moons), 2 tbsp chopped parsley, 100g of shredded ham hock, mixed salad leaves.

Method: Rinse and drain lentils then mix with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then mix in all other ingredients.

They're very pretty and multi-coloured, but other than that, this radish growing thing isn't really going very well from a practical point of view, as I've only actually managed to harvest about three at the right size so far (of about 20 I've pulled up) and I reckon I could have bought the same overall number of radishes harvested at their ideal size for about £1 - £1.50.

I'm doing much better with the rocket. It's easier to harvest at the right time, as you just take off leaves to eat after it's got big enough to survive you doing this, but before it goes to seed, which is a much bigger window of opportunity than the radishes. And because rocket is pricey, I reckon I've already had almost a quid's worth with my first harvest and I'm expecting to be able to harvest more later this week.

It doesn't quite look like the rocket I buy from the supermarket. The leaves are bigger and coarser and some of them are positively bumpy like it's trying to grow spines, but it tastes the same and that's the main thing. 

It's also pretty much entirely unappealing to slugs and snails. They've largely left it alone. The only sign of pests I've found is that some leaves have small black spots on them which I assume to be some sort of insect or egg, but they're really tiny and practically invisible unless you look really hard for them, so I'm assuming it won't do me any harm. I read somewhere that plants that have been attacked by pests are actually better for you because they produce more antioxidants.

I made chorizo penne pasta with tomato and rocket out of it.

Chorizo penne pasta with tomato and rocket recipe:

Ingredients: 2 x 15 ml spoons of olive oil

150g of chorizo, chopped into smallish cubes

1 clove of garlic

2 x 400g tins of chopped tomatoes

400 g of penne pasta

50g rocket

10 g chopped flat leaf parsley

salt and black pepper

150g mozzarella

3 x 15 ml spoons of grated Parmesan

Method:

1. Heat the oil in a pan. Add the chorizo and garlic and cook for 2-3 minutes.

2. Pour in the tomatoes and bring to the boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, cook the pasta in a saucepan of lightly salted water until cooked (8-10 mins). Drain well and set aside.

4. Meanwhile, dice the mozzarella, grate the Parmesan and chop the parsley..

5. Mix the rocket and half the parsley into the tomato sauce and season with salt and pepper.

6. Stir pasta into the sauce plus the mozzarella and half the Parmesan.

7. Serve sprinkled with the remaining parsley and Parmesan. 

Radish harvest 2

I still seem to be leaving most of them in too long in my attempt not to pull them up before they've grown a root worth eating at all. Some interesting colours today. I've no idea which variety the purple one is.

Some of the varieties seem a lot more peppery than others - White Turnip is particularly strong. Although it could simply be that the older ones are more peppery. I haven't tried the diddy White Turnip one I pulled up yet.

Radish harvest

They may grow quickly, but this radish growing thing is harder than I remembered. I noticed that some of the radishes appeared to be getting a bit big, so I thought I'd better pick some before they went old and woody.

It turns out I was late to the party, the two I ate today (two of the big white ones) were already past their best and a bit tough. On the other hand, they were delightfully peppery and I sliced them thinly, so they were still a nice addition to my salad - even though I'd have turned my nose up at them if they'd been on offer at the supermarket.
I think harvesting the radishes at the right time is partly made harder - but also partly easier - by the fact that my radish seeds were a variety mix, all of which seem to mature at different rates. This means that any day on which I pick them, some seem to be past their best, some just right and some not ready yet. The white ones (presumably the White Turnip radishes) matured a lot faster than the rest. They're not nearly as pretty as the pure white radishes on the seed packet either.

I think that may in part come from having picked them too late, but it may just be having grown them in real, outdoor conditions. I certainly gave them enough water, I've been watering nearly every night except when it had rained or a storm was forecast.
I'm clearly going to have to keep an eye on them and pick them when they're ready (I reckon about 1.5 cm in diameter) rather than when I need more radishes.

I think the two red ones may be two different sorts, the packet says the mix is French Breakfast (23%), Scarlet Globe (24%), Sparkler (7%), White Turnip (13%) and Pink Beauty (33%). I think the little one might be the Sparkler radish, as Google says they're the two-tone spherical ones. It looks like oblong two-tone ones are French Breakfast, but I haven't had I've had any of those yet. The other red radish is probably either Scarlet Globe or Pink Lady. I'm guessing Scarlet Globe, as it looks slightly more scarlet than pink, but I can't tell for definite from Google Images.

Slugs 2 - Runner Bean Plant 0

Remember my lovely new runner bean plant with its two perfect leaves? Turns out having that sort of thing in your garden is pretty much like advertising a slug bistro. First they ate all of one leaf, but ignored the other and I thought I was safe, the remaining leaf was too high up. But slugs can climb, and despite my late intervention with a beer slug trap yesterday (two big, fat slugs caught), my lovely (and only) runner bean plant is now back down to zero leaves.

Before

After

After the death of the only other runner bean seedling that came up (possibly at the paws of a local cat, possibly my own big feet - either way, something trod on it and crushed it to death), I'm now on my last ditch attempt to save my only chance at home-grown runner beans this year. Slugs and snails can and will strip a plant of all its foliage if they like the taste of it. I know this from what happened to the marigolds in my front garden. I now have a row of lifeless, wizened stems punctuating my clearly less tasty geraniums. So, after the failure of my beer trap to save the last few millimetres of my runner bean leaves last night, even though it caught two huge slugs, I've now resorted to a slug ring (the copper ring in the after picture) to keep the slugs at bay. My marigold and brassica experience tells me I have maybe one final shot at this before the plant gives up the ghost. It could still regrow some leaf at this point, but if the slugs take that off the moment the tiniest sliver of leaf reappears, that's it, no more chances.

I've had variable levels of success with slug rings so far. Some of them have protected my plants beautifully, but some plants have had large chunks eaten out of their leaves (I suspect in at least some places by things other than slugs). I think how well they protect my plants depends how well I've managed to connect the slug rings with the ground. Some slugs are tiny (I've found some in the beer traps that are only about a centimetre long and a few millimetres thick), so if you leave any bits where the slug ring isn't firmly connected with the ground, tiny slugs slide underneath.

Looking at the slug ring in my after picture, I think I may have left just such a gap at the front of it, so I'm going to sign off now and head out to put that right before night falls and my slug foes come out to play.

First radish

Today I picked and ate my garden's first radish.

It was largely watery on first bite, but nice and peppery on the after-taste. I've now also planted another row of radishes (slightly naughtily between two existing correctly spaced rows of veg), so my second crop can get started.

I looked on the seed packet today to try and work out if they were supposed to be ready yet and discovered I'd bought a mixture of varieties, but it didn't say when any of them would be ready. Fortunately I spotted the radish in the picture poking through the dirt, so realised it was ready. Unfortunately I may have killed some of the other radishes first by disturbing the earth around them to see if the roots were big enough to eat yet (they weren't).

It's a little bit sad that all this effort producing my first row of radishes (I've been watering every day it hasn't rained) is probably only going to produce abut 60p worth of them.

Slug observations and beetroot-seedling salad

I've been experimenting a bit with the beer traps. I have two now because they only seem to be effective for a radius of up to about a metre. My initial thought was that I could just fish out the dead slugs and snails (with a stick, not my fingers) and keep using the same beer the next night, but it turns out that slugs and snails find beer that their dead brethren have been  floating in for several hours about as appealing as we do. It turns out that really you need to change the beer pretty much every day to achieve a nightly round of slug slaughter.

Which leads me onto my next observation, which is that unlike me, slugs are just as attracted to Sainsbury's Basics 2% lager (4 pack for £1.05) as they are to Becks.

This makes it a lot more feasible to keep replacing the beer every day - although I'm hoping that by the end of the four pack I'll have devastated the garden's slug population and won't have to keep replenishing the slug trap all summer. I've already killed dozens (partly because it rained one day and I went round killing the ones who came out to enjoy the damp - which made me feel a lot guiltier than killing them with beer does), and I still tend to find at least 3 per beer trap whenever I give them a refill with the fresh stuff.

Other news from the vegetable patch is that my beans have finally sprouted, but one has been killed by having its top broken off.

I suspect a marauding cat – although I haven't yet witnessed any cats visiting the garden. I do hope I didn't tread on it by accident. I wouldn't put it past me. I planted another bean to make myself feel better, but unless we have a very long summer, I think that might have been too late.

In other news from the garden, I decided to use the beetroot seedlings I thinned from my line of beetroot to decorate my salad. I checked on the Internet to make sure you could eat them and the Internet says both the leaves and the seedlings are edible (and I haven't suffered any ill effects, so the Internet appears not to be lying). On their own, the seedlings tasted just like beetroot, but their flavour was swamped by the rest of the salad, so in the end they were largely just decoration.

Beer trap a success!

4 dead slugs and 2 dead snails found floating in it this morning. (No photos for the sake of everyone's sensibilities.) I've put them out on the lawn in the hope a bird or hedgehog might eat them. Hopefully this won't mean drunken animals lurching round my garden after consuming slug a la Becks.

Slug trap

There's good news and there's bad news. The good news is that my seeds are starting to come up (I think the ones in the picture below are radishes, but I didn't have anything to make labels out of when I planted them and I've forgotten what order I put them in, so I'm not 100% sure).

The good news ... seeds sprouted

 The second bit of good news is that the brassicas at one end of my anti-butterfly tunnel are still all healthy and leafy and there are no caterpillars or butterfly eggs in sight.

The good news 2 ... brassica seedlings with uneated leaves

The bad news is that pretty much all the brassica seedlings at the other end of the tunnel have little left in the way of leaves.

Leafless seedling post pest attack

One of the worst affected is actually in a slug ring. I think it's possible I didn't push the slug ring firmly enough into the ground, as it did look like there might have been room for a small slug (a baby?) to slither underneath and my least eaten plants are in other slug rings. Alternatively, perhaps my garden has other pests that strip seedlings of all their leaves. I've now pushed the ring more firmly into the ground and am keeping my fingers crossed that the plant can grow a new leaf before it dies.

Anyway, the upshot is that I've decided to fight back ... in the form of a beer trap.

Beer trap

Slugs love beer almost as much as students do. So you can use it both as bait and the means of death, all in one fell swoop. What you do is buy some beer then half-fill a plastic or glass container (in my case a plastic cup) with beer. Actually, in my case I quarter filled it, as I didn't want to waste good drinking beer on slugs. If it doesn't catch any tonight I guess I'll just have to open another bottle tomorrow :)

The idea is they climb in, start drinking and drown. It's got a stick in it because one of the websites I read about it said that slugs and snails won't be able to use it to climb out but other creepy crawlies that are beneficial for the garden (such as the ground beetle) can crawl up it and get out if they accidentally get trapped. That's also why the rim of the cup is about 2 - 3 cm above soil-level, so that it doesn't catch insects walking along the soil.