We have to find sustainable ways to manage plots
On sunny days, bumblebees have been out and about. All bees are welcome on my plot as pollinators of peas, beans and soft fruit. I’ve watched them homing in on early spring flowers and will plant some more crocus next year. When Glasgow’s New Victoria Gardens allotments were founded in the 1870s, plotholders were asked to grow 25 per cent flowers. The original aim was to do with enhancing the site’s appearance. Today we know how important simple cottage flowers are in helping insect life flourish and they should be part of every allotment plot.
Swedish school pupil Greta Thunberg made an impassioned speech about the human effect on climate change to world leaders at a meeting in Katowice recently. She said, “I want you to panic and then I want you to act”. David Attenborough put it in stark perspective when he said that if we and the rest of the backboned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if the invertebrates, such as slugs, were to disappear, the world’s ecosystems would collapse.
It’s a step in the right direction that outside use of metaldehyde slug pellets has been banned from 2020 and this year they will vanish from garden centre shelves. The knockon effect of poisoning slugs may not immediately seem significant but as they are near the bottom of the food chain those species who dine on them will inevitably ingest some poison. The time has passed when it’s acceptable to grab a toxic chemical
Ladybirds are our first line of defence against aphids
of any kind to zap whatever bug threatens our allotment crops.
For a sustainable future, the emphasis must be on building in resilience on our plots, using environmentally friendly ways to help our crops withstand attacks. Concentrating on growing strong plants helps them to survive unwelcome infestations of aphids, slugs and snails. Seed packets usually mention optimum spacing for fully grown plants but I’m often tempted to grow them too close together for their own good. Ruthless thinning out is essential.
Tidying up round my plot, I’ve been amazed and pleasantly surprised at how many ladybirds are nestling under leaves and around the base of perennial plants such as raspberries. They are our first line of defence against aphids. Ladybirds lay hundreds of eggs in the colonies of aphids and other plant-eating pests. When they hatch, a ladybird larva will eat up to 5,000 aphids. n