Doing the splits...

Over the winter I lost a colony of bees. Talking to other beekeepers, reading other blogs, browsing articles, has led me to the conclusion that the colony died of starvation, not helped by being affected by nosema last autumn and being a small cluster, probably unable to keep themselves warm enough to move to available stores during the last really cold snap. Since then I have been thinking about splitting the one remaining hive and how best to do it.


Yesterday seemed an ideal opportunity. A week previously I had knocked down a queen cell and knew something had to be done, so with a decent bit if weather (sunny, a bit cloudy, cool breeze) I decided to take the chance. Equipment was readied, every grain of sugar in the house was used to make syrup, hive parts were checked for cleanliness and spiders.

I did the normal inspection of the first hive. Removed the, now empty, feeder and checked stores. There still isn't a massive amount in there, but they have enough and this cool weather surely has to end soon. In the brood boxes, as the hive is on double brood, all was well except for a couple of queen cells. Two frames of brood were removed into the new box, along with a couple of extra frames of bees, then began the hunt for the queen. Three times through the bottom box and I gave up. Surely she can't be in the upper? But three frames in, there she was. Into the 'queen cage' (an old hair roller) and transferred to the new brood box. She scuttled off between the frames and I moved the hive onto its stand. Added some syrup to the feeder, put the crownboard and roof on, strapped it up.  

Now I have to be patient. Will the queen be happy in her new home? Will there be enough bees to cluster successfully? Will she swarm? Or go back to the original hive? Will the bees in the original hive rear a successful queen? Are there enough drones? It will be a long week I think, and I am already itching to go and have a look, but I know that disturbing them now will probably do more harm than good.

Simple steps in seed saving...

Although I know it makes sense, I am still slow off the mark when it comes to seed saving. Having to construct a fly-proof cage, isolate a plant and then try to pollinate it myself without any biddies getting in to fluff it up, makes the whole process seem quite arduous. But I keep reading about it, thinking about it.

Last year we had a good crop of very tasty broad beans on the plot. The first batch were put in in October, but a brief snow fall in December burnt all the tops off and they didn't survive. So in Srping I replanted, in the only part of the plot with more than four inches of topsoil, and they grew, flowered and fruited well. I left about a dozen or so pods on the plants at the end of the season and then removed them after a couple of weeks. I now know I should have taken up the plants and hung them to dry before removing the pods, but no matter.

In the early part of the year, around half of the seeds I saved were put into large yoghurt pots, two to a pot. They were left outside and given no real looking after. After a month or so they started to show and gradually two plants showed from each pot. I had 100% success with the first batch.

About two weeks ago they were planted out on the plot. Good roots, nice tips, they should do well and produce enough beans for us and for some more seed. The other half of the seeds are destined to go out on the Rainford plot in better soil. The variety is a dwarf one, and last year only grew eighteen inches high.

I'm really pleased with the success of the germination and progress so far. Plus I feel like seed saving could actually be easier than I thought. While I have saved about a fiver, it's the satisfaction of knowing I grew them, I harvested them, and I kept the seed in good condition until this year. I saved some seeds from the runner beans too. A baker's dozen, which have also gone in yoghurt pots, one to a pot this time. I can see the top of the soil thrusting upwards but so far it's impossible to tell how many will germinate and grow.

Losing the plot, in more ways than one...

On top of the churning of the site there came, last week, news of changes in management. The site is currently run by a foul-mouthed woman and a couple of gay absentees who take the money and promise the world but who actually never deliver. Previous ideas included buying everyone a spade and fork, installing water and providing a toilet on site. None of which has ever come to fruition. Now there's trouble at t'mill as a group of three or four have taken firm steps to take over the running of the site and find out where the rent money has gone.

I've pretty much had enough and, while I will play along for now, the long-term plan is to slowly extricate ourselves from the whole situation. The bees are moved and slowly we'll take off what we've planted and not replace it. So far there are spuds in, King Edward and Charlotte, but no sign of any growth yet. I did plant them deeply and it has been chilly so I'm not surprised.

The garlic has been in for a while and looks good, with the lovage making a comeback in the distance. Lovage is great chopped and added to soups and sandwiches and has a celery hint without being over-powering.

Onions are also in now, planted on a wet Wednesday morning. The sets were from Edwin Tucker and are, I have to say, not the best. Out of just over 100 that arrived, I planted about 80, the rest having gone mouldy or failed to sprit. Still, we have no room to store many, so I should stop wingeing!

Moving house, part two...

After a three week break due to crap weather, I finally got everything together to go and check the bees. A slight panic at first as there was nothing flying, but a quick look under the crown board told me all was well. They seem to have settled into their new home quite well and look like they are building up nicely.

I also got time to put up a second hive stand, which you can see in the background, covered in the wood I used to shore up and rebuild the killer steps. They're not brilliant, but they're a lot better now. The second stand will take a Commercial brood body, something I am trying out to see if it gives the bees a bit more room. Slightly against my better judgement, and partly to make some space in the yard / shed, I have added a second brood box to this hive and will try on double brood for this season. I don't have enough equipment to have more hives because, quite simply, I don't have enough space to store spare equipment for more hives. 

Once the weather properly warms up, hopefully in May, I will split this hive to go back to two colonies. The method I will use is a new one, but comes recommended from a bee farmer. Take the queen of the original colony on a frame of brood and move her to a new hive along with some bees. The flying bees go back to the original hive (and then raise a new queen) and the non-flying bees stay where they are. The queen thinks she's swarmed, and I double my colonies. Sounds simple, so we'll see.

Moving house, part one...

I thought I might have had the plot to myself last week when I popped up to turn the ground ready for the potatoes, but the place was packed. There'd also been a good deal of activity since my last visit, as I found out when I went through the gate. What was once good thick turf has been reduced to a slippery slope.

It got worse further in, with the path to the plot more of the same, up to the spring where we get our water. There, some bright spark had had the idea of moving the basin where the water collects, with the result we now have a pool where the old pool was, and a swamp because the new plastic sump doesn't drain the water away properly.

When I got to the bee plot, I was horrified to find this mess:

Walking across from the path was hard work and I can only begin to imagine how much harder it would be with a full super. You can't even wheel a barrow it's that uneven. When I queried who and why, and pointed out that was my half plot for the bees I was given some vague bullshit that just proved once again that the people who have plots on that site have no clue how gardening works, and if brains were manure, there'd be enough to fertilise only a very small gro-bag.

So my hand was forced, so to speak. I don't want the bees on this site any longer and decided to move them straight away. So with a friend, Andrew's, help the remaining hive (the one on the left in the photo) was lifted from its home of over three years, carried stumblingly across the ground, placed gently in the car and driven to a new location.

The distance from site to site was well over the regulation three miles and they should do well there, secluded and in the midst of masses of balsam. I returned to the plot site on the Monday and removed the rest of the windbreak netting and the remaining hive and will re-queen as soon as possible to get back to two colonies.

All this was done in the rain so thankfully there were no flying bees, and I have yet to inspect them after their move, but it all went smoothly, albeit a couple of skids on the path of the skimmed allotments and a near-miss blunder at the top of the potentially lethal steps, below.

The photo is blurred because I was still shaking after slipping on the second step, with Andrew skidding at the top. Thankfully those orange straps keep everything nicely tight and together. So one colony successfully moved, no stings, no mishaps. Thank goodness!

Rest in bees...

Apologies for the awful pun, but it seemed appropriate. On Saturday, with the mild weather continuing, I decided to go and check all was well with the bees. The first colony, the more tetchy of the two, was filling the super and buzzing quite a bit. Their mood wasn't help by my clumsy removal of the super. I just couldn't get it off and ended up tipping one side and prising off the frames underneath. I knew it would be stuck but didn't think it would be so bad. It wasn't helped by the extra comb the bees had built down into the, now empty, frame feeder. At least they have taken all the Fumidil B and so should be nosema-free now. One thing I do need to do is widen the slats in the floor for the varroa tray. Part of the reason I don't effectively manage the varroa is because it's a struggle to get the sliders in and out. Must remedy that this season, it's a part of my beekeeping I know is lacking...

So, after a bit of lumping about (and only one minor sting!) I moved onto the second hive. Oh dear. No sign of anything when I took off the lid. A small cluster of maybe 20-30 bees were stuck at the top of one frame and there were odd ones and twos of bees across some of the other frames. There were stores, at least four frames-worth, but from the position of some bees (head down, right down into the cell, just the business end sticking out) I must suspect starvation. I can't understand it, they were a good-sized cluster not two weeks back, with plenty of stores and a frame feeder full of syrup. Needless to say they hadn't taken much from the feeder. So for the first time since I started keeping bees, I have lost a colony. Gutted. I brushed off the frames and closed up the hive and came home to think about my next move. I hope to move both hives in the next few weeks and then, once settled, will attempt to re-queen from the first hive. I like having two colonies, it gives a way of comparing how each is doing so I will make sure I expand again as soon as possible.

On a slightly different note, I got my monthly newsletter from my association, Manchester beekeepers. The results of the honey show were in. Seven of the classes were won by the local bee inspector. Is it just sour grapes, thinking a professional beekeeper has an unfair advantage?

Snowdrops and rain...

It's been some time since I posted anything. Kalina keeps us both busy and, at the moment, there's very little to do on the plot except visit every couple of weeks and replace the covers that the wind blew off. The bees were treated with oxalic acid, for varroa, and Fumidil B, for nosema, in December and are snug in their hives. At some stage I will need to move them on to our plot as the powers that be want the area they are on for another allotment. The original idea, that the area was used as a 'bee garden', has obviously been superseded by financial need although the way the plot site is run means spaces are given to people who turn up once, pay, and then disappear. Cronyism is suspected, rather than getting people who are interested and willing to break their backs. Our plan for this year is to leave half the plot covered, put potatoes on the other half and pray whatever gods we can think of that we're offered something by the council close to home.

The bees present another problem, however, and I am still trying to find somewhere for them. Hopefully I will get somewhere before the end of February when the weather should start to warm up, although we have been promised another cold snap.

On a brighter note, the snowdrops we have on the windowsill have started to flower. Pretty little white heads, tinged with green, nodding gently in the breeze and looking in at us through the window. A sure sign winter is ending.

Blight...

Despite spraying with Bordeaux mixture in June, I noticed several stems wilting and turning black over the past week or two. The warm damp weather are perfect conditions for blight spores to increase and even on Sante, a foliage and tuber resistant potato, they found a good breeding ground. So I have pulled the tops of all our spuds, the second earlies that we'd just started digging, and the mains that I was hoping would see us through the winter. Probably not this year. I am dismayed at this turn of events, particularly as potatoes are my staple food, and I was just getting to the stage of being able to grow enough to last a year. So what to do when disaster strikes? Dig what we can and hope they survive.

The daggy end of the stick...

It was a glorious morning this Sunday, the motorway was full of people off to clog the highways and byeways of the Lake District, and arriving at the farm at 7.30 is lovely. Quiet apart from the song of birds, the occasional passing car, the bleat of sheep or goats. The sun shone and it was so pleasant to walk through the fields, marvelling at the wood anemones, pausing to pick some wild garlic / ramsom leaves. They made lovely soup the day after and are excellent mixed with mayonnaise and used as a dressing for potatoes.

I put the collected leaves in a bucket and was in a world of my own when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Fozzie charging down the field at me. Naturally, I shit a brick, as you would when a 100kg ram is making straight for you. Thankfully it wasn't me he was after, but to see if there was anything in the bucket. One sniff of the ramsoms and he was off again, uninterested. I was much more alert after that.

After milking we put the Dorpers through the foot bath, something that we now do every week (when they don't undo the gate and let themselves out as they did this week) and it seems to be keeping their feet nice and healthy. Then we rounded up some of the ewes running with the ram. They were due for fluke drenching and, while we had them in the shed, we crutched a couple of dirty ones.

Crutching, dagging, call it what you will, it is one of the dirtiest jobs I've done so far. Basically, dagging is removing the dangleberries from a sheep's rear end, the accumulated dung that, due to scour or illness, sticks, like the proverbial to a blanket, and has to be cut off. Now, I am all for learning new skills and techniques and if I want sheep I have to do this, so I didn't complain when I was given the dagging shears and told to get on with it. But what a job. Thick, black lumps of dried muck stuck to the fleece. Cutting it out was a slow process, but essential if the sheep isn't to be the target of flies which, attracted by the smell, lay eggs and then on hatching, the maggots burrow into the wool and skin of the animal.

So could it get worse? Hacking at dried cack? Well it got worse when the largest lump turned out to be warm and slimy on one side; it got worse when the ewe decided the shears were too close to her bum and started flicking her tail; and it got, finally, worse, when she decided that now would be a good time to add further dung to the stuff already there. Textbook.

Ten minutes of cutting and trimming, though, did the job and she must have been relieved to get rid of the extra weight. Too much information?   

 Later that afternoon we went to do my favourite job of the year: planting the potatoes. This year we have earlies Annabelle, and maincrop Sante. I think Sante are what we had last year, but a memory lapse and poor bag marking means I don't actually know what we've almost finished eating. I'll be better this year, I made a note in my book.

Odd uses of a flowerpot...

I am almost at the end of my second season as a bee keeper and was tying up the rampant honeysuckle to the trellis when another plot-holder shouted me, pointed at the new hive and then promptly locked himself in his shed. There was a mass of bees flying above the hive, many more than the normal daily activity so I wandered over to have a look. Bees were pouring out of the entrance and, when they’d more or less all exited, moved as a cloud across the allotments and settled in the highest tree they could find.
There was nothing I could do then, so I finished off the plot jobs, called at the house (in whose garden the tree was) to apologise and let them know I was coming back, then went home for a bite to eat and to assemble a brood box and equipment to house the swarm. We returned around 5.30, just as the rain started. After some difficulty getting the ladder up to the tree, a manoeuvre which included dropping it on my head, I finally got it positioned and started to climb.

In the textbooks, collecting a swarm is a piece of piss. In reality, 20’ off the ground, trying to hold onto a wobbly ladder, a spray, a sheet and a cardboard box and shake the tree to dislodge the colony, it’s anything but. I soon got rid of the spray, dropping it into the thick grass. Next I cut a couple of little branches to get the box in position, then I whacked the trunk. Nothing. A slight buzzing but no movement. So I shook the tree harder. While some of the bees dropped into the box, plenty more decided it was time to fly. I got back down to the ground and put the box onto the sheet, propping open an entrance. When I looked up, most of the bees were still where they were: on the tree. By now I was sweating like a pig, a mixture of nervous energy and adrenalin-fuelled fear. Grabbing a large flower pot, I went up again, managed to get the pot under another large hanging cluster and, again, shook hard. This time they dropped with a plop and I got stung in the process. I don’t think I ever got down from a ladder so quickly. I threw the rest of the bees into the box and then left them for the night, not hoping for much.

The next day the bees were gone from the tree and were clustered in the box so I decided I probably got the queen. Now I just had to get them out of the box and into the hive.

And the easiest way to do this? Shake them out. So I did. Mostly all over the floor but some of them went into the hive. I arranged the sheet (bought in India ten years ago and, until now, unused) so they could use it as a little ramp to get into their new home.

Then, slowly but surely, the remaining bees walked into the hive. I've heard about this before but this is the first time I have witnessed it and it is, indeed, fascinating; watching them all plod up the cloth and in through the hive entrance.

After about an hour they were all, more or less, inside. The feeder was filled with sugar syrup so they don't starve, and the roof put on.

I can only hope, now, that the queen is inside and in one piece. I have to check the hive they swarmed from, to see what is going on in there, but as there were a lot of wasps buzzing round I decided to leave it for another day. I don't like wasps at all and, even though they were sneakily robbing the honey, I still found it unsettling.

This my first swarm experience and I learned a lot from it. The hand that was stung swelled up dramatically over the next day but, two days later, is going down slowly. I am glad it was only the one sting! Now all I have to think are the robbing wasps and the three colonies I now have. I don't have any more equipment and some of the boxes on one hive don't fit properly, leaking when it rains. I will have to reduce my stock down to two for the winter.

Thanks to Agnieszka for moral support and photos, I'll try to keep the bees out of your hair.

Not what, but who, you know...

I’ve recently had discussions with some other allotment-holders about the availability of plots and it seems that, to get one in Farnworth, I have to wait until current holders pop their clogs. So far two years has passed and we’re not in possession of our own ground. So you can imagine how happy I was when the place where I keep the bees offered me a plot there. Strictly speaking it’s a bit naughty as I am not resident in Manchester, but the need for land is so great I took it anyway. My dad said that when we finally get ourselves sorted he will give up his, so it looks like the end of the long days to Rainford to dig and plant will get closer as the year draws on.
So on Saturday we took the 15 minute drive to Whitefield and started work on our own allotment, slap bang in the middle of the site. It is, unfortunately, almost completely covered in grass, so a lot of back-breaking, blister-forming, slicing, turning, digging, sweating and swearing will be done before it’s anywhere near ready. The soil itself is clay, but not too bad, although the rubbish being unearthed makes me wonder what the site was used for previously – a tip I think, judging by the mattress springs I dug up.
Four hours of toil cleared about a quarter of the site and we were more than happy with that. A line of beetroot and spinach, some poached-egg plants and a few rows of beans went in and that was it for the first session. I went back a couple of days later to water but in hot summers (ha!) that’ll have to be every day I think. Now all we have to worry about is turning over the rest.

Co bylo pierwsze kura czy jajko?

Well, for us the chickens came first. We picked them up from a guy in Leyland who carried them over to the boot of the car by their legs, puffing on a pipe, his big gold earring glinting in the weak sun. They won't lay for two weeks, he said, but it was almost four before I found a small, perfectly egg-shaped egg on the floor of their hut. I was amazed and excited and rang Agnieszka to tell her. She had it for breakfast the next day.
Having chickens is really nice. Whenever you go out the back door they rush to the end of the run, expecting grain or other treats. When I try to get into the run, to replenish their food or water, they all make a break for it, to chew on the pathetic-looking broccoli or to trample my salads. Most worrying is their obsession with the rhubarb, which they try to demolish before I can move them on.
So far two of them are laying, with the third just wandering around scratching and making a mess. They have completely ignored the purpose-built sand-pit I gave them to dust bath in, choosing instead to eat the sand and crap on the roof. To bathe they have dug a pit in the corner of the run and flick soil over everything.
While I argued with myself that they have enough room, I am still not wholly comfortable with their accommodation. I would like them to have more room, a bit of grass to play on, somewhere they can wander about in. However, I am also trying to learn about them and their needs so that, when the time comes that we have a nice big garden, I know what I am doing.
We still haven’t named them, though. Nothing seemed to come to mind when we got them and, now we have had them a month, there’s still not been any inspiration. They’re known collectively as ‘students’ because, after they are let out in a morning, they have a drink and some breakfast and then go back inside (and presumably to sleep) for a couple of hours before emerging again some time later in the morning.
One thing I have realised is how tied we are now. If we can’t find anyone to look after them we are going to struggle with time away from the house, even for a weekend. It’s one thing reading how tying animals are, and quite another to have it hit you when they arrive. I’m glad I am finding this out now and with chickens, rather than later with a cow or two.

And over that potato-field, a lazy veil of woven sun...

The most important job of the growing year was tackled yesterday – the planting of the potatoes. This year we are trying a different tactic to try to avoid the poor cropping and heavy eelworm infestation of last year. I am trying a couple of new types and planting only earlies or second earlies to give us a chance of getting them out of the ground before the destructive insects get to them. Yesterday was the turn of Accent, three rows of first earlies, 53 tubers.
It was the perfect day for planting: sunny, warm-ish and bright. The robin was bobbing about in the hedge and a blackbird was singing from a tree. The only downside was the constant noise of a motorbike scrambling somewhere on the other side of the railway. When they stopped it was bliss, just the wind and the birdsong, the scent of woodsmoke and the knowledge that a job has been well done. We’ll see how well the spuds do this year.
From Spraying the potatoes:

He turned my way. 'God further the work'.
He echoed an ancient farming prayer.
I thanked him. He eyed the potato drills.
He said: 'You are bound to have good ones there'.

Czutni chutzpah...

I grew up in a family where tomatoes were a staple over the summer. I have vague memories of my mum selling them to people in brown paper bags, price unknown, and I think this has influenced my growing habits in later life.

After last year’s disastrous harvest of exactly no tomatoes, this year has proved to be a much better deal. Having put up a greenhouse on the allotment and transferred plants there early on, the results have been much better than I expected and we still have fruit in the yard just beginning to ripen. One truss has thirty fruits on it, but the worry is the summer will end (ha, did it ever start?) before they’re ripe.
Above, some of the many plum tomatoes, variety San Marzano
And the ordinary variety, Shirley. The Polish ones, Kmicic, are still green although a couple have now started to turn and will be red before too long.

So what to do with the masses of tomatoes? Well, some have been traded for eggs from local chickens (Thanks Henrietta) and the rest have been eaten in take-to-work salads, made into tomato sauce for pasta, using home grown onions and garlic, and then frozen, or boiled up with more onions, dates, sugar and vinegar to make chutney. Now we have to wait six weeks before testing, so I hope it's ok. We'll see.

Looking for a queen on a hot summer's day...

For this week's hive inspection I took along my mentor, Pippa, from Manchester Beekeepers. She has kindly agreed to look after me in the first few months of my beekeeping and is a very nice, very laid back person and great around the hive. Not like some of them on a Monday night at Heaton Park, banging things around and squashing bees through ham-fisted carelessness. I mean, I know eventually I will get stung but the longer it goes when it doesn't happen, the better and I certainly don't want to get the fallout from someone else's clumsy handling.

Anyway, this week was very hot and even with shorts and a t-shirt under the bee suit it was very warm. Sweat trickling down your face doesn't help and because of the veil in the way, you're not able to wipe it away so must suffer. We were met at the gate by one of the allotment holders, who asked if the bees had made any honey. She went on to ask me twice more, and Pippa once, if they'd made any honey and proudly said there were more bees (wasps, it turned out) in one of the compost bins.

The hive looks quite at home now, in the midst of the allotments and the windbreak fence is helping to lift the bees up to a safe height so they don't bother other allotment holders. The posts are sagging slightly so I will have to keep an eye on that as time goes on. The choice of colour was a good one, and unless you know it's there, you can hardly spot it.

There was plenty of activity, lots of brood, stores, eggs and larvae and a lot of bees coming in and going out of the hive. In another week it will be time for a super and hopefully we will have a bit of honey at the end of September. More importantly, the colony should be big enough to over-winter safely and start next spring in good condition. The queen, marked in this picture, is doing well and laying a nice brood pattern and there are plenty of young bees.

They do seem to be using a fair amount of syrup though, and it's starting to become expensive, purchasing sugar to feed them, but it has to be done. Without it they couldn't produce wax to make comb and therefore nowhere for the queen to lay. Aside from worrying about them when I am not there, and resisting the urge to open the hive every five minutes, they are getting on with business without me interfering. It is very pleasant to sit and watch them gliding in and taking off, bringing bags full of pollen and crops full of nectar and generally just enjoying watching them flying about. The next job now will be to name them all...

After we left and I had dropped Pippa off at her house, she gave me some redcurrants which I used even more sugar to turn into redcurrant jelly. Such sweet pastimes!

A sting in the tale...

We were warned last week about the wasp’s nest in the shed. As I am now the unofficial family expert on bees, wasps and other flying insects, I felt it my duty to go and inspect. While everyone had seen the one hanging up on the shed rafter, they were slightly unnerved to know that one enterprising wasp had built a nest on the fleece hanging up. The fleece was issued by Pilkington’s architectural glass division so maybe that was why the house of paper was constructed where it was.

The wilt alternative...

Although I wouldn’t say it was my dream home, our little house in Farnworth is comfy and, since they put the insulation in, cosy. It’s big enough, except for the long thin crappy kitchen, it isn’t too full of junk and we have pretty much everything we need. Once I remove the bee hives from the front room, we’ll have space again, so all is looking good.

The yard, however, is another story. The house doesn’t face due south, so the amount of sun we get is limited and despite the wall now being as bright as I can get it, it is still chilly during the afternoon. This has affected the plants with the result that tomatoes are stunted and yellowing at the edges, the ogórek have wilted and died and some of the flowers are listless and slug food. This time last year we had a glorious crop of plants, all brought on in the garden of my parents and strong enough to survive – until the rain blighted them all away – in a sun-free yard.

It’s an almost desperate task to bring plants to maturity. The greenhouse we put up on the allotment is almost complete and I am frantic to get some of the tomatoes into it to try to get them growing properly again. Going out every morning to inspect is a sad and depressing job, as they don’t seem to be growing or even looking any stronger week on week. I’d like an allotment of our own but I read a piece in the Manchester Evening News this week that said the waiting list in Bolton was around three years. So far we’ve done three months or so. A few years back you’d walk straight onto a plot, not now. What irritates me is those people who have taken on plots in times of low demand are still managing to hold on to them despite long waiting lists. Surely it’s one each and those who have two, three or more should give them up.

One alternative is a community plot but I’m not convinced that’ll be a good thing. Have to find out more about it. Until then, I guess it’s struggle on and do what we can. Learn from experience and try to do better next year. It’s a depressing thought, though, no tomatoes for a second year.

As there are no photos of plants to look at, here's a couple of us putting up the greenhouse on the allotment.