Buying in plants

[watervole]

 On Sunday, we planted some small plants from the garden centre.  Two courgettes (Ambassador F1) because some of our existing courgette plants were badly slugged (you know it's a bad year when the slugs turn on courgette plants - the leaves are pretty rough and hairy).

Six mangetout (Oregon sugar pod) for the opposite reason - we had such a great crop of mangetout that we want to see if we can get even more this year.

it's always a risk buying in plants as they may not be hardened-off, but sometimes one takes the gamble.

We also got a dozen purple sprouting brocoli.  We lost all but three of ours to slugs and pigeons (but we had let the weeds get out of control in that corner of the plot, which always gives the slugs an edge.  Ironically, the weeds do tend to help reduce the pigeon damage - camourflage.  Pigeons love all members of the brassica family.  The new plants are going in with chicken wire cages to help project them.

Comments

[wingedkami.livejournal.com]

My parents always netted their sprouting broccoli to keep the pigeons off. I've had people look at me like I was insane when I said pigeons love broccoli, but they weren't the ones with a garden full of spherical pigeons.