Pig Sty Avenue

Wood pigeons have done far more damage to the peas than the dogs. I don't recall them being a nuisance in previous allotments. I should have known, of course, having seen how fastidious my neighbours were about netting their crops. Heigh ho. Another example of how one can fail to acknowledge a potential hazard until punched in the face by it. The damage is so severe I got the idea this morning to turn over the whole of the Fabaceae bed, the SW bed, and sow it with clover for this year. I think today is the 1st anniversary of starting work on the plot. It feels like a significant decision: dig over and green manure the pea bed. I then went down to the other end of the plot, and thinned out the neeps, (aka swedes). They've had some attention from the wood pigeons, but have weathered it reasonably well. I've (at last) gotten around to rigging up a pigeon net: pigeon net over neeps. marigolds on path edge to the right, row of coriander to the left, currants and berries on...

Done. Though, there was a bit of rush towards the end as it began to rain in earnest, which is why I hit on the wheeze, (which I might regret before the growing season's out) of sowing the "Kleine Rheinlanderin" peas as a broadcast. And I still need to work out some climbing arrangement for the runner beans.

The information online about crop rotation is not adequate. It doesn't take much account of perennials, green manures, herbs or other companion plants. And it doesn't usually use the proper botanical taxonomy, which you need if you're going on to Google Scholar to seek out research. Family plants plants Fabaceae pea winter field bean mange tout alfalfa french bean gorse runner bean lupins broad bean clover So, for example, the family Fabaceae (in the table above) is usually referred to as "legumes" or the "pea family". And yes, we know that's peas and beans, but it also includes the gorse in the hedge and the lupins you might use in a fallow year. So I've put together a spreadsheet with 13 plant families containing ALL of the plants which I'm likely to want to grow, (I might have to include other down the road, of course). Having done that, I then encountered another learning curve, namely, adding a table in...