UK: Allotments have love hate relations with local wildlife
Fifteen years on my allotments have taught me to recognise signs of most of these visitors
From Paul Niblett,
Financial Times
Sept 29, 2023
Excerpt:
My terroir has regular visits from all creatures great and small, most of them intent on depriving me of the fruits of the seeds which did manage to glimpse daylight, albeit for a brief period. The culprits can be four-legged (foxes, badgers, rabbits, squirrels and frogs); two-legged (birds of all shapes and sizes, but especially pigeons) and then our friends of the dark and deep — slugs, snails, beetles, worms etc.
Fifteen years on my allotments have taught me to recognise signs of most of these visitors, but I’ve often thought that an I-spy book of faeces would be a useful addition to my shed library.
Aglionby refers to gifts of wine for his friends’ attentions. I planted a dozen Siegerrebbe vines on my plots when I first took them on and I’m now chuffed to be able to offer guests wine made from their output. Only last week I took my latest harvest to Halfpenny Green wines (just west of Wolverhampton) where the Vickers family continues a long tradition of producing a very acceptable co-operative wine using grapes supplied by “cottage” growers like me. That definitely makes it all worthwhile.
