What's eating them!

Did I accidently plant ready eaten broad beans. Are these bite marks on the leaves? They have only been up a day or so and they are already nibbled. All of them are the same. Or should they look like this? I can just imagine a mouse lazing in the sun while I am at work waiting for his broad beans. As soon as he sees one ....chomp!

On a brighter note, here are my cabbages. Lovely!

This is a very sorry looking broad bean plant. To get such a specimen, take more hopeful looking broad bean and plant in the autumn so it can get eaten. Then put a bottle on top in spring and cook it during a warm spell until it flowers. Then leave specimen out for a nasty March frost. To get the final dazzling effect drop your cold frame on it during an allotment reshuffle. Do you think it will come again?

I need more space

No time to take photos today. I have lost an hour! Got up this morning and it had vanished. Now everything is just ruined. Didn't have time to do stuff for work tomorrow, the house didn't get cleaned and the spring onions didn't get planted. The potatoes did get planted...hooray! I achieved something! The other problem I have got is that I have a distinct lack of window sills. I may need to knock a wall down.

lovely veg

Here are my tomatoes. There are aubergines in the background. Lovely! Next to the tomatoes are a couple of chilli plants growing ever so slowly. It's been very cold this week. I'll be glad when it warms up and I might get down the allotment after work again.

Dog in trouble!

Top tip! When taking the dog down the allotment ( She is very good at breaking up the heavy soil), don't let her out of your sight as she is likely to roll around in the fish bone. Now the animal stinks and the bathroom is trashed.

new broadbeans on their way.

It's been baking in London this week. T-shirt weather! Now the first of the broadbeans are poking through the rock hard earth.

message in a bottle

Back from the dead here come the broadbeans again.

My place

Here is the allotment. I should really post a before and after shot but the before shot is still on a roll of film yet to be developed. Anyway, in the front you can see the remains of my broadbeans which have kept the mice going over the winter. I have put bottles on the survivers to get them going again. Next to that is my make shift cold frame which houses the cabbages. At the back you can see the bonefire which I am useless at burning. The other bare bits of earth are home to new broadbeans (hundreds of 'em this time!), onions and shallots. The rest of the place has been cleared of obvious weeds, dug and covered.

Beginnings

Here are some photos of the stuff growing in the spare room. From left Dads orchid, a spare tomato, and another of Dads orchids...dendrobium...or something like that. Then we have got various cabbages, tomatoes, aubergine and chilli peppers which have been potted on. I have been down the allotment today in a monsoon to try to cover the dug parts with material. This was to stop the weeds. Underneath the olds carpets I have various white weeds struggling up which should be easy to dig up so I am hoping the same will work on the rest of the place. I must take my camera down when its not raining. The place looks like a scene from the Somme. The only things growing are the mice which have feasted on my intrepid broad beans.