Wildlife is a key thing for me. I love nothing more than seeing bees busy at work, butterflies fluttering past and other insects and creatures doing what they do best.
I've discovered a few things about my allotment and how despite it not being a very large plot, there's still a lot going on.
The lavender was a good buy- it's growing really well in the pot & the bees are always on it. So I'm definitely going to get more for growing in the ground as well. I have been doing my research as well, and have read that bees can see purple/dark blue a lot easier so are attracted to flowers of that colour- so I'm going to bare that in mind!
I had to put some of the onions in with the Brussel sprouts. This seems to be making no difference to any one- in fact, the onions that have gone in with the sprouts are looking even stronger and healthier than the ones in the onion bed on their own. (Though there are now young carrots in the onion bed as well- companion gardening at it's shabbiest!!)
Though I've also discovered a fair few ants nests on the allotment as well. One under the onion patch.
Some lovely quote large spiders seem to live over the back part of the allotment as well, in the celery bed and next to the pond. Not sure what kind they are. I keep meaning to research them, but they live in little holes in the ground and seem to be doing no harm. I quite like watching them scuttle across the soil!
Earl June I started to discover a pond problem! Can you see the murkiness of the photo below? It had started to really warm up, and while I know oxygenator plants put oxygen into the water during the day (I have some oxygenator plants in there) I also know that at night they use back up all that oxygen and emit carbon dioxide instead. I also noticed however that the oxygenator plants under the surface didn't seem to happy- they looked as though some sort of algae was growing on them, and the lily leaves started to die and turn into skeleton leaves.
I was pretty gutted, and wasn't sure what to do. So my husband and I started searching the Internet and eventually came across a solar powered oxygenator. It was £25 on Amazon (inc delivery) it came with a little solar panel, a little motor connected to that, then 2 tubes that have little porous pebble like things at the end, you pop them in the water, the motor then sucks on air and sends it down the tube into the pond. Sounded ideal! Reviews were mostly good, and I really needed a fix!
Turns out it was the best £25 I've spent in a long time! Within 2 days (thankfully sunny days) the pond looked amazing! The water totally cleared, the oxygenator plant totally cleaned up, the lily stopped dying & all sorts of creatures started to appear again. (If you look closely you can see a nice frog in this one).
I was hugely impressed! And it's still working away now on sunny days. So I definitely recommend if you're having the same problems!
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