Following my bad experience with Purple Sprouting Broccoli
last year, I decided to experiment this year. I left a couple of Purple
Sprouting Broccoli and a Romanesco Broccoli outside
a newly erected netted tent whilst the rest were all safe and tucked up inside the new tent. The objective was to establish which will survive best and make it to the
dinner table?
Last year I had a bumper crop in the making and it was already
to be harvested, but and there is always a 'but', every day I was greeted with,
yet another plant stripped of sprouts. It like the monster fish that got away from the angler. The leaves were left but apart from Percy
Pig on the Farm, who wants those? It was if a combine harvester had paid a
midnight visit and systemically stripped the plan bare.
I thought at first it was down to those pesky vermin with furry
tails. If it stands still and can be eaten Sidney Squirrel and his mates think
if fair game. I am not sure if it’s down to what he can carry, what he can
squirrel away in his many hiding places, or he is trying to fool everyone that
he hasn’t been there? But Sidney’s modus operandi is to only take a bit at a time.
I did accused Freddie Fox and was told he didn’t like greens
and even his cubs have been brought up on proper food. He was also adamant
there were no rabbits or rats allowed on his plots, ‘So don’t bother looking there.’
A fellow plot holder then pointed to the skies and told me that
it often resembled the night bombing raids over the East End. This time however it was the 6th Luftwaffe Pigeon Squadron. They have apparently got night vision goggles and detailed maps of all the plots and like the Baedeker raids of the Second World War know just were to
strike hard and dampen allotment morale. I took this insight with a pinch of salt and thought
it to be an overstated urban myth. After all Pigeons unlike Canadian Geese don’t fly in
formation and in flight they resemble more a bunch of flying ill-disciplined Kelly’s Heroes.
I must find out who or what was stripping my Broccoli.
It would take an army of battle hardy slugs to get even close to this level of damage and they would probably get preoccupied on munching through the leaves. As they have little idea how to cover their tracks, they would also have left a trial of slimy DNA behind. Snails are even less likely to be able to carry their little houses on their backs to such dizzy heights and if they did carry them up how could they descend with a full stomach of Broccoli back down. Also they tend to set up estates with their tiny houses huddled together.
It would take an army of battle hardy slugs to get even close to this level of damage and they would probably get preoccupied on munching through the leaves. As they have little idea how to cover their tracks, they would also have left a trial of slimy DNA behind. Snails are even less likely to be able to carry their little houses on their backs to such dizzy heights and if they did carry them up how could they descend with a full stomach of Broccoli back down. Also they tend to set up estates with their tiny houses huddled together.
I decided to get up early to see who the night raiders were.
I arrived to find yet another plant stripped of its shoots.
Over my shoulder i could hear whispering but could only make
out the odd ‘coo.’
I turned to face a line of pigeons. Yes, it was the 6th
Luftwaffe Pigeon Squadron complete with leather jackets and Broccoli emblems painted of their 'kills' down their wings. Obviously they were very proud of their kills. They were chatting away to
each other with the odd one or two keeping watch and staring straight at me.
Suddenly the call of, ‘Bandits at 6am,’ went out and they took to the skies. A
quick circle over my head and they were off.
This year I decided to start the experiment early. This
meant that I also had a chance of outsmarting those white butterflies who appear from
nowhere and deposit their baby caterpillars to munch through the leaves of the
cabbage family.
When the harvest was ready to be picked and not day before, the plants on the
outside of the tent suffered a blitzkrieg from the 6th Luftwaffe Pigeon Squadron but those inside the tent were left protected by the netting barrage that
surrounded them.
Interestingly the one Romanesco Broccoli outside the tent was left untouched. Perhaps they haven’t acquired a taste for
the Romanesco Broccoli yet, or fathomed out how to unlock its flower and just stick to the simple fare they grow up on.
I sometimes see the odd member of Squadron flying overhead during the day. I now know that his is busy taking aerial pictures for their next target, but i think they have moved onto
new and untented target.
Mind you they have now started dropping those big white bombs all over
my greenhouse roof.
I wonder if I have upset them.
