Beans and a reprive

The first broad beans have pushed through the soil in their pots. I need to keep up with watering as the pots are a bit small. No sign of any parsnip roots yet. Everything seems a bit slow this year.

The East Riding of Yorkshire council have emailed to confirm the parish council does need permission to dig up the hedge. I have heard through a third party that the parish council have abandoned the removal of the hedge until next year, but the council have yet to confirm this.

Parsnips

In other news, I've started the parsnip chitting process for the year. They are happily sitting on damp paper, waiting for their root to appear before they get potted on.

Losing the hedge?

The parish council, from whom I rent my allotment, have written to me again to confirm that they intend to pull up about 70m of hedge and replace it with what they call a secure rabbit proof fence. The site is a rectangle, with the northern and southern boundaries being about 80m and the eastern and western about 50m. The southern boundary has two entrances in it, one at each end, which are open. I have walked the length of the northern boundary and I can plainly see two rabbit holes, but there may be more hidden from view amongst the stuff on people's plots.  Across the road from the southern boundary is some land surrounding the Water Tower which is not cultivated nor obviously managed. There are rabbit holes there and rabbits have been seen running across the road from the allotment site to take cover in there.

The plan now is to grub up most of the existing hedge along the northern side of the site, dispose of the rabbit holes, build a secure, rabbit-proof fence and then next year, replant the hedge along its existing line.

My questions are:

Why will fencing 80m of the 260m boundary prevent rabbits entering the site?

When the main reservoir of rabbits seems to be to the south not the north, why is a fence being proposed to the north?

Do the parish council know they cannot remove a hedge without permission from the county council (1997 Hedgerow regulations)?

Will any nesting birds be disturbed by grubbing up the hedge, contrary to the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act?

What other steps have the council taken to minimise the disturbance to existing wildlife (other than rabbits)?

Why did the council press on with this without seeking any consultation with plot holders about this?

Is putting up this secure, rabbit-proof fence really a good use of public funds?

Will funds to replant the hedge next year really still be available?

When the job is done and the money spent, if we still get rabbits on the allotment site who's head will roll?

I would like to see the back of the rabbits. I would like to see the hedge improved, especially elder replaced with, say, hawthorn. I'm just not sure that the upheaval of grubbing out a hedge in the spring, the nesting season, replacing it with a fence and hoping a new hedge gets planted next year is the right way forward.

Rabbits are not so smug now

I went up to the plot to find it very wet after the weekend's torrential rain. There's water standing in many fields around the village and the cold is not helping shift the water. The sap should be rising in some trees now which makes a big difference to the wet ground, but winter wheat is waterlogged and not growing at all well.

Plants growing is the main way water gets moved out of a lot of the ground. They suck it up into their leaves so some water molecules get an electron stripped from it by photons from sunlight to start the generation of sugars, mostly from water and fresh air (CO2). The water that keeps its electrons is passed out, alongside some oxygen from the broken down water molecules, in a process known as transpiration. This sucks yet more water from the roots, which dries the ground a bit more.

Once I had decided the ground was still to wet to walk on or even dig over I looked at the rabbit hole behind, and under, my compost bin. I looked abandoned. There were no new dropping and no sign of digging. I filled it in with the pile of soil the rabbits had dug out, adding a few big rocks for good measure.

As I did this I heard a familiar sound, the keewik of a buzzard. Across the field there is a copse and sitting on a branch there was a buzzard, quickly joined overhead by another one. I'm hoping they nest there and then they can feast on their favourite food: rabbits. They would also take rats which would also be a good thing for us plot holders.

Late start

I've made a very late start this year, but given how cold it has been I don't think that is a mistake. I have begun clearing up the plot ready for a dig over, but I'm waiting for the frost to go first. I want the soil to warm up so digging frost deeper into the ground doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Maybe I'm wrong though. The other reason to wait a little is that the very cold weather has left the melted ground very claggy so walking on it is harming the soil structure. It needs to warm up a bit and let the beasties in the soil work their magic.

Our new plot holders have got off to a start turning over their plots. It is certainly a better time of year to take over a plot than when we got ours in June. I wish them well. Let's hope the weather and pests give them a break this year.

I've sown some broad beans in pots and as I came inside the sky darkened and it looks like rain, so just in time. 

No further word about fences, hedges or rabbit warrens and no sign of activity. I suspect reality may have taken hold, but we will see.

Rubbish

We visited the plot today to get rid of some wood from the hedge bottom. The wood was rotten and went to the newly refurbished local recycling site, which was much easier to use than before. The reason I did this was due to a letter from the parish council, the site landlords, asking people to clear up any such rubbish.
 

The letter suggested that access was needed to deal with rabbits that were causing problems. Given my battle with rabbits you might expect that I would be happy, but I was not. The letter went on to say access was needed to remove the hedge and replace it with a fence. I wrote an email to say how unhappy I was about this. Removing countryside hedgerows is the kind of vandalism that I thought we were leaving behind. Since the rabbits burrow under the hedge I didn't see how a fence would help. It seems that a parish council meeting had decided all of this and was was setting about it without discussing it with tenants. 

I got a reply from a councillor who is also the guy who farms the field at the other side of the hedge. He said the hedge is staying and indeed will be improved by removing elder and replanting suitable species. The fence would supplement the hedge and it would be dug down 12 inches to prevent burrowing under it. 

I replied with more detailed concerns, but I have not had any response yet. Let's remember that any action the council takes will be paid for by public money, so they need to be able to justify its value.

Rabbits are a concern, but destroying hedgerows is not going to stop rabbits. The majority of damage to fenced plots was not from rabbits. There are rats, pigeons, crows, partridges, mice, slugs, snails, caterpillars and possibly deer all causing problems, rabbits are just more visible than the rest. I believe rats have caused more damage in the past year. The contractor the council asked said there was no sign of rats, even though the council chairman himself found a dead rat on his plot last year, to go with the others found elsewhere on the site.

Let's see what letter arrives after the next council meeting.

Crops destroyed

We went to harvest some leeks. I expected there would be enough for one or maybe two more harvests. I was wrong. They were eaten to the ground. The photo is lousy, but you can see they were covered and there is almost no sign of a leek left. Looking around the whole site everyone else's leeks have suffered the same fate - except Norman's. He has covered his handful of remaining leeks with a complete covering of chicken wire mesh. Even then the few leaves that poked out through the mesh have also been eaten off. Something likes leeks. In previous years we have simply protected them with CDs hanging on strings when they were first planted to stop the birds pulling them up, then safely left them uncovered but this year something has changed. There are no tracks to be seen around the plot, there are lots of rabbit droppings in the hedge bottom behind our plot but as far as I can see there is no gap in our fence to let rabbits in. Besides, there is worse to come.

We have been growing broccoli and for the first time we have got it to grow well. I know pigeons like it, so I covered it with frames and netting, and so far it has be doing well. We had three separate patches each covered with frames and netting. Two have been eaten to the ground.

This is utterly dispiriting. Our vegetable harvest for the whole year have been destroyed by pests and once again I think it is rats. Birds would love the leaves of the broccoli, but not the thick stems. The stems have been gnawed through and not a trace of the rest of the plants are left. As you can see the frames are intact, but a the plastic net covering was pulled off and a piece had been gnawed through. This is not birds. There are other plots with cabbages and sprouts not covered up which are largely untouched, yet leeks and our broccoli have been destroyed when they were hard to get to.

I hope the parish council, our landlords to whom we now pay increased rent, will employ a pest controller to deal a serious blow to these rats - we cannot have another year like the last one.