A Quiz?

So what has been eating my sweetcorn? Only 1 cob has been affected, and this was still on the plant - therefore about two feet above the ground - and in one of my enclosures. The entire site has a deer fence, therefore it is not likely to be deer, and the cob was still on the plant, therefore it was probably not a badger (which would anyway have made more of a mess). The teeth marks do not look like a bird's beak made them. Perhaps it was a mouse? Any suggestions are welcome! Fortunately, I have plenty more sweetcorn coming on.

Yesterday, I put a thick layer of manure and compost on a part of one of my plots, and dug it in. Then I put down some plastic with holes in it, and planted some onion sets, bought specially as they stand over the winter and are harvested early. The polythene keeps the weeds down - onions hate weeds - and if any do not survive the winter, I shall plant a different variety in the spring to fill the gaps. I also planted some garlic, which must sprout then have a cold period in order to form good cloves.

Autumn show

It was our autumn horticultural show this weekend. As usual, I managed to find a few things to enter, and this was one of them - a basket of fruit and/or vegetables grown on the allotments. Mine consisted of apples, potatoes (I managed to find 4 without slug holes!) sweetcorn, onions, runner beans and garlic. Astonishingly it not only won first in its class, but was given 'Best in Show'! I also took first prize for specimen vegetable (a butternut squash), onions and a couple of others. However, in the jam class I committed the cardinal sin of using a jar with a screw lid rather than a twist cap, so despite the excellent flavour it went nowhere!

On the allotment, things are beginning to come to a close. There are a few more beans and courgettes to pick, plus butternut squash, beetroot, carrots and sweetcorn, but it is almost time to start the cycle of manuring, digging etc again. I have some garlic cloves to plant out, plus some overwintering onion sets, and there will of course be some winter vegetables - leeks (very poor) swedes (very small) and sprouting broccoli - to pick.