The Working Party and rats

Being the second Sunday I spent most of the time with the Working Party being helped by my two stalwarts, the two Johns, Batchelor and Lack, who always seem to turn out. Jim from plot 41 joined in and did some shovelling and Hugh Merret, who was on 'Shop' duty, lent a hand by using a pickaxe to break up the heap of road-stone while the rest of us spread it to fill the potholes in the main track from the gate and past the Trading Hut. This should make it better for next Sunday's Mince Pies and Mulled Wine celebration at the café.

Afterwards I emptied the kitchen waste bin into my compost heap and covered it with grass cuttings from a neighbour's garden. It is still so warm the grass is still growing strongly.

As I lifted the carpet covering I saw a rat scurry away into the heap from under the old runner bean plants covering the top of the heap. Checking the plastic milk bottle lying on its side at the edge I found all the rat poison had gone but, as it was a complete bottle a rat is unlikely to go in. Apparently rats always want to see their escape route when entering a space so I swapped the bottle with one from my Broad Bean patch which has both ends cut open so it is a tube. Then I replenished the poison in all the bottles around the plot; in the hut, alongside the Broad Beans and in the compost. Almost all the poison I put down a few days ago had gone so the mice and, I hope, the rats are eating it.

I started to rake the woodchip off my old pumpkin patch but there is so much of it that I think I shall have to bury it deep down at the bottom of the trench when I dig the patch over. I hope then it will absorb any nutrients that get washed down through the soil and rot down without spoiling the fertility of the soil. I still need to cover next year's brassica patch before the weeds get to any size or the mulch will not work!

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