Mistaken identity

Adult cockchafer

Those horrible looking larvae aren't stag beetles at all. I found a couple of adult beetles today, and they're cockchafers. This is not good news, as they eat the roots of various plants, especially the grass family - including rye.

I found several dozen of the grubs in different stages of development while digging all the beds, which seems to be a bad infestation.

Update: According to advice received on the excellent Grow Your Own forum, they are not a major problem for vegetable beds, as they tend to move away from cultivated soil (although they are very destructive of lawns.) Phew!

Third bed

I've drawn a diagram (not very accurately) of the layout I want to make - the eastern beds (1-4) at the bottom of the garden are on slightly lower ground, and receive the best of the sunlight, so I've started there. So far 1-3 are de-turfed and have had the bigger pebbles removed. Tomorrow I intend to dig and de-pebble bed 4,  and grade the whole patch. That'll be a big job, but I can't plant in any of them until it's done. After that, I'll sow seeds in all four beds:

1. Winter grazing rye, a green manure.
2. Brassicas, initially kale (Nero di Toscana) and cabbage (Advantage F1).
3. Winter grazing rye.
4. Legumes, initially broad beans (Aguadulce) and peas (Meteor).

The kale should have been sown by the end of September according to the packet, but with the weather being very warm (and forecast to stay warm for a while) it should be OK, I hope. That's why I'm in a hurry to get the first four beds dug, de-pebbled, and graded.

I'm not sure yet about the higher section (beds 5-8) - I will probably plant alliums, try to prepare a bed for potatoes, and do at least one and maybe two more beds of rye. This is just a place-holder and soil improver until it's time for the main planting season in Spring.

Horrible looking thing, with glove finger for scale.

De-turfing the third bed today, I saw  more ants than in either of the first two beds, and I saw black ants among the red ones. Some ants steal the pupae of nearby ant colonies of different species, and when they hatch the abducted ants work in the abductors' colony. I assume that's what happened here.

Right in the middle of the ant colony, among all the eggs and grubs, I found this horrible looking thing. Looking at images of larvae on the web, I think it was a stag beetle larva. I say was, because it was gone by the time I'd taken the camera back inside - I expect a bird ate it. I'm sorry about that, because they're a declining species.

Ants

The ants make the digging less fun. When I dig into a part of an ant nest, the first thing that happens is that lots of little ants run around, taking eggs and grubs away from the disturbance and further underground. These ones are about 4 mm long. As the digging goes on, the little ants vanish and and bigger, slightly darker ants appear. These are about 7-8 mm long, and they mill about on the surface within a few feet of the place where the nest was disturbed. If I keep standing on the same spot for more than ten seconds or so, they find me and begin climbing up my boots. They also end up on my hands, because I've been picking up the lumps of grass to shake the earth out of them - I want to get rid of the couch grass but keep as much of the soil as possible.

They have quite a nasty sting - it feels like a first degree burn, where the skin turns red and painful, but doesn't blister. The red patch is a bit smaller than a 5p piece, and the burning sensation slowly fades over about 6-8 hours. It is considerably worse than a nettle but nowhere near so painful as a wasp sting.

Because of this aggressive defence, today I just dug away the ant hill seen in the photo in yesterday's post. I thought I'd just remove that bit, and then go away while the soldier ants milled about. With luck that will reduce the amount of ant activity when I dig over bed number three.

Start

The garden as it was initially

This is a blog for recording my progress in turning a long-neglected garden into a vegetable plot.

The part which receives the most sunlight is shown in its original state, as it was when I moved in. The area is very uneven, due to the presence of many red ants who have made ant hills everywhere, and the vegetation is mostly couch grass, which is notoriously hard to get rid of.
The soil is very light in texture, that is to say that the particles are large (mostly sand, not silt or clay). This makes it easy to dig, but rain sinks through it very quickly and leaches out nutrients. The pH is 7.0, so it is neither acid nor alkaline, which should suit most vegetables.

Post-strimming, with two beds dug.

I got someone in to strim the area, and cut back the large Buddleia bushes and brambles in the soon-to-be-vegetable plot. It made the area look enormous. Gulp!

Before winter sets in, I hope to dig eight 6' by 6' beds, in two strips of four - there is a noticeable change in ground level where the apple tree is, so I will have an upper area and a lower one.

Here are the first two dug, and a third area also marked out with string. Notice the large ant-hill in the un-dug third bed. There were only a few ants in the nearest bed, but I saw a lot more digging the second.