At our allotment

Allotments can be great places to see wildlife!

We have been growing vegetables on our allotment for over one year. Allotments can be great places to see wildlife! Our allotment uses peat-free compost and manure from horses in the field next door, which brings in the worms, which brings in blackbirds, which brings in birds of prey. We have found piles of blood and feathers where a sparrowhawk had a dinner of blackbird!

When we first got the allotment there were a lot of brambles. I liked to pick and eat the blackberries. They also feed a lot of insects. I saw a lot of blue-bottled flies on the gone-over blackberries.

Three cows leaning over an allotment fence.

Spring

In Spring, Mummy ordered a massive sheep’s fleece from a farmer and we put some around the baby plants that slugs like to eat, like kale, climbing beans and broccoli. We had a friendly mole that moved the soil around our feet. We don’t dig in our allotment. Instead, we put cardboard down on top of weeds and put horse manure or compost over it. This gives the soil more nutrients and we don’t disturb the bugs in the soil. This means there are lots of worms and other bugs for the mole to eat.

Rabbits like to dig next to the potatoes and make tunnels under the plants. Our allotment has a rabbit-proof fence around it, but they kept finding ways in. They chewed through the metal wire!

Summer

In the summer it’s very busy on the allotment. We get a big harvest from it and in the summer months, it’s all green. Swallows come and sit on the telephone cables right above our plot. They make sounds that remind me of the taste of honey. We spotted a devil’s coach horse beetle on our cucumber plants. It lifted its tail up to make itself look bigger and scarier when it thought it was being threatened. I could see where the name came from!

The small mammals (voles, mice and rats) like to eat the sweetcorn just as they are ready. They nibble the other cobs too to see if any of them are ready. Cabbage white butterflies (also known as large white butterflies) came and tried to lay eggs on our cabbage leaves. We had to put netting over in the end so the caterpillars wouldn’t eat them all!

It’s important that our crops are being eaten by animals because they all have a part to play in our world. Some of them even do good things for our crops, like pollinators taking pollen from one flower to another so they can grow into fruit and vegetables that we eat. If we put pesticides down to kill some of the bugs that you don’t want on your plants, then it may also kill the bees and other pollinators that you need. We don’t use pesticides or weed killers in our plot. Sometimes we use netting, but we encourage things like ladybirds to come in by leaving pests, like aphids, that the ladybirds feed on. We also plant things like nasturtium and marigold which lure some bugs away from our crops.

Fruit and veg in boxes surrounding a small table and chair. It's outside in front of a fence.

Winter

Last winter, we had a couple of queen wasps hibernating in the shed. We also had voles and mice using the shed, and our compost bins, for shelter. We put camera traps out to see what the animals were doing when we weren’t there. Once I saw two long rabbit ears popping up in front of the camera which was funny. I liked watching the mice, scuttling quickly to look for food.

We sometimes take mealworms for the robins, but they are more interested in the worms in the soil!

My favourite wildlife encounters on our allotment this year were watching the mole hunt for worms, bugs and beetles, listening to the swallows and seeing their forked tails and watching the devil’s coach horse flick its tail. It has been fun seeing them while also watching our pumpkins grow and turn orange, seeing nasturtium flowers grow so quickly and digging potatoes and pulling up carrots for my dinner!