The calabrese has been hardening off outside in pots at home for a good month now, I have been meaning to do something about it for ages but didn’t want to plant them at the plot until I had something to protect them with.   Following advice on forums I spent £2.50 on some scaffold netting off of ebay which turned up just in time for the weekend.

I knew I had a lot more than just calabrese at home that needed planting, the sprouts are more than ready and the kale (which I only sowed the other week) have suddenly grown having been repotted into something bigger.   With nowhere to put any of them I decided to take a late evening visit to the plot on Saturday and start digging.

The raspberries on the lefthand side were in a bad state when we started, no formal rows just lots of plants that had popped up in irregular places, lots of bindweed.   It hasn’t really changed, I haven’t looked after them in the same way as the ones on the righthand side, I have been thinking there is only so many raspberries you can eat and do we need quarter of the (small) plot taken up with them.  I might then dig them all out over winter, but in the meantime I have reduced them a small bit while also using a bit of land that had we hadn’t done anything with which is next to the strawberries.    Digging took a long time with a good bucket of bindweed roots as a result.    I didn’t finish off on the Saturday, at 9 in the evening I called it a day to be left for the morning.

 

 

Early start the next day to finish off digging and forking in mushroom compost, leveling the path off while I was at it too.   I forked over the bed I dug the other week for the calebrese and planted them, covering with the scaffold netting kept up with bamboo poles with bricks/bits of pallet at the bottom.   Quite pleased with that and I’ll repeat it for the other side and the new bed for when I plant out the sprouts (hopefully soon).

I weeded and tidied up the first sowing of spring onions and radishes.  Not many spring onions came up and so I sowed some more to fill in the gaps.   Likewise I sowed some more radish in the space where a potato plant had been and had died from ants nesting.  I thought the ants had gone but found a lot still there, so not sure if that will work out too well.

I spotted the rocket leaves looked like they were ready to pick but unfortunately some animal had got there first.  A bit annoying, which made me to decide the circle the whole main bed with netting as an attempt to prevent it happening.  Nothing had touched the carrots and beetroot since I had done that for those.

Courgette plants have got massive a lot quicker than I thought, which means the radish and spring onions in that raised bed are suffering a bit, I used metal hoops to hold them back a bit.   At the same time I was able to cut off our first courgette, we have lots more on their way.

Nothing had eaten the strawberries since me and Tom covered in netting quickly during the week, I was able to pick two strawberries – which I took home and we eat.  I put netting over the beet leaf as last time something eat it and I didn’t really want that to happen again.

I had cut the grass at home this weekend and so bought the cuttings to the plot and used it to mulch the potatoes.  They don’t look like they are coping the best, I don’t know if it is the dry weather or the ants, or a bit of both.  Likewise I was worried about the broad beans (and still am)  where the flowers have gone black and don’t look good.  When I did a google search on this it seems they are meant to do this before turning into pods – I’ll see what happens.

It is meant to rain tonight but it doesn’t look like it will…