Not much on the list of things to do this morning, so I generally pottered about and weeded.  The runner beans had quite a number of flowers but had fallen over, so I attempted to upright.   A couple of minutes later, I attempt to upright them again….   I turned my back and I had another go at putting them back upright….   I then left them leaning over.

I thought I would turn the compost heap over, which was worthwhile as I was able to discover it was stone dry and hadn’t done that much.  I forked it all out and back in again, gave it a big water and didn’t cover it over.    It maybe isn’t in the best position as it is under all the trees and so I don’t suppose it gets that wet.   I might re-plan it.   Saying that, it is a place to put the waste plants and so looking at it that way it is fulfilling part of its role.    Mushroom compost will continue to be bought in, plus keeping an eye out on Facebook Marketplace to local offers of rotted manure.

The Christmas potatoes that we banked up and covered on Wednesday where more than showing, all 10 plants now.   I’ll keep an eye on the weather over the next three months and get ready to cover with fleece for when it started to get cold.

The other week I had unloaded a couple of wheelbarrow loads of woodchip and so I decided to start using it to replace the general weeds and overgrown nature of the entrance to the plot.     I cut back a whole load of thyme that grows by the entrance and is way too woody and out of control to be of any use.   After putting down a layer of plastic I piled on the woodchip, edged it off.  I was pretty pleased with the result, with minimal time and effort required.   I notice there has been another delivery of woodchip and so will carry this on over the coming weeks.

I watered the cabbage plants, three looking ok, a fourth looking like it might not make it.     I covered the area where the broad beans were with compost and dug a small bit over in order to remove as much bindweed root as I would.

We returned in the afternoon for a bit of a harvest.  I also used this time to have another go at putting the runner bean wigwam back up, I failed once again and decided they were doing fine as they were.    I noticed the swede had suffered a bit with caterpillar action and so covered them over, I’ll keep that on for a couple of weeks maybe.

Today we decided to start pulling the carrots.  These had been a bit of a battle over the year as either they had not germinated or they had grown pretty small.  I wasn’t expecting much, so I was pretty pleased when we found they had done quite well after all.  The normal misformed shapes, but also some very much carrot shape and quite large too.  Nothing to win any prize, but good enough to charge £5 per carrot at a farmers market in a posh city centre.

Items we picked included:

• carrots (first lot!)
• salad leafs and rocket
• runner beans
• french beans (still getting a small number each week)
• broccoli (small bits from previous cutting)
• radish (last lot of the August sowing, all did very well)
• courgette

We still have a lot of kale, beet leaf/chard, and beetroot at home, so left that for now.