It did finally rain, for a whole day, which was nice.  Then, during the night the wind and rain woke me up, looking out of the window showed me a river running down the road and the rain almost horizontal.   I wonder how the plot copped with all of that.

We went up on Wednesday evening as normal, not so much to do any watering but to see what was left standing.   The failing runner beans were no longer standing up which was pretty much expected and as they weren’t coping that well it has put them out of their pain.  Better luck next year.  All netting on brassicas had copped well and just needed rejigging in places.  All plants was leaning slightly but looking ok.

This evening we checked to see if any rocket and salad leaf seeds had started to show, and they had.  The checked beetroot sowings and nothing yet.  Turnips all starting to show.

Having removed some of the netting around the edge of the beds at the weekend it was clear to see something had been helping themselves to carrots tops.   The carrots have not done that well in general, so having the ends eaten off is not helping.   We replaced a lot of the netting around the bed.   We left out the broad beans, but they seem to have finished mostly.

I had been reading and watching videos on no-dig methods, and while I have no plans to stop digging (surely a pleasure in life that makes the world worth living in) I was quite interested and surprised that actually it is nothing too clever.  Just piles of compost as a top layer and instead of sowing seed straight into it you tend to sow seed in pots and plant out when ready – even carrots and beetroot.    I’ll give it a whirl, but I have dug the old potato and onion bed over, spent ages removing stones, and raked before spreading mushroom compost on top.  I’ll leave it for a while.   I’ve sowed swedes in pots and in a couple of weeks they should be ready to put out.

I checked the kale and picked off around 2000 caterpillars…. I’ll keep doing it and we might have something at the end of it.   More positive, we picked our first ever broccoli head off of the calabrese, looking forward to eating.   Hopefully there will be heads appearing on the other plants soon.

By the time we left, we needed to use headlights on the car…

 

 

 

 

At home, the “Tumbling Tom” tomatoes are demonstrating how they like to tumble which has meant trying to get them to stand upright.  I might re-plan this for next year!  Saying that, I’ve been picking three or four each day for lunch and there are millions more.

 

I noticed with “no dig” it seems to be a lot about starting plants off in seed trays and planting out as plug plants when they are older – so I thought I would have a go with some late summer planting of swedes, cabbage, and an attempt at some late radishes.   I can see why this method would work so well and looking forward to giving it a proper go next year, I just wanted to have a go now.   Not too sure what to do with cabbage, nothing I like cooking/eating.