The idea this morning was to dig up all the raspberry canes, cover with cardboard and manure, then put back some of the canes through holes made. The aim to tidy up into straight rows and prevent some of the bindweed growing up the canes during the summer. In reality, I did none of this.

I wasn’t looking forward to doing this, so I pruned the current bushes first. I then thought I would mulch the old Christmas potato bed with manure, but while I was doing this it seemed a good time to look at paths. Most of the plot now has been reconfigured to have a series of long grave like beds instead of a path along the middle. There remained one last middle path as you entered the plot, it used to be quite a wide grass path when we got the plot. The soon put wooden boards over the top of the paths and in some places dug the grass away completely and just had the boards. Now the path was going to move to the edge allowing a full width bed, carrying on the theme from the main part of the plot into this area which had typically been a bit more derelict (all summer it had been pretty much nothing until we planted the Christmas potatoes).

After all that, there was neither time or manure left to think about the raspberries – I’ll leave that for another day.

Doing that has given us more growing space and along with other beds emptying out, it looks a lot bigger than it did a year ago when we took it on and there was lust one little bed and a lot of grass. This is now most of the way through giving us seven banked up “nodig” beds which each use the whole width of the plot.

I came home with:

• the last of the carrots, dug the remaining ones up to clear space for mulching
• a couple of small turnips
• a couple of small swedes (two more left)
• loads of sprouts (planning for a sprout prep and freezing session this afternoon)
• kale
• leeks (our main harvest item now)

The last carrots are a bit of a milestone, it took a number of attempts to get them to germinate and I was surprised when we finally saw somethig happen. The last lot dug today all pretty large and forked and certainly “winter veg” looking. I plan to have a go at sowing in toilet rolls this year, along with normal direct sow. The germination rate will then be a little bit more controllable hopefully.

Another milestone, or a repeat milestone, or maybe just something of interest, it might not even be that interesting actually… garlic is something special on the plot as it was the first thing we planted when we took over. We quickly prepped some ground and stuck it in, having never grown it before. It worked out well. So it is a special time when I spotted this year’s garlic showing in places, re-starting the special relationship we now have with garlic.

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