We had only been away for a week but since then we had gone through various extreme seasons, strong wind and rain followed by warmth and sun. This meant lots of weeds, netting blown all over the place, and evidence of many slugs by the look of what was left of peas, carrots and parsnips. Nothing too serious with slugs although half of the pea plants look like they might not make it, rather annoying.

Potatoes looking good and ready to start digging up which is great as last year we didn’t do too well. Garlic looking all a bit rusty and looking like that could really do with pulling up and drying out. While onions which have looked a bit dodgy all year, suddenly with all the rain and warmth have doubled in size.

A lot of weeding, mostly hoeing as our evening visit meant it was starting to get dark, at the weekend I’ll do a proper job. I un-netted the parsnips and carrots, small loses from slugs. The netting was only really there to protect the small plants from the hot sun, the sun now seems a distant memory. Under the netting the weeds had made good use of the protection too, a quick hoeing sorted them out.

Over wintered broad beans are coming to an end and blown over, but loads of beans to pick. The spring time broad beans a lot smaller and suffering from black fly, next year I’ll do only over winter ones I think, minimum hassle.

Before we left, I had promised Tom we would do some work on the fence which cuts the end of the plot off a bit. Remove that bit suddenly opened it up a lot. Lots of work left on this to build a gate, put up new bits of fence.

We came home, very late in the evening in the dark, arms full of broad beans and loads of giant strawberries.

At the weekend I arrived with plenty of beetroot plants to put out, way past when I had wanted to put them out but it had yet to stop raining for weeks. I planted them out but notice the carrots no longer looking strong. A closer look found lots of small black beetles crawling over them and eating anything that was green. I noticed the same on the parsnips and the celeriac. They could be flea beetles maybe and I expect they will wipe out the remaining carrots, parsnips and celeriac. A bit of a blow and not too sure what to do about it, to get rid of it or even prevent it another time.

Potatoes looked good, I dug up the first lot and was pleased. I kept glancing at the strawberries and each time finding another bunch of red ones, I even took a first harvest of raspberries. Broad beans overwintered are all starting to yellow and I’ve now taken most of the pods, there is maybe one more harvest left on them. I took home a mixture of berries and vegetables. It ended the visit on a high, but the beetle problem overhanging all the time. At least it took my mind off the slugs that took out half a row of peas…

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