Super hot and it’s only 10am

I purposely went up to the plot at 6am in order to beat the hot weather, my first job was to do lots of watering. Someone else had the same idea and already had a hose pipe out. This early in the morning the sun has yet to come up from behind the trees and so it was quite pleasant. I had planned to tackle the composting end of the plot but ended up sorting out the gooseberry end instead.

Gooseberry bushes I pruned off around five leafs and shaped them a bit, removed some of the lower branches completely. A light pruning for now, harder pruning in the winter. While doing this I weeded and hoed and generally tided bits up. The carrots were still under netting and they were all trying to escape and so I uncovered them. The plot (and next door’s) seem to suffer from small black beetle things eating carrot, celeriac, parsnip leaves at such a fast rate they will destroy it all over one weekend. That’s why I have them covered over, but when they get too big for that I put netting around the edges instead. Fingers crossed as I uncovered the parsnips too.

Other plants needing more space under netting were the sprouts. I re-did the netting using some of the branches cut off the trees in the spring as supports.

I gave everything a second watering before I left at 10. The sun had reached the plot and it was super hot.

At home I sowed some radish, the last lot for the year and a sowing following the summer break. There is no point sowing radish in the middle of summer as they just go to seed. I also sowed pack choi, mustard, and spinach. All part of the VegGrowerPodcast subscribers project that Richard is doing.

The shallots have been drying at home for a number of weeks and so Jack and myself spent a little time tidying them up before storing them somewhere dark and cool.

I gave everything at home a good watering too. The water butt ran out of water last week and so it’s back to the kitchen sink with the watering can….

We’ve been pretty pleased as this weekend we have been making meals mostly out of things we have grown. This has included: