With bad weather and other commitments getting in the way, I had my first visit the plot for over a month. November has mostly been heavy rain and strong winds, until this weekend which turned out to be sunny and rather warm.

Last time I visited, the green manure field beans were tiny, now they were massive and some starting to flower. A sign that it was time to cut them down and dig them into the soil. I also needed to plant out some broad beans. I need to come back to spent a lot more time on the plot to tidy things up quite a bit.

On arrival I noticed a delivery of wood chip by the main entrance and so I finished off a bit of path. If I had had more time I would have renewed some of the existing paths too, maybe there may be some left for next time.

Before sorting out beans, I had had a brief visit the week before to cut the small pumpkin and used it to make a crustless pumpkin pie and to roast the seeds in salt and chilli. I’ve never grown pumpkins before, the pie and seeds were quite nice. A still have the larger pumpkin at home waiting to be used.

I cut down all the field beans and chopped them up a bit smaller using a spade. I need to next time dig these into the bed, but for the broad bean bed I chopped them even smaller and had a go at incorporating them into the soil a bit more before I planted five broad bean plants.

The field beans really had grown quite a lot and swamped the leeks. The leeks never really got going this year and this seemed to finish off the small number that we did have. From what used to be a massive and one of our big crops, this year leeks will hardly feature. A mix of field beans swamping then, the super hot weather, and allium leaf miner which still plagues the plot.