I quickly went up to the allotment in the evening when it was neither windy, rainy, or cold. The plants, and the weeds had been enjoying the recent rain and so I spent a couple of hours weeding out mostly bindweed. Keep doing it, they say, and eventually the bindweed will be no more. Seven years later and it’s still coming back as if I had never done anything.

A success against bindweed in with the raspberries though where earlier on in the year I dug up all the canes, dug down deep to remove bindweed, and replanted less raspberries in two rows. The bindweed is still coming up, but a lot less and currently it’s easier to handle as the number of raspberry canes has been reduced a lot so less over crowding. Most of the canes have grown back although not much, whereas a couple have recovered completely. I expect the others to follow next year. The ones that have recovered are now neatly contained within the wire that goes along the length and the raspberries I picked were large and flavoursome. I picked some blackberries too from the plot next to ours, now fully overgrown. The new people planted strawberries earlier on in the year and then never came back.

The rest of the weeding did not take long, I tidied up around the leeks and tomatoes. With the weather as it is I am not sure we will see many red tomatoes this year, but fried green tomatoes are quite nice.

The cucumbers are not really enjoying the weather, the cold, wet and strong winds make them look miserable. The courgettes, which were late to the planted out, are small but have been enjoying a rain.

A good job I spent this time tidying up, the next day it seemed like winter again, cold/rain/wind (risk to life it told me on BBC news, really…?)