I covered the swedes last week in order to keep the birds off but it turns out it was not the birds I needed to keep off but the butterflies. A spent quite some time picking off caterpillars and I replaced the wide holed netting with the normal scaffold netting. Over the coming week I hope a lot of the eaten leaves will be replaced by new ones.

The main job I wanted to get started was digging out the strawberry bed, lowering it down so that there is more horizontal space for next year when they grow back. The netting worked really well this year but it restricted how much the plants could grow upwards, not a lot was the result. I did a bit of this during the summer but it was too hot and the newly re-planted strawberries frazzled in the sun. It’s constant rain now for the next days, so no risk of that any more.

For the rest, just lots of weeding and picking cucumbers.

I noticed turnips nearly ready for picking and the ones on the plot, which were the weaker plants, have done a lot better than the ones in the garden, the stronger plants. It is clearly telling me, don’t bother trying to grow turnips in the garden next time.