It was forecast to be a wet week with super hot days in-between, I’d been waiting for a whole week of dry weather but that seems to be a rare occurrence for the “summer of 24”. About half of them had their tops bent over and most were quite big onions so I pulled them all up and put them on the raised netting frame to keep them off the ground and allow them to start to dry out (in-between showers). A lot of the overwintered red onions didn’t make it and the ones were did ended up being small. The insect netting that I had put over earlier on in the year had done a good job of keeping allium leaf minor off. While some did suffer earlier on in the year, even under the netting, it had been minor and now there was no sign of it at all. Previous years a rows of onions had been affected and that is the reason why I decided to grow leeks at home and not on the plot. I wasn’t going to grow onions either but I thought I’d give the netting a try.

In their place I have planted out purple sprouting, tiny plants that have been in the module trays for way too long. I gave them a good watering and I’ll have to come back in a couple of days to make sure they are still ok and not frazzled in the sun. I’ve put green netting over them which should give them a bit of shade.

I also:

• planted out the last lot of turnips (the others went in the garden earlier on in the week)
• finished digging up the first row of potatoes. At around 3.5kg it is not the best (in a good year we have for 1kg per five plants in a row) but this particular variety (I forget what they are) did die down a lot earlier than expected so I’m not surprised.
• prepped the ground from where the first row of potatoes were and sowed a row of spinach. I normally do this in the garden but it’s too sluggy for that sort of thing at the moment.

We bought home with us:

• courgettes
• carrots
• potatoes