A month later than I would had wanted, due to the bad weather, I finally dug up the potatoes They never too as well when planted at that end of the plot than when they are planted at the other end. The harvest was not the best and quite a lot of potatoes had rotted or been eaten. The rule of digging them up 100 days after planting then had not been kept, they were in the ground way too long. However, I dug up enough, dried them off and bought them all home for eating and storage.

This weekend has been a weekend of eating allotment and garden food, if only we kept our own pigs (and made our own sausages) we would had been completely self sufficient. This is a great feeling. It’s not about saving money as out of all the items a supermarket sells, vegetables are about the cheapest items you can buy. Instead, it is knowing you have worked for your food over a long period of time and able to take advantage of it to cook good meals out of nothing. They are probably fresher and better for you than supermarket bought veg too. The cycle is completed when you are able to put all the cuttings and scraps into the compost heap ready to be put back on the ground next year.

I got back into my old routine of first weeding the plot from one side to the other before I do anything else and because I spent so many hours doing it last weekend (for the first time in ages) meant this time it took only ten minutes. I dug up the potatoes and I prepped the ground for a row of chiccory. I’ve never grown that before, I’m not convinced it will do well or if I like it, but I had the seed so thought I would give it a go. Likewise, I sowed 60 modules of over wintering onion seed, ready to plant out in February it is suggested. Again, I had the seed so thought it was worth giving it a go. They are outside, undercover and I’ll leave them there, look after them during the winter.

On the plot I cut off a number of courgettes, plus noticed at least two small pumpkins which will hopefully keep growing into something viable. I also saw some cucumbers which maybe this time next week will be ready for picking.

Some of the edging I have made out of old decking had rotted and fallen over. This has been a “long term” project, in that during the last three years I have still to complete it. I repaired the broken bit and I would had finished off the last remaining sections, but I ran out of time. Maybe next week, or certainly before the winter and can say the job has finally been done, ready to start doing the repairs straight away!

I came back later in the evening to give everything a good watering. We have had a weekend of super hot weather and another day of it tomorrow. The BBC news tells us not to venture out without a bottle of water, I took a flask of coffee… and survived.