Late frost - quite a bit of damage

 

Sudden couple of cold nights and I've a lot of frost damage. Potatoes affected but they should recover, and about a third of the dwarf beans killed. One, maybe two tomatoes killed also (but they were a risk putting them out at this time of year).

April started cold but warming up now

Potatoes coming through so earthing them up. The row under the plastic cloche are a couple of inches higher than those not protected.

Some of the seeds (carrots, beetroot) germinated but many did not, so planted some more and took the plastic cloche off the carrots, as maybe this was making it too dry.

Planted leek seedings in the furthest back bed on right, by dibbing a quite deep hole, dropping seeding in, with only an inch or two poking out, and watering in. That is a very highly menured and dugover bed so hopefully should perfectly suit the leeks. Moved the bramble sticks to this area to keep any animals off until stuff gets established.

Dug over the bed for sweetcorn, leveled and covered with black plastic so it starts to warm up.

Emptied one of the skip bags of composting straw mix, partly into the others and over some of the beds.

Planting up for this year

Planted potatoes, carrots, beetroot.

Wet start to winter

Driest autumn since 1972 (apparently) followed by a wet start to winter.

Moved 4th rasied bed in to position and dug over. Probably do carrots in here next year as not composted at all.

Started to dig over the first bed on left; probably do potatoes in here next year as very heavilly composted, being left overs from the squashes growing in near raw compost which by now has nicely broken down.

More composting...

Weekend, dry and warmer than average, with occaisional sunshine.

Started to fill another of the large skip bags, next to central beds. Got both boys wheel-barrowing straw/menure mix to my plot - had to be paid of course - and they soon got fed up and started playing in the stream.
Apparently a council truck is going to deliver tons of their composted waste this week; and it will reverese down the path to dum pit at end by stream, past these two new skip bags; not sure if there will be room, but we'll see.

Planted over-wintering onions and garlic

Planted 3 rows of onions and 2 of garlic in the central box that had potatoes this year. Added a couple of barrowfulls of the straw/menure compost. Covered loosely with netting, but already some fox has walked right into the centre of the box and poo'd.

A spot of chilly weather and a little rain

Very cold couple of nights and the odd bit of rain, but the ground is still quite dry if you dig down.

Picked all the remaining squashes - some are starting to split, maybe brought on by the little bit of rain. Total of about 14 in all.



Also digging up remaining potatoes and carrots. The potatoes are not great -- about half have some brown marks or are a bit eaten or otherwise no use. The carrots are quite big but none of them straight. These are 2 of the best.

Planted and netted brassicas; harvesting potatoes and squashes

Planted up a variery of brassicas (cauliflower, cabbage and purple flowering stuff) into previous onion and potatoe beds in centre 'aisle'. Netted them over with some plastic mesh mum bought.

Continuing to get planty of potatoes from the back bed ... should be enough to last until Christmas I think ... also planted some potatoe offcuts that had started to shoot, they may come to something or nothing, doesn't matter.

Loads of butternut squashes coming on, probably 16 in total, picked 5 quite large ones already.



Emptied one of the skip bags of compost into various beds and refilled with raw menure mix already. This time, not much added soil or other compost stuff. Also, added more to the raised bed at the back and covered that with black plastic -- hopefully to keep it warm and compositing.

Plenty of potatoes, raspberries.

Dug up most of the raised bed of early potatoes -- more than enough to keep us going until we leave.
Butternut squashes are taking over -- spreading well beyond the confines of their box, and plenty of small squashes BUT many look like the might go rotten, with the lack of hot, non-rainy weather. As an experiment covered a few with plastic fruit trays -- mini-greenhouses to see if that helps.
Latest box, still from loft extension left over wood, placed to right of photo, next to carrot bed. Plan to move rhubard here, or get something orinmental to sand by itself.
Plenty of raspberries coming on -- in fact many of the stalks are falling over due to weight of friut, which means they are hanging in long grass and gettign eaten by slugs.

Plumbing and more composting

Bought grafted cucumber and aubergine (£3.50, £2.50 respectively) and planted in the double height "mega compost" box. Uncovered the squashes and built a "fleece tent" over the cucumber/aubergine end.

Installed some blue mdpe 25mm pipe, with connectors to 22mm speedfit and valves to fill both the buried barrel and the water tank saved from the loft extension. From that tank am running a hose pipe and just letting it empty onto one of the plots at the back. The entire pipe is now watertight and thus siphoning is much easier, not requiring to refill the entire pipe each time, plus the flow is much greater than previous attempts with siphoning.

Salvaged 3 skip bags from some work in the street. Placed 2 by the black compost bin, and one at end of the double height box at the front. Filled all three now with alternating layers of the raw straw/menure mix, soil, compost and any bits of vegetation going spare. Takes a whole evening to fill each one, but it's done and they should make very good compost some time next year.

Some progress on the next box -- using the purlins (3"x10") construcuted a single square 5'x5'. Now "bolted" onto the side a smaller piece using just 3 lengths of the purlins...basically using up all that size wood I have. thats about 5'x3'4". That should nicely cover the two beds at back right. Been digging soil out of those to fill the skip bags.