Look Away Now..

It's a time of plenty. The spuds are ready the mange-tout (see below), runner beans, courgettes, beetrot and chard are coming on stream. The family is fed up of lettuce while huge rosettes adorn the plot, surplus to requirement and a bit over the hill.



So why be glum? Well here the rogues gallery:

We returned from holiday to find the broad beans looking like they'd been through a forest fire. A consultation of the books suggested root rot. (Do not grow the same crop in this area for 8 years)



Next to them the onions were also ailing with white rot (9 years sentence)



... and the last straw is that 6 potato plants have developed tell tale brown spots on their leaves in the course of the last week. This is blight and I have chopped the haulms down and removed them in an attempt to stop this spreading to neighbouring plants. The six plants were all Kerr's Pinks which I bought at the potato day. I'm not too chuffed with the supplier!



I know it has been exceptionally wet but my greatest fear was slugs. So to be told that broad beans and onions are out of bounds, in one corner of the plot at least, is a galling!

How Green is My Plot?

Two weeks away and there has been a green revolution. Brassicas:



and the view from the end.




Of course a big element of the green is the weeds! I've been weeding 90% of the time on this weekend's visits. On the plus side:

We are eating first potatoes (Ballydoon and Sharpe's Express), lettuces and broad beans. The runner beans are flowering nicely, as are the mange-tout (both in the forground, above).

Note strawberries finished by first week in July.

Anyone for Strawberries

Wimbledon hasn't even started and the single punnet we picked last weekend has grown into a positive glut by this weekend. For such a neglected corner of the plot the rhubarb and strawberries come up trumps year after year! The netting has preserved the crop from the birds, but something is still managing to breach the defences and drag off the odd fruit, or relocate them just to prove a point, it seems. I don't begrudge the odd fruit. (It's just when there is a peck out of every one that I get mad!)

Lettuce is now also in a glut situation, but I will still be sowing now to ensure there is a succession right up until the autumn frosts.

Bean looking for support:

The runner beans are, for the most part, already wrapping themselves around the poles. I haven't had to tie one this year, just guide the occasional wandering one around its pole by hand. They are positive triffids. Here's one 'looking' for a pole:



It's so nice to get some return - compensation for all that boring weeding!

Leeks

WHAT:





HOW 1:




HOW 2:




WHERE:

June Update - Pictures

Some snapshots of the current state of play:

OTHERS



ROOTS



BRASSICAS



The "others", despite looking so bare now has 5 rows of leeks planted out and 5 rows of Dwarf French Beans (Canadian Wonder) sown yesterday.

More pics to follow but I think I've exceeded the capacity of the blog entry!

The Good the Bad and the Ugly

An hour at the plot tonight and my spirits are lifted:

I replaceed the runner bean plant, planted cabbages in between those attacked by the SAS pidgeon and another row for good measure, watered and planted out one of the two pots of leek seedlings. ....and I weeded and weeded.

It was so dry that planting the leeks proved to be a problem. Each hole I made with the dibber just caved in with loose soil. So I watered and tried again, only to find the wet soil stuck to the dibber and the dry soil still caved in. I muddled along, all the same.

The Good:




The Bad and the Ugly

So this is summer, and what have you done...

It's summer so why be glum?

The planting plan was going well but... in the meantime the weeds are still growing, so instead of a weed free seed bed I've got, 6 inch high weeds. Everything is dying of thirst. Despite fencing off and netting the brassicas and strawberry patch some rodent is dragging off the strawberries and a pidgeon got under the wire and demolished an entire row of cabbage seedlings. (Those Primo must be tastier than the rest).

On the plus side the runner beans have settled in under their wigwam. Out of 12 plants 11 are fine. The fox took a dislike to one and dug it out. In addition some mange-tout I sowed as an afterthought have come up nicely - and I've had the foresight to provide some protection for them.

The early potatoes have burst into flower, and I've got around to mounding the last two rows.

I shouldn't complain because Monday last week was the first non-weekend, non-bank holiday visit (after 4 days of blazing sunshine and soaring temperatures). Unfortunately everyone else was on a water run too. Tonight was my second weekday visit, spurred on by the prospect of picking strawberries, only to realise that things are getting out of hand.

My target, which I haven't given up on yet, is to get the whole place planted up and weeded by the end of the month - More weekday vists beckon.

Photos on hold for now.