Eighth Day

I've been on leave for a week, we've been busy with other things but have also had time on the plot and achieved some stuff, though there's still plenty to do. We still have a few potatoes chitting at home - they're going into bags on the plot, at some point...Looks like an alien with his hands up "I come in peace".

We've had sunshine with some rain and the nights have threatened frost and also reached -1° so we've been fleecing and de-fleecing most mornings and evenings.We have plenty of weeds growing but have cleared areas and taken bagfuls home for the green bin.

But flowers are providing lovely bright spots. We have way too many of these Californian poppies, but they're so beautiful!

And the chives are all flowering so the bees are very happy.

We've potted on all the french marigolds and also some supervivum (houseleek) for the plant sale.

We've braved putting them outside under netting but we are fleecing them overnight if a frost is threatened - it's easier to deal with than in the greenhouse though and they need to toughen up...

The strawberries have so many flowers and tiny fruits forming that we don't want to risk them so they're fleeced each night too. So far they've kept their yellow centres so the frost hasn't got these..

But as well as protecting things and weeding we've been planting - broad beans are in...

Salad is planted in the raised bed with the onions.

And today I planted up a smaller raised bed with Boltardy beetroot, Red and White Salad Onions and Purple and Pink Asian radish. I spent some time yesterday digging out the masses of weeds in that part of the plot. I dug out another part of Plot7 on Bank Holiday Monday - here's a timelapse... you can see why it takes me a long time to dig... apart from having to pick roots (from the hedge) from almost every spadeful it does appear that I do quite a lot of chatting :-)

While I was doing that, Jamie was clearing a large area of Plot 3 and dug the runner bean trench.

It's nice that we're beginning to see areas which are free of weeds. And the beans are planted into pots in the greenhouse - Benchmaster and I have some Pickwick dwarf runner beans that another plotholder gave me.

Our rhubarb is growing monstrous and we've not eaten much of it yet, but did give some to a friend at work to make some rhubarb gin...

We had some torrential rain but no thunder. Anyway that sums up our last week and a bit, and so Hazel O'Connor provides the title track (it should be 9 days, but well, you know..!)