Before you Leave

I received a 'help - urgent' message on my phone at the weekend, from a plotholder. It was because her partner and a fellow plotholder had to hide in a polytunnel while this lot decended on the site - the plotholders felt like they were being dive-bombed as the sky turned black and the buzzing built to a crescendo!

By the time I got there the excitement was over so I just took a few photos. I think they're honey bees. The swarm had selected a blackcurrant bush to rest on while the bee scouts went to find a suitable location to re-home.

They had moved on when we looked a couple of hours later so I was a bit disappointed to have missed them leaving. 

I'm suprised they didn't decide to stay on site with Ivan's amazing bearded iris plots providing a colourful centrepiece to our site. They really are stunning and a real talking point as people walk to their plots.

I'm pleased that we can sit on our bench on Plot7 and see the lovely colours. The whole site is looking beautiful at the moment, especially at the sunny weekend with lots of plotholders working and bringing various plants down to plant up - it's a fab time of year, isn't it?

The recent sun-rain-sun weather has been perfect for growing (weeds) and has made digging easier, so we managed to clear and dig the final quarter of plot 7. There are two deep holes filled with manure for the courgette and pattypan to be planted into in a week or two. The rest of that quarter will be for sweetcorn and maybe a few flowers and other bits and bobs.

The potatoes have all emerged, with plenty of space for earthing up when the time comes. And the beetroot and radish will be providing me with a bit of salad quite soon. The florence fennel mostly germinated but is always at risk from slug damage - I'm hoping that sown into the middle of a plot it may be less susceptible... 

The carrots and parsnips have been less successful.... germination has been very poor even though we've done two sowings of carrots (already). It looks like I may get 8 parsnips(!) from the thickly sown row. I may have to try another sowing of them as I do love parsnip soup.

At the moment we're only harvesting rhubarb but the broad beans are on their way, plumping up nicely. The aphids have found them, of course, so whenever we find a ladybird we put them onto the beans to have a good feed and hopefully stop the beans getting spoilt. I thought this one was a Pine Ladybird, because of the rim round its wing-cases, but it seems it is just a Harlequin.

We have various seeds germinating in the polytunnel - still no giant sunflowers though 😞. A few of all the beans need re-sowing but we expect to have at least five plants of each type which will be plenty for us. We've dug the area on plot 8 for 3 wigwams - over holes filled with manure.

I have a few days off soon and hope to get the holes, or trench, dug for this year's squash tunnel. Plot3 is looking a bit abandoned at the moment, but shouldn't be too tricky to get that ready for squashes. I haven't been doing much cooking but have prepared this year's chive flower vinegar.

And, I've been doing a bit of this.... but more on that another time..

The song title is provided by Pepe Deluxe - and is referring to the bees. I'm suprised to see that I haven't used this song before, it's so great! Dance along now 😄