Finished path

Managed to get the path finished off though we didn't get to the plot till gone 3pm and there wasn't much sun left so it was a bit chilly.
We used up one of the bags of bark chips which was left over from last year. It had turned into a snail farm with loads of different sizes hibernating huddled together - we put them all over the hedge.

It's fairly level and reasonably straight apart from the one really obvious bulge - well, the plank was warped, not our fault :-)

The path doesn't actually go to the end of plot 8A - that is intentional. We're going to plant some Leonaris flowers (orange) in the corner.

I need to start moving the raspberries to the other corner so we can finally dig out the area where we move them from. We inherited the raspberries so that section of 8A has never been dug by us and there are quite a few docks and other weeds that pop up each year.

Mostly Compost

We decided to make the path between our Plot 8A and next door's 8B a bit more permanent; our bark on weed suppressant didn't do very well in that location and basically got scattered all over the place by birds and us. It was a lovely sunny day, not too cold (7° in the sun) and not too wet.
The little vole didn't know what to do with himself; running backwards and forwards, as we were working in his area!

We're adding wood surrounds along the path this year and also extending it so we have access from the grass path - that meant that the first job today was to move the compost bins.

The first bin which has been full for about a year turned out to be lovely compost - nice and crumbly and lots of happy worms. We started riddling it and filled one big compost bag with that. The rest, which we weren't going to have time to riddle, we piled on this year's sweetcorn patch - we'll sort that out when we have a bit more time.

The second bin which we're still filling has got clear layers - though we have been trying to mix it (you wouldn't think so!) but looks interesting! At least with having to do this move it'll get a really good mix.

The third bin (the wooden open one) will probably be put into the first one when they're back in place and to mix it up a bit we'll divide the fresher contents and mix that in too.

By the time we'd finished the wooden edging of the (rather wonky) path it had started to rain and really felt like January- brrr - so we went home. Will have to do more sorting tomorrow and hopefully get the path finished, though the temperature is meant to be dropping...

Another warm January day

A warm day (11°) with wind, drizzle and dazzling sunshine meant we got quite a lot done today. We were clearing the area where the sweetcorn was last year. It was soon apparent that it hadn't ever been dug very well - there were masses of roots (not sure what sort, felt like the tree!) and some very big stones.
Also composted all the remains of the celery and weed clearance on Plot 8a


Sunny/Windy/Rainy

Having read that sprout tops are delicious I took one home and had it with tea. Not all that impressive, not as strong flavoured or sprouty as I would have expected.

We took a photo of this little caterpillar on the sprout top (haven't been able to identify it yet) and when we got the photo home we could see a whitefly was piggy-backing on it! There are masses of whitefly in our compost bin - apparently coffee grounds can help reduce this, but it's not helped us so far, I may see if I can get some from the coffee lounge at work.

Whitefly

Old Beetroot

The beetroot which had been in the ground for months wasn't too woody but it did fall apart a bit whilst cooking. I had it in a salad - it didn't have a huge amount of flavour.

So, as if we didn't know, it's better to eat it when it's not been in the ground for more than half a year!

A drizzly day

I had the day off work today - not a great day for working on the plot, but at least it was only drizzling for part of the day (unfortunately that was the part while we were there!).

We made up an enviromesh cage for our onions - we're hoping this will keep them clear of leek moth which was all over the site last year :-(
We did say last year that we're going to cover the whole site with enviromesh, but we'll stick with just covering individual beds for this year :-)


Yellow is this year's colour for enviromesh

We cleared the beets which have been in the ground for about 10 months  - this ugly giant and most of the others have gone into the compost but we took a couple more reasonable-sized ones home; Boltardy aren't meant to go woody even when they're old - we'll see...
The vole/mice hadn't even ventured into this big one, but some of the others had severe slug/snail damage.

Me, with the ugly giant

We hoed and levelled the potato quarter where the onions and other alliums will be going. We're making sure that the chicken manure pellets are well worked into the ground before we get the onions and shallots planted.
We also cleared the cabbage patch and there are only a few sprouts left and then that quarter will be ready for the potato trench preparation.