It was early morning when I arrived at the plot but the glorious sunshine was already taking the temperature upwards to 25 degrees C. Yet another fine day. My first job was marking out 4 drills in the warm dry soil and sowing some more Parsnip seeds. After covering the seeds with soil they were watered in, even though the seed had been soaking overnight. It was the rattling of the rain drops on my bedroom window that broke my dream filled sleep, no plot today again, too bloody wet once more.
Having just spent a couple of hours reading through ALL of the blogs that I follow, both on my profile list and blogs I follow list (they are all gardening/allotment blogs or related topic blogs), it was nice to see that only a few were not up to date. It was interesting to see the diverse topics and view many wonderful pictures and photographs, my favourites being various forms of wildlife we have here in UK. Although each blog was unique in its own right the goals were the same, to produce good fruit and vegetables for the dinner table. After one of the worst growing seasons for many years, in most parts of the country, one thing was common to most blogs. Despite our adverse weather conditions this year most bloggers had still gathered in a reasonable harvest, which is a tribute to their hard work, ingenuity, skill and patience this year. If you fit this description the smilies are for you.
During the past week I have only managed 3 visits to my plots, on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday mainly due to, you won't believe this, yes more rain. I spent Tuesday clearing out some old brambles from the lower end of my main plot to make space for my cultivated variety to take their place. Once the roots had been dug out I completed some weeding around the same area. Then I finally got round to covering one of the beds on my second plot with black fabric and weighting it down with various heavy objects, harvested a few more Carrots, (Autumn King and Flyaway), before departing for home.
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| About 50% of Octobers Carrots Affected by Carrot Fly Earlier Ones Were Perfect |
On Thursday a few odd jobs were called for so my second compost bin was cleared out of various items such as pea sticks which were bundled and tied up, then stored away in the dry for later use. The other various poles, sticks and tree branches from the bin were made into a log pile underneath the roof of my manure heap, for the use of any hibernating creatures over the Winter. The newest compost on the top of the pile was then transferred into the second bin before I use the more mature compost, on next years Brassica bed, when the rain lets up. I removed the cloches from my over wintering Carrots to allow some moisture into their soil, they have certainly had plenty of that since Tuesday. Before leaving for home I harvested afew more Runner beans, Cucumber and Sweetcorn.
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| More Sweetcorn Runners and Cucumbers |
Sunday started off on the wrong foot when after finding out I could take videos with my camera, then forgetting to take it down the plot, I discovered that every one of my grapes had disappeared from the vine, a great pity as, despite the lack of sun they were ripening nicely, recently. A host of hungry birds were no doubt to blame and obviously the use of netting is called for in future. After hoeing and weeding part of my second plot I tidied up and cleaned some pots trays and tools as the afternoon came to an end.
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| The Mixed Lettuce Loves the Rain |
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| This is More Cheerful |
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| Top of My Back Fence in the Rain Tonight |
I've never planted parsnips at this time of year - does it take them long to germinate - why don't you wait till spring? Lucky you still getting plenty to harvest and your carrots are great - you certainly have green fingers. We haven't had that much rain here which means plenty of jobs have been done outside.
ReplyDeleteHi Elaine, thanks for looking in. Sorry to confuse you with the first paragraph of my post. It was a dig at the bad weather as a joke (dream). The rest of the post is factual. I might sow a few Parsnip seeds though just as a trial. The recent temperatures here lately have been around 15 deg c. so they might germinate under cloches, but sunlight is in short supply recently. Another 2 inches of rain has just been forecast here tomorrow?
DeleteYes I think you are right despite all our complaining about the weather and slugs I think most people have had a reasonable harvest it has just been a bit delayed. But it has been hard work this year! Some things seem to have thrived in the weather though.
ReplyDeleteWhat a shame the birds had your grape harvest!
Hello Annie H, It certainly has been hard work this year and late, even veg I got in early took ages to develop. I've just taken an overgrown plot on yesterday and its already waterlogged after 2 days rain??
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