Another week or so of warm and mainly sunny weather has seen me continuing to clean vegetable bed 2 on N2 Plot, for several hours on a daily basis. With only 1 day with some evening and overnight rain the ground in general is dry and parched still. Number 2 bed is approximately fifty percent cleaned out of weeds roots and stones down to 1 spits depth, this being the depth of topsoil before reaching the rock hard sub-soil level.
Due to the vast amount of weed roots and "withey vine" infesting the bed I decided to start off by removing the top soil, forming a trench, then breaking down the large clumps of soil, filtering out the weeds and then moving the soil up the bed until the next trench was dug out. Similar to double digging but without the depth of topsoil.
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| Cleaning Out Bed 2 N2 Plot |
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| Removing Withey vine |
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| Bed 2 N2 Plot 50% Complete 26/Aug/13 |
When time has allowed in between digging bed 2, watering and of course harvesting has been done. Sweetcorn is in abundance along with French climbing beans, Lettuce, Cucumber. Runner beans have been adequate but not in the abundant amounts of last season. Although some Red, White & Blackcurrants remain on the bushes they have been left for the birds to take, due to the vast amounts already in my freezer. Jam making was done last Friday and the remainder of last years frozen Strawberries were used for this, to make more room in the freezer for this weeks harvests. So far my Desiree Potatoes have been very good, with up to 12 large tubers per plant. As the ground is still dry the plants are only being lifted as the Potatoes are used up. I lifted the Carrots growing in barrels on N1 Plot last Thursday, which gave me a good selection of both large, medium and baby carrots. These were grown without being thinned out and were sown fairly thickly into each barrel, keeping them adequately watered. The remaining carrots in the roots bed of N1 Plot will be harvested this week, leaving 8 rows at the seedling stage in 1 of my raised beds.
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| Carrots from My Barrels 22/Aug/2013 |
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| HI! |
Many Butterflies, bees and other insects have been visiting my plots in large numbers recently due to the continuing warm and sunny weather. My camera has been playing up recently. The problem has now been sorted out, so I expect it will be raining again soon.
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| How Long Are Your Beans |
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| Another Nice Harvest |
There's Always Tomorrow!!
Love the yard-long beans!
ReplyDeleteCheers Mark, most of these beans will be kept for seed for next year. Mainly due to the fact that even the heat loving Yard long is over developing far too quickly due to the persistent heat and sun.
DeleteWe like to get our potatoes up as soon as they have finished growing as if not we often have the slugs moving in!
ReplyDeleteIs that vine bindweed - this is a huge opest on our plot. We bring all that we dig up home ti dispose of away from he plot. Every tiny piece soon grows into a nuisance.
Hi Sue, you are right about the slugs, I normally lift mine all together but this year the ground is so dry that the slugs are almost none existent. The withy is similar to the normal bindweed, its the ground hugging type with the arrow head shaped leaves. From memory there are at least 2 types of the weed, one is black bind weed and they carry various viruses with them. I'm trying to clear every little piece out from bed 2, its extremely time consuming.
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