mudandgluts

That last quince on the tree has now fallen off. Maybe better luck next year. It was the first year it’s ever formed fruits after all.

Operation Aphid Squish is beginning. I jetwashed the broad beans this morning with the hose and have started the soapy water treatment on the other beans. Given how much blackfly there is on site this year I am not sure that it will make a difference but it’s worth a go. Squishing them is distinctly unpleasant though. Fortunately they don’t like peas and I have been munching away on the Kent Blues as a handy plot snack. They are nearly 5 ft high and dripping with flowers & pods.

I’ve finished digging the second bed on #92 and it’s now planted up with 2 rhubarbs (Timperley Early and the Glaskins Perpetual from seed), 2 Flat White squash, 11 popcorn, 5 kohlrabi and a rather large kiwano/jelly melon that was attempting to take over part of the greenhouse. I’ve fixed some mesh for it to climb. After years of painstakingly attaching the mesh to bamboos with clipties, it’s suddenly occurred to me that actually I could just thread the poles through the mesh and it will be just as sturdy. And takes seconds…

Putting the comfrey butt next to the greenhouse really was a bad idea. It smells so very, very bad. Even though the lid fits tightly. This winter it will be moved over to the daleks on plot 100, which is about as far away as I can get it.

The flowering beetroot has been pulled out and composted. They were only Chioggia, for which I have thousands of seeds and I couldn’t figure a way of isolating them from the chard on site. Plus they were also covered in blackfly. I do want to try again next year and will sow one of the varieties that is less common later this year in a tub and take them to Mum’s to isolate them.

It does mean that there was then space for the new courgettes and the other Crimson Crush tomato to go out. Which was nice.  Also out are the Rosella and Dancing with Smurfs tomatoes, the Mrs Fortune climbing beans and more kohlrabi in the squash bed. Need to net that or the pigeons will just scoff them.

My mini-fig had outgrown its small pot and is now about 18 inches tall with 4 healthy shoots coming off it. I’ve repotted it into a flower bucket, in a mix of 3 parts compost to 1 part sand and some BFB. It now lives outside, and already has a healthy population of blackfly on the top shoots.

Harvested: huge amounts of strawberries, redcurrants and mint plus some Kent Blues.

Still to sow: some more beetroot and carrots. Swedes, kale and PSB all need potting on. This time of year it never ends…