My twice-weekly drenching of the plots does seem to be working though.

I’ve got myself more organised – not been on top form for a few days and I can’t move fast so this is needed to make up some ground! There is a list of things to do on my Crapple and I am sticking to it. No getting sidetracked…

First on the list was sorting out the compost bins – thinking ahead to next year and having a better supply of well-rotted compost. 6 sacks of fresh manure went in – 3 bins are now full and the other 2 will follow. The hotbin is roaring along – it’s very hard to keep it filled up! Though it took a bit of digging into the site’s pile to get to steamy manure, and next time I will take the time to put wellies on instead of trainers. Manurey feet are not a good thing.

Pulled out lots of horsetail from the path & bottom bed and took a good look at the onions and celeriac. The latter looks like it’s been tunnelled so I’m not sure if I will have a crop or not. The onions look great though. There are some white marks on the leaves, but I am telling myself that that’s not allium leaf miner, no, no, no! Though I think I have found a few casings in my shallots so far. (bleurgh)

After hauling in 3 more bales of compost (I think that makes 7 this year, plus 3 bags of rotted stable manure) I’ve potted on the Winston Churchill fuschia from the balcony, cut up more comfrey and added it to the onion bag of slurry in the water butt, ‘encouraged’ the kiwano to climb, bagged 2 Black Futsu fruits for hand-pollinating tomorrow, pulled up lots of weeds from the hedge path and tied up the tomatilloes with only minor breakages. Also picked lots of cerinthe seed pods and Kent Blue pea pods to keep for next year’s seeds and spent some time coo-ing over the 4 Bozeman watermelons that I think have set – 1 definites, 3 maybes.

Lovely Lionel gave me some figs, all warm from the sun and squishy. Fab!

Finally, given some recent near miss Smith Periods, I’ve dug up 2 rows of Charlottes and a bag of Lady Cs. I’m going away for a bit and my waterer won’t really have time to check for blight. The Charlottes were ok – a lot more holes in them than I had thought, which means about 20% were unsalvageable. Another 10% had holes but are useable, so that’s us having a very big potato salad tomorrow evening. I can’t find my spud bags anywhere, so the harvest is in the shed for now till replacements arrive.