A Week On The Plot

I’ve fallen behind a bit with my diary, but that doesn’t mean nothing has happened. We are the proud owners of a fourth freezer. My Mum is moving and didn’t want this, so we have a small 4 drawer freezer to go in our collection. Some people collect stamps! I reckon it will cost us about £20 a year to run, since it is an A+ rated efficient machine. Not too bad when you consider how much it would cost to go and buy what we store.

Out oldest freezer has a savaplug, which makes it as efficient as it can be. I think it makes no sense financially or ecologically to scrap a working freezer to buy a more efficient model. The amount of energy saved would have to be quite high to compensate the energy of manufacture wasted plus the energy to scrap it and dispose of the gas etc.

Valor Potatoes

I’ve got the Valor lifted now. In terms of gross weight, slightly more productive than the Kestrel second early, already lifted. Unfortunately the amount of slug damage is far higher. About two thirds of them have been nibbled at by the little devils.

Val spread some old shower curtains out on the lawn, emptied the carrier bags onto it and sorted them. Some were a bit blighted and starting to rot so they were discarded and the storable sorted into ‘use first’ and ‘perfect’.

The good news is that we’ll have plenty of potatoes this year despite some losses. The Sarpo are nearly ready to come up now and I’ve 4 rows of them. The foliage shows some blight but I’m sure the actual potatoes will be fine. They’re also very slug resistant.

Plum Roma Tomatoes

These are a disappointment for the second year running. We’ve had an atrocious August with rain and little sunshine so the fruits aren’t even beginning to ripen. Worse still, they’re coming down with blight. I’m not surprised, we’ve had a lot of Smith periods and all the outdoor tomatoes I’ve seen on the site seem in a bad way.

Onions

I lifted my onions. Usually I do well with onions, but this year I was late with them. Onions are one crop you can’t be late with and get good bulbs. I’ve also got a lot of rot. It looks horribly like white rot, but maybe it’s just because things are so wet this year when they should be dry. Not my proudest moment.

Brassicas

I’m afraid it looks like the caterpillars have won this time, on plot 5 anyway. I had gone through them and checked carefully, squashing eggs and removing the caterpillars but one or two always get overlooked.. Some of my cauliflowers are just skeletons. Still, maybe a few will recover.

Compost Heap

I’d been weeding a lot and the comfrey needed a cut, so built up a new compost heap. I’ve layered the comfrey, which will act as an accelerator and turned the old heap, adding the un-decomposed from the top to the new heap.

Sweetcorn

Back on plot 29, the sweetcorn is ripening well so we harvested quite a few cobs. Many of the plants have 2 cobs on them and some 3, so a good crop there. Val was helping but got stung by a bee. I’m really worried, the bee will probably die. My application for husband of the year’s been rejected as well.

Runner and French Beans

What can I say? We have enough beans to feed an army. Soon I’ll stop harvesting the runners and leave them to grow on for seed and for the actual beans which are a good filler for stews. The French beans are well worth freezing, but they’re better fresh.

The borlotti beans seem OK, with a bit of decent weather we’ll be OK.

Greenhouse

The tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers are doing fine in there. We’ve a ridiculous amount of cucumbers. Don’t delivery men look surprised when you say “Hello, how many cucumbers would you like?” Nearly as many cucumbers as courgettes!

Carried on side-shooting the tomatoes. The Canadian types are real tryers, you have to keep on top of them. Some of the leaves were yellowing so they were cut off along with most of the lower leaves. I want to get what little sun there is to the fruits now and ripen them up. Can’t believe September is upon us tomorrow.

The Food Factory

Since it’s raining, we’ve converted the kitchen back into a factory. Blanching and freezing. Val’s making a bulk courgette soup, which will also be frozen. This time of year is always busy for us but things will slow down a bit in October.