1st Week of June
In the first picture it’s looking a lot like summer!
The potatoes are galloping ahead in the warm sun and longer days. We’re also getting through the manure, just a small pile left now as the “digging marathon” end is approaching.
The tomatoes are doing well in the Polytunnel, we were very grateful that we didn’t put them in earlier as the winds and storms would certainly have brought them to an early demise.
We are now proud owners of a rechargeable strimmer which will be useful for cutting the grass. We are going to be cultivating every inch of the plot except for pathways as we want to maximise our growing capability. The strimmer will be handy for the currently uneven and less than perfect grass we are dealing with along the paths. Will need a second battery though as even with this small amount of grass, it takes 1 hour or so to cut.
Hoorah!! The 3rd quadrant of digging is finally over! June 5th - so, twice dug, manured and it has taken from October 10th 2020 to June 5th 2021 - that’s a lot of digging… but we made it!!
In the next picture you can see the 3 quadrants all nicely dug over. We are not using raised beds preferring open plan but it will be interesting to see during the summer how we are afflicted or otherwise by weeds growing through. Our intention is to keep taking out weeds, Couch grass, Bindweed, etc. as we see them pop out and just burn these directly so as to keep on top of everything. Regular weeds will just be hoed and left to compost on the soil.
The butternuts are also now “planted out”. You can see them in the quadrant with the fire, bits of orange peel scattered around in an attempt to deter slugs (not very successfully).
The next picture, a closer look at the outside tomatoes and the butternuts, which we will be growing along the ground this year to provide some ground cover. Notice to the right of the polytunnel we have planted out some onions into a narrow piece of ground. This bit of ground was going to be the fourth quadrant until the idea of the polytunnel came about. Now using it for our first onion crop.
The last picture is the first actual edible item we have grown on the plot - a radish and a mighty big one too! That might serve us a few salads. We intend to let some radish go to seed this year so we have plenty next year.
