2023 - What I did today

Planted 2 sweet potato tubers with slips.
Potted up some cucumber seedlings - Mini Munch, Miniature White and Perfection.
More weeding.
Pulled up some bolting carrots - since its Carrots day. The ground's too dry to sow any.

Yesterday, as I now have room because the outdoor tomatoes are spending their nights outside, I planted out one border of gh1 with some of the indoor toms. Previous years ive planted six to an 8' border, I resisted this year and only put five a side. The decisions to make - which varieties to the front/to the back/near the door/near the darker end. It's all rather academic, it'll end up like the Amazon jungle eventually no matter what I do. Rather than big toms in one gh and little ones in t'other, I've mixed and matched alternating big and little. Potted up a Summerlast patio tomato and put it, guess where.........on the patio!

Potted up courgettes that I thought weren’t going to germinate.
Pulled up some bolted lettuce.

Another trailer load of plants moved. Planted some daffodil bulbs on the bank behind the post box.
Started digging bed 2.

Potted up courgettes that I thought weren’t going to germinate.
Pulled up some bolted lettuce.

Snap! Five Cocozelle courgettes and all the bolted lettuce in GH1. This made space for 2 bottomless pots into which I've planted 6 DFBs.
Put mesh bags on the peaches to protect the fruit from the birds.
Pulled up a load of sticky willy - horrid stuff. Bit more weeding on Bed 2A.

Busy working yesterday but got to the plot this afternoon. I'll aim for morning during warm weather!

Planted out most of my CFB, which included building bamboo structures and providing strings to climb. One or two pots left at home. The Mrs Fortune's beans all rotted in my first attempt. I have a handful left so I'll treat them nice and hope for some germination. Everything else germinated from the first sowing though, so low hopes there.

Planted out melon plants. Very very low hopes there, but they grew so nicely to this point, so maybe they have a shot.

Some things look a bit downtrodden, but the tomatoes seem happy enough, if small. The courgettes are putting out some new leaves. The recently planted CFB look pretty healthy. Things are still fairly encouraging.

Looking forward to eating more things from the plot soon. Lettuce and radish to be picked next time I'm there.

Constructed two A frames with 2m bamboo and twine.
Planted various CFBs for shelling and runners:
CFB La Vache - brown and white (like a cow!)
CFB Uzice Speckled Wax - black and white
CFB Borlotto Lingua di Fuoco 2
CFB District Nurse
CFB Tresnjevac 
Runner Scarlet Emperor (for pods)
Runner Gigantes (for shelling)

The Vache, Uzice and District Nurse are new to me so I hope they perform well. I grew the Borlotto last year, didn't have a good harvest although the small number of beans I did get were lovely and fat so thought I'd try again and see if they adapt and do better. District Nurse is a Borlotto type bean also so I'll just stick with whichever one yields better. 

Very pleased to have done all that.  Looking forward to having less plants to put outside and bring in each day.

I planted another gh border with toms and also some cucumbers in both gh. I'm always amazed at how long it takes. Had to do a bit of watering of the pots lurking to be planted out. Put shading over the gh.
Tomorrow's shopping day but I might get something planted in the afternoon if I'm not too lazy after lunch. Possibly DFBs.

Dedicated today to the removal of Sticky Willy - the garden waste bin is almost full of the stuff.

I've felt really rough since Saturday. Ended up having to leave work a couple of hours into a long day on Tuesday as I felt so unwell. I've not had time off with anything other than Covid since December 2019 when I had Influenza A so I think my immune system has gone overboard fighting this virus off.

Thankfully, I'd already taken today through to next Tuesday as annual leave so I have since time to recover. I'm definitely a bit better today, though I've not managed to actually do anything. I sat and cut down the peas I sowed for peashoots (now overwhelming my broadbeans), chopped them up and added them to the Hotbin. That was enough for me and I had to come in. Hopefully I'll feel up to getting more done tomorrow.