2023 - What I did today

Weeded most of the fruit cage now. Lots of nettles and grass so should have worn a long sleeved shirt. Tied up a few tomatoes then covered early potatoes and courgettes with fleece as frost forecast overnight.

Yesterday was feed day.  Living by the sea we collect seaweed from time to time, firstly we give it a good rinse then put it in buckets with lids and add fresh water.  Leave it until it stinks then sieve out the seaweed which goes on the compost, we then have a lovely seaweed liquid.

Fruitcage weeding for me too both yesterday and today.

Planted out the tomatoes that had waited patiently at the plot over the weekend. Put in nerines and white pumpkins. Did some weeding and watering. At home I sowed a few giant pumpkin seeds (the one at the plot has popped up and is growing!), sweetcorn, some flowers? and finally finally potted on some strawberries started from seed and chillies/peppers.

Planted out climbing french beans after that we moved the brassica cage to the next bed along.

Cleared the broad beans as they have galloping chocolate spot. Planted out 12 cabbages Penca de mirandala in the space.
Put up some more tripods and planted haricot cosse violette & two sorts of gherkjns.
Planted out cucumbers and yard long beans.
Sowed corn, beetroot, turnips, lettuce, kale nero, rhubarb chard.
Cut and removed last patch of phacelia and then hoed ready for sowing but ran out of time!

Finished weeding the fruit cage then fed and watered the raspberries then carried on to water broad beans, peas, onions leeks and the polytunnel. Fed and watereed a strawberry bed. I would have done more but I was distracted by the wagon arriving to empty our septic tank.

Chased a bee off the broad beans that was just making holes in the base. It flew off to the nearby comfrey that was flowering. I gave the flowers a good shake to see if that helped pollination of the broad beans as I've had a very poor crop (because of that bee) for the last few years.

Potted up some courgettes and Giant Chives. Then, back to the pond for some more clearance and the development of a new Plan.

I desperately wanted to do more gardening today (and ideal overcast but mild weather again) as it was my last day of annual leave, but I instead spent all day doing work stuff. Seven days in a row off work (four days of annual leave, the bank holiday and the weekend) and I spent four of them doing work stuff and one in a heap with a stinking cold. If only I was paid for all the work stuff I do in my own time!

Anyway, I managed to dash around the garden wielding two big watering cans this evening. I didn't have time to refill them, so I just gave all my recent planting-outs and sowings a little trickle of water. I'll not be able to check on anything again until Saturday so I hope things survive.

I found another half-bird in the garden while I was watering. This time I haven't immediately buried it - let it be a warning to any birds thinking about hoiking up more sweetcorn!

Not so much what I did but more what happened. Next door lady, who is now alone since her husband died, went to visit her sister for a few days, Thursday to the following Tuesday. We looked after things whilst she was away, collecting post, watering gh and patio pots etc. Early afternoon she found me up the garden head down @rse in the air struggling to weed the rock hard ground of the fruit cage. She asked quite worriedly whether there had been an incident. No says I not as far as I know. She said her back door was broken, and there was water on the kitchen floor. Long story short, the plastic lower panel of the door was completely missing and a smell of bleach pervaded the kitchen. Nothing in the house looked disturbed but when she checked a fair amout of cash, some jewellery and her late husband's wedding ring were missing. It must have happened sometime after P went round that evening. Police and CSI visited but not much hope of a result. So unsettling for her and heartbreaking about the ring. Its made us all feel very vulnerable.