2023 - What I did today

Ouch!! Anything broken?

Ouch!! Anything broken?

The block of wood is fine  I’m not sure about my foot. Starting to think it’s a little more than just a bruise.

Hopefully its just bruised. (your foot, not the wood).

Ouch!! Anything broken?

The block of wood is fine  I’m not sure about my foot. Starting to think it’s a little more than just a bruise.

Ooh! Nasty and painful. No ballet for you this week. Hope it gets better soon SC.

It’s all good definitely not broken. Just fat and many shades of purple. That’s my professional opinion anyway.

Spotted a crow pinching a pear so decided to bag some of the fruit to protect it. To get to the pears, I had to cut down some brambles and honeysuckle that were growing through the tree. Also had to cut back a forsythia and a big fuchsia that were alongside it. Once I'd done that, I wasn't sure it was worth the effort! There weren't many decent pears on the tree. Some were small, some had fallen off, one had a ring around like you see on tomatoes when you overdo the watering and they split their skins. Hope this isn't going to happen to the other tree fruit.
Went down to the old pond/swamp where the courgettes were having a good paddle. Managed to reach one courgette without getting my feet wet but the rest will have to wait for a wellie day.
I need a plan to capitalise on this waterlogged area. The courgettes are thriving there.

Collected seeds. Picked up a mole hill.

Picked some pea pods for seed next year. Tied up some the flowering onions producing seed for next year. Then harvested some nectarines, 8 courgettes and a cucumber. After lunch, harvested a 19' row of early potatoes that had died down. They looked good with very little slug damage and weighed just over 18kg so nearly a kg per foot. The only feed they had was at planting time when the shallow trench had a 2" layer of homemade compost at the bottom and a good watering with comfrey and urine mix. I'm thinking that I'll plant more earlies in future as they will keep long after Christmas and a smaller amount of maincrop as they are more affected by slugs.

The soil/compost mix looked really good while I was digging them up so I think I'll plant autumn sown onions there later on and may be a couple of squash next year. I sowed the Autumn onions on the 16th August last year which seemed to work OK.

Heavy rain again stopped play. I potted up some windowsill clutter - a ginger root, a rooted rosemary cutting and a big avocado stone that I was given a few weeks ago (photo on the avocado thread).

Whole crew to the allotment. Pulled some of the many weeds while husband and daughter harvested. The no-dig beds need some weeding but it's mostly the edges. The plot is still growing beautifully, although I think blight is setting in on tomatoes, so the weeds aren't too disheartening. I do feel nervous about how we'll carry on next year though.