I had taken home the kale plants after my last visit and stripped them of leaves and sprouts for the freezer, so there was room to plant a row of seed potatoes. No-dig does mean I didn't have to dig over the patch but just hoe the weeds and cultivate the surface. I then buried the seed potatoes just beneath the surface with a tiny ridge to ensure the chitted shoots were covered. Then I drew a small ridge of soil over the row ready for mulching with a thick mulch of horse litter. I mulched the early potatoes, carefully covering the emerging shoots, and covered all that patch including the second earlies and Cara potatoes. Not tidy but effective! I then had time to pick yet more purple sprouting, this time from the dwarf plants on the new cabbage patch inside the newly constructed brassica cage. I finished off by putting the finishing touches to the cage with a pair of hooks to hold up the batten the door netting is wound round.
Saturday 13th April Having missed a visit or two with a throat infection and the installation of my wood stove, I made an extra visit today. With the Working Party tomorrow, Sunday, I will get nothing done on my plot then. My main target was to finish netting my half completed brassica cage. Both sides are pigeon proof but the top and door are open. The old netting was stored rolled on its batten in the shed, with the runner bean canes. A couple of staples held the end on the back rail and I rolled the batten along to top and dropped it down the front over the doorway. With a bit of adjustment I was able to staple the netting to the top side rail, folding the slack with a stapled 'Hospital corner' at each end where it bent over the end hoop. The end, rolled on the batten, lays on the ground and held in place with stakes and a couple of short post ends laid to trap the netting against the stakes. That covers the doorway. With the netting complete I was able to remove the netting and bottles protecting the plants within. Having the young cabbages under the bottomless plastic milk bottles has got them off to a good start and the autumn planted cabbages are beginning to heart up and will do better now they are not shaded by the net tunnel. Once I had put my tools away I started harvesting. I pulled the row of curly and black kale plants as I need the space to plant my maincrop potatoes. They had started flowering but, after lifting the plants, I chopped off the root so I could take the whole plant home to harvest what is useable. Then I started picking the purple sprouting broccoli. The heads were very loose with an odd flower but there was masses of it and it took a while to pick it all! While picking it I saw that a couple of cauliflowers had headed. One was a good size but the second had separated. Even so they were both useable though they took an effort to uproot. Finally I dug up a couple of leeks.
Then I bagged up a load of rubbish from my dump just inside the gate and from my neighbour's heap outside his and squeezed it into the trailer alongside my garden waste, taking it to the tip on the way home. Having completed the framework of the cage I retrieved the netting from the shed and started stapling it onto the frame. Starting at the back I fixed the side strip of buttefly netting. The other side has a lower strip of 2 inch square netting that lets the small birds in to deal with the greenfly with the butterfly netting above. Butterfly netting covers the metre wide strip above this wide netting.
I had to be quite careful measuring and checking before stapling the netting in place so it took me some time. However, I was happy with the result when I had to go home without doing anything else. It only remains for me to cover the top of the cage. Sunday 7th April
Returning from a trip away, I wanted to get on with rebuilding the first brassica cage on the new patch at the far end of the plot. I was stopped last time by not having suitable battens for the side stringers so I visited InExcess on the way and collected enough for this cage and the second. I stopped at the gate and the Trading Hut to put up notices for next week's Working Party so decided to have my Sunday morning coffee straight after unloading the timber. It was great to see that the Wildlife List on the cabin was already very long -and it has only been up a week! After coffee I returned to the plot and sorted the best battens for the stringers. They need to be in line with the edges of the netting for stapling so I spent some time measuring and marking where to fix them. Even so I had to make some adjustments while fitting them. Once I had finished the structure felt quite strong and stable so I hope to do without any diagonal struts. All this had taken some time and I realised it was lunchtime when my neighbours settled down for a picnic. Hence there was no time for harvesting. I got a shock when I started to post my latest blog item! The last post was the beginning of March! Of course I've not been doing nothing, in fact as normal spring is the busiest time and I have managed to write some posts.
The problem has been that transferring the text onto the website is both complicated and tedious. Hence this post is being tipped onto the website direct! However the problem that stopped me in my tracks a few weeks ago was when I accidentally deleted the programme (Sorry - app!) I use to write the text. When I tried to download it again they had upgraded it so my tablet can't use it any more! With help from Karl Foreman (? Plot 100) I am now trying out another app - Google Keep - so I'm posting last Sunday's entry. No photo but the text seems to work! Just need to post date the entry to get it to display in order! |
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May 2023
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