Week ending 2nd September

​It is with a guilty conscience I realise I have not posted anything on the blog for over six weeks. I have been rushed off my feet trying to complete the work around the cabin, prepare for the show, entertain visiting grandchildren and coping with the wife falling and injuring herself! Back in July I wrote a post for a week's work but then didn't actually post it so it may  appear in the near future if I can locate the appropriate photos.
This week I have tried to get some work done as, while the grandkids were here, they needed supervising with harvesting and so nothing extra was completed. 

Now I struggle to keep up with the harvesting on my own and don't have time for anything else it seems.
WORK
I decided on my visit on Saturday the only way was to ignore harvesting initially and concentrate on one of the many tasks in my list. I focused on the peas as the most mature row had started growing through the netting. Teasing the plants from the netting as gently as I could, I only pulled a few out of the ground and there was only a handful of peas that needed collecting to take home. It looks as if there will be quite a harvest of peas in a week or so.

​I then moved the wire arched decorative fencing that I used to support the first crop over to the last row of peas I have sown which are just a few inches high. The netting was left as I need some stakes from the Trading Hut if I am to avoid the problem I had just dealt with!

Then I got my hoe out and hoed between the peas and beans hoping, vainly, that it wouldn't rain.
​I also hoed between the seedlings hoping to reduce the number of weeds that threaten to swamp the crops.
Sunday's rain probably negated all my efforts!















​HARVESTING
Both Runner and French beans are producing prodigiously; a carrier bag full at each visit! Offering them to friends and neighbours only works if they aren't growing their own! On Friday I stripped the Runner beans of all the older, tougher, beans and threw them on the compost. The next day I picked the rest for consumption. Even then there were some that were too big to be at their best so we extracted the beans for later use. (I may go back to the compost heap to recover those thrown away to harvest the beans as well.)
When I looked at the French beans they seemed ok - until I started picking when there were hundreds of them! One full carrier bag despite me disposing of anything a bit over developed.

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​I checked out the dwarf French beans that are growing extremely well. I collected a handful of very young beans to take home from the first three plants in the row. There will be huge amounts to harvest in a few days.
After that I sorted out some shallow pots and began collecting raspberries. I needed two pots even though I have only half a row of Polka raspberries producing as all the others are newly planted and won't fruit this year.
Then I moved on to the blackberries. I have two plants running along the fence on either side of my plot absolutely covered in fruit. Again I filled two pots but rather deeper - with the result there was juices running out of the bottom by the time I got home. - and that from was only one plant as I ran out of time!
OTHER CHORES
I had finally remembered to bring down the kitchen waste bin and emptied it onto the compost. Fortunately I also had a dustbin full of grass cuttings from a neighbour to cover it with as the kitchen waste was very smelly. Even so the chap on the next door plot commented on the smell so I collected some weeds to further contain things. At least that meant the path was cleared of the heaps of weeds I'm always collecting.
Hopefully next week I will be able to tick off a few more tasks from my long list!