​Hoeing and weeding

Monday 11th February
With the warmer weather I thought it a good idea to deal with some of the weeds before they start growing. I had brought my small hoe to use between my onion sets and garlic. The soil was quite damp but hopefully the next few days will be dry enough to kill off the seedling weeds I 'unearthed'.

When I had finished I realised it was a good idea to hoe the asparagus bed before the shoots start to emerge and only hand weeding is possible.

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​I then realised that it also might be worth covering the soil to warm it up where I plan to plant my first early potatoes. I had a roll of landscape fabric but had to pull up a few brassica plants to clear the space. One small cauliflower had already begun to go mouldy and the Romanesco plants all were struggling as this is not the normal time of year for them to crop.

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​I then moved on to pruning my gooseberries. There were some shoots growing up through the middle of each bush to remove and a few long twigs but the major task was to cut them back to avoid them trying to grow through the netting. Generally this meant removing a whole branch where there was a younger one ready to replace it or cutting back to remove the end of the branch.
That done I fetched my large (6 inch) hoe and hoed off the last of weeds growing round the base of the bushes. There were so many weeds I had to rake them off afterwards and put them in the compost.

​Following that I just fetched a few barrow loads of horse litter from the heap on the 'Roots' bed and spread it as a mulch. While doing that I spread the mulch to cover under the blackberry plant at the end of the row. I hope that will make it easier to keep it from rooting into the ground so much.

To finish I spent a few minutes pulling some of the rotting crab apples off the tree by the leaf mould bins. I got half a bucket and there is at least three times as much still to remove!