Late evening visit

I have had alot to do at home this week so tonight was the first chance I had to get down to the plot.
I got to the plot after six and was surprised at how high my Italian Ryegrass green manure had grown. Thank goodness I had a holiday job many years ago cutting grass - before the days of strimmers, so I made short work of it with my bill hook.

However, as I was swinging my hook I came across a clump of dead grass with a hole underneath. Now I know I have a mole problem but I don't think they use clumps of grass. Anyone got any ideas?

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Having cut the grass I realised that there were some jobs I needed to do while the light was still good, so I got on with sowing a row of carrots that were Carrot fly resistant (Maestro F1 from Suttons) and a half a row of beetroot, remembering to leave a plank over the carrot seed to keep the soil damp through the initial germination period. The beetroot should germinate easily though it was old seed (2012) so I sowed quite thickly.


Remembering the weed problem from my last entry I got the hoe out and worked on the onions patch sown this spring. Most of the weeds were so small that they succumbed easily but I left the larger thistles as I know they are very deep rooted and I think the only way I can deal with them is with Glyphosate weedkiller. If I use one that translocates down to the roots then I might have a chance of controlling the problem! I shall have to be very careful and use a trigger spot sprayer to avoid affecting the crops.
I then managed to fix one piece of netting to my second brassica tunnel. Thankfully it was plenty long enough.
Finally I harvested. First I cut another huge cauliflower - leaving two plants growing strongly and hopefully developing lovely white curds under the leaves.
I also dug a few leeks, nothing big  but there are still some reasonably thick ones.
I then had a choice between a cabbage or Swiss Chard. As the light was fading fast I chose the chard as I was not sure I could see how bad the whitefly/slug problem was on the cabbages. I cut a huge bunch of chard and will choose the best leaves at home but that means bringing the uneatable leaves back down for the compost heap.

The last job was to gather up the cut grass and load it onto the compost heap. There was alot and it took some time to stack it on an already full bin!
As I was last of a queue of cars to leave the site in the gathering gloom (I drove right round the site to check noone was still working) I padlocked the gate and scrambled the number - just a little as whoever arrives in the morning, probably quite early, will curse if they have to spend too much time unlocking!