Lifting the last of the potatoes

Saturday 23rd September
I need to get the last of the Sarpo Mira potatoes out of the ground so I came down to the plot specially. After sorting out a couple of issues regarding the new container with our chairman, I set to digging them up. I had cut down the haulms some time ago to avoid the dreaded blight but obviously didn't do it early enough. There were at least a dozen soggy stinking masses that had been potatoes. Most of the plants had one or more affected tubers. I need to remember that even Sarpo Mira is not immune from blight, only 'resistant'. There was also quite a bit of slug damage, possibly because the slugs had a lovely time while I was away on holiday and the weeds grew luxuriously. The spuds will need careful sorting before I store any and the bag of haulms and infected potatoes will have to go to the tip..
Once the tubers were out drying in the sun I dug out some carrots. Once again they had suffered from various forms of attack and I threw more than half of those I lifted onto the compost heap. They were seriously crowded as well, resulting in some peculiar shapes so when I had finished I turned to the row of young seedling carrots and went along the row thinning them so there was at least a finger width between each seedling. Later I will thin them some more and then lift them before they have time to suffer too much.
Having forgotten to harvest the dwarf French beans, Safari, last time I started on them. There were a few beans on the plants I had previously cropped but no flowers so I decided to pull the plants up and then pick the beans. This meant I didn't have to bend over so much (something I find a major problem with dwarf french beans) - and it is easier to avoid leaving some beans behind.
I pulled up the rest of the row bar two plants, which I have left to produce seed for next year, and got quite a crop. The Tendergreen beans growing alongside are going to be left to provide dried 'haricot' type beans as they are not as tender as Safari but have produced lots of pods.
I had brought down a plastic tub into which I had emptied two boxes of Garotta compost activator. I left it ready for use by the compost bins, two handfuls over every substantial layer.