Light work for warm weather.

Saturday August 27
Last Thursday I got down on the plot to help clear glass from behind the Trading Hut. Having moved it out to where we could load it up to take to the tip on Friday morning I went on to the plot. It promised to be hot and was already warming up so I decided against lifting a row of potatoes. Instead I concentrated on weeding and thinning the row of baby fennel. The weeds were so thick I had to run a hoe down each side of the row to loosen the soil and enable me to pull out the weeds growing closer to the seedlings. Then I hoed the general area and raked up the fallen growth for the compost bin before watering the remaining seedlings and the tomato gro-bags.
I remembered that the purple sprouting broccoli was crowding out some cauliflower plants so I removed some older lower leaves and earthed them up to make the plants stand upright. That opened up the patch for both broccoli and cauliflower.
I then noticed that some of the plants were being attacked by caterpillars and started squishing them. I must have found at least 50. I was particularly careful checking the younger smaller plants as they can be decimated by caterpillar attack. I then sprayed the smaller plants with pyrethrum spray against whitefly of which there were clouds.
In my glassless greenhouse there was signs that the blight, of which we had a warning from Blightwatch, had affected a few tomato leaves so I removed them  in the hope that the weather would improve and stop the attack.
I lifted the last of my onions now the tops have flopped and gone brown. I had eased then up with a fork a few days ago to break the roots and facilitate drying off so I collected them in a bucket to take home and set out upside down on a grid in my plastic "Gro-house". At this time of year it is empty off seedlings being hardened off and is an excellent airy place to dry onions.
Finally I got a good picking of runner beans, French beans (both climbing and dwarf) as well as peas, strawberries and raspberries. I also cut a good solid summer cabbage, the first of the Greyhound cabbages inter-planted with red cabbages. To add to this a neighbour gave me a half dozen apples, one of which tasted delicious later that evening.