Preparations for my Holiday

In my absence I hope this fleece will shelter the young plants before being blown away.

Sunday 4th June
Going away in a few days and too much to do! With the warm weather I struggled to work on the plot during the day that resulted in me arriving early and then going home for a late breakfast them returning after my evening meal and working until dark. Indeed today, for the first time ever, I unlocked the gate this morning and locked it as I left in the dark.
Early morning and late evening on the plot are the best times to enjoy the atmosphere. - and get the work done. Over the last few days I have sown, planted, netted, dug and tidied ready for my break and not had chance to write up the blog. This therefore is a summary of all my diurnal sessions.
I started my morning visits on the first day of June, the start of the meteorological summer. I came down to sow my climbing French beans, two seeds at the base of each cane in the newly constructed framework. I then formed a groove between the rows to make sure any water stays close to the seeds and plants. Finally I removed the fleece screen from the runner beans, as they had grown tall enough to avoid bring pecked at by the red-legged partridges, and arranged it round the French beans instead.

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​I then turned my attention to the brassica tunnel. I removed six large kale plants and weeded the patch they occupied ready to plant a follow-on crop of winter greens. I have already planned that this tunnel will be moved to its new position at the end of next spring and so will house the winter brassicas. Next spring the other tunnel will move first so needs to be empty as early next year as possible and has the summer and autumn brassicas planted in it. The last crop to harvest in that tunnel will be the Christmas Brussel Sprouts.

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I have also planted a range of squashes and courgettes.
Three courgettes, two yellow and one green, will supply most of our needs I hope. Yellow courgettes, which I prefer as they have a thinner skin, produce less vigorously and last year failed almost completely. The grass cuttings will form a mulch to keep the moisture in - after the rain that is forecast.
In the bed where I had planned to plant sweet corn (but the seed didn't germinate) I planted three vegetable spaghetti squashes (my favourite) and three butternut squashes with two marrow plants between. These are Tiger Cross F1 variety which can be picked as courgettes if the others fail.
In a vacant patch of the potato bed I had to dig the soil over as it had been left for nearly two years while growing brassicas. It was very compacted despite previously being covered by a woodchip horse litter mulch.
The dry soil came up in big chunks that needed much prodding and bashing to break it down. Fortunately I had hoed the weeds off beforehand which made the task much easier.
 In this patch I planted two winter squashes (Crown Prince) and two summer squashes (Rolet) with a pumpkin (Small Sugar) in the middle. At the back I found space for a fourth vegetable spaghetti squash plant so I don't run out next winter!
All this presupposes that they will survive while I am away but 'you can but try'!

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​One of the last tasks I completed before going away for my holiday was dealing with the weeds outside the front and at the back of the plot. I didn't have the time left to deal with them as I normally do so I was reduced to using weedkiller. Fortunately InExcess was offering ready to use glyphosate in 3 litre bottles at a very good price. I poured it into my spray bottle and, setting it to coarse spray to reduce over-sprayer, waited until there was very little wind and sprayed all the overgrown areas at the front and surrounding my shed and greenhouse.