Trying to get ahead

I went down to the plot today in an attempt to get a little bit ahead with the work. At this time I tend to get bogged down in constantly harvesting the crops. It takes so long to collect crops at this time that I never seem to get time to prepare for next year and for the winter.

So this time I planned to prepare a patch for a green manure crop and perhaps get it sown as well. Before I started I decided to dig a row of my King Edward potatoes. I say 'my King Edwards' but I grow them because the wife likes them and I grow them even though they succumb to blight and other problems very easily. This year we have been lucky as there has been next to no blight so there is quite a good crop. Once dug I left them on the surface to dry off and went to prepare the patch.

I had just started when I I realised the patch I was preparing was going to be for Brassicas next year which means it needs to dug over this autumn and then left to compact for the crop next year. Green manure will need to be dug in next spring so it was no good for that patch! So I stopped hoeing off the weeds as I will be mulching the patch with horse litter and that can be left until later in the year!

So I went back to harvesting!

I got a few climbing French Beans, a very disappointing crop as I had hoped to freeze French Beans instead of Runner Beans but that will have to wait until next year now. I picked lots of Runner Beans even though it is only a couple of days since I had help doing a major pick when we picked what we thought was absolutely everything! I got more than enough for meal on the second pass, having picked a carrier bag full on the first pass. My wife is very good at processing the beans and freezing them in meal size packs, Though we have quite a large amount left over from last year which I am going to add to the compost heap in the hope they are not a total waste!

My Purple Teepee dwarf French Beans gave me another good picking but probably the last as the night-time temperature drops.

I was very happy to get a picking of peas but there was only enough for a meal so it was gone within the hour as was the sweet corn I picked. Afterwards I had reset the rat traps and added some rat poison within the containers. I have caught a few mice but the rats have eluded me so far; hopefully the poison will get them! They've had too many of my sweet corn!

Next time I need to dig over that patch ready for mulching it!