Entries from November 2007 ↓

I have been out digging today. It’s been the first dry weekend in a while and I wanted to get as much done as possible.

So I borrowed a Terex spade to get the job done as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. If you don’t know what a Terex spade is you haven’t lived. See one in the pic below.

This flips the clod over very easily and spares your back a lot of pain later on. Though I still need the odd ‘nip’ to ‘recover. 😉

The other picture is of the collection of weeds – some of which I killed beforehand. You can see the hops bag that I collected from the brewer. These have all gone into the soil well so far and unfortunately for all you beer drinkers out there, will not impart any beer flavour to the vegetables.

I still need to go back as I am harvesting my sprouts now that the frosts have arrived. I am hoping some will last beyond Christmas and into the new year, but we will see.

The first picture below is sadly not of my plot, but of the guy’s near mine. He is retired and has all day to do it. You can see how having the extra time helps when you look at my previous post.

On another note I have been digging over my plot and integrating the horse manure and hops and some of my own compost to enrich the soil and to get it to break down.

The manure as rather fresh so the over wintering will allow it to break down and weather to avoid it burning the crops next year. I could have kept it to dig in in the spring, but I would have to keep it in bags as I’ve nowhere to overwinter it at home or the plot. Plus, the longer you leave it exposed at the plot, the more likely it is to reduce in pile size. By that I mean a lot of people have an eye on it for their own plot. Not that I would accuse any of my fellow plot holders on the site, but there have been a series of break ins on the site and tools and all things gardening/growing have gone missing. A pile of manure is just another draw for the thieves.

I will be going up again soon – not today as it hasn’t stopped raining – to get some sprouts now that we have a had a few good frosts. Instead, today we ate the aubergines I grew in pots. sorry on picture, but it was one of those days when cutting to plate was too fast for the camera.

Anyhow, here is my plot freshly dug over yesterday:

Strangely enough, the beans are not dead yet. Waiting a little longer for them to die away before removing everything.

This is how my leeks were last weekend. I know, it’s not that good to leave these weeds around something that’s growing. So I did have go and hoe those weeds away.

They now look much better.

I checked out the sprouts on Sunday. They are still growing, though I think they should be a little larger than they are:

I know we have been having cold weather and by rights not much will be growing this time of year, especially if it is outside, but my chillies are still doing the business and turning red

I am surprised that it is happening, but they are against a south facing wall. This means that I am still picking and drying them and then cooking with them.

It’s wonderful really, especially after all the ‘weather’ we have had this year.