There’s been lots of watering and some weeding going on and today we did some major weeding. Mum cleared from the elder to Mr B’s gate with a good fork weed and unearthed a few little plug lavenders still alive. The nasturtiums have dropped lots of their brain-like seeds all over the ground, so with any luck there’ll be some self-seeding going on.

I brought the lemon balm that I’d had in a pot at home and Mum put that in too. It’s not particularly thriving in the pot, but has at least already got new growth at the bottom, so it can get ready to spread next year in the bed. There’s a mint that’ll be planted out too when the right place for it become evident.

Over the course of two visits I did a variety of jobs, starting with emptying finished pots of terrible cherry tomatoes from home into the compost and then being distracted into pulling up lots of mare’s tail from the ridge. The nigella seed pods are all dried up and starting to open now. Nice to think that I’m filling this allotment a border of things that the next person – whenever they come along – is going to have a job to get rid of 😛

I pulled up all but one of the blight-ridden plum tomatoes. There are a few toms at the top of the last plant that might just ripen before the blight gets them. It’s certainly not been as destructive and fast-moving a blight as I’ve seen before.

When I arrived in the afternoon, wanting to get rid of the elder stem that had grown up outside the fence went from just quickly cutting that down into cutting off nettles, pulling up grass and thistles from along the fence, at the front and along the side of Mr B’s path, all of which were also poking through into the plot .

I deadheaded the gate sweet pea and put runner beans that had gone over into the compost and finally got to sit down and work on weeding the festival squash bed. Not easy as the plants are bushes rather than vines and the weeds were rather established right among the plants. As were a number of slugs. The job’s still not quite finished, but I did enough before I dropped to feel satisfied about a job that’s been on my list a long time.

Harvest-wise, I got a few tomatoes and a couple of good-sized beetroot, as well as one little orange carrot that actually looked like a carrot, but for the fact that a slug that bitten the top off and moved in. Fortunately he’d only ruined the top and left enough for a snack for me.