We have had a lot of heavy rain in the past week – some really insane downfalls. Happily, the allotment wasn’t a quagmire though and the soil was perfect for pulling things up and doing a bit of digging.

The bitter melon trellis was semi-collapsed again, so I dismantled it all with a knife and removed the poles from the ground. The vines and netting are now on the compost heap, so the rat can have fun getting tangled in that.

There were a lot of red tomatoes, but many of them were split, weird or just plain on the ground. A few little asters have just started flowering in that bed though, just to slow the putting to bed process.

I pulled up the remaining vines from the big trellis. The marigolds are still blazing, even though I’m not deadheading them. Removing the vines left a lot of big weeds and a smattering of weird fungus.

I cut the last gourds and pulled up the vines from the back bed, which left a similar pile of big weeds. Weirdly, there are still big caterpillars on the nasturtium in the middle. I’ll leave it there another while to see if something ever eats them.

Most of  the French beans are done, but I was able to pick another little handful. I pulled up a few plants for the compost, but have left a few too, as they still have beans and even flowers.

Before lunch, I pulled up the tomato plants for the rubbish and scooped up as many of the dropped tomatoes as I could. There ended up being a lot to take home, so I called for reinforcements as I’d not brought the car all the way down.

The apple tree is leaning more and more. The stake is also leaning and isn’t offering any support at the moment. I picked another bagful of apples – too many to lay out to photograph! – and raked up a good number of the fallen ones.

I went back after lunch to take advantage of the soil conditions and went around digging up as many of the big weeds as I could. I ultimately filled two buckets.

I dug up four sweetcorn roots as well, which was hard work. Definitely a job to spread out over a few visits. That nasturtium in the middle, which self-seeded last year, has dropped so much seed. I should really scoop it up and never buy seed again!

I’ve finally pulled up the big weed by the shed. It never did flower, it just went from bud to seed. There are still flowers around the place, the newcomers being the asters which have finally appeared here and there. I might need to transplant them to flower beds as part of the autumn tidy up.

If there was someone using the plot behind mine (which is going to be covered in thistle seed any minute), they’d be enjoying my black-eyed Susans, which are flowering well, just the wrong way.

The sweet williams in the pot suddenly look very big and probably need to be thinned out a bit more, if I can get them out.