Today’s job was tidying up Bed 1. Some of the vines were very long. This one above had  stem that reached from the plant at this end of the bed all the way to the other end – with nothing growing on it!

I dug up a heavy bucket of weeds from the bed, leaving some of the black nightshade that has self-seeded. The borage and viper’s bugloss have been propped up better now, so they’re not lounging all over the place.

Metres and metres of dead and/or empty vines with crunchy leaves have gone to the compost heap – enough that the top surface is pretty much covered with the tipped out bucketfuls. All the pear gourds were done so I harvested them. It’s a bit early, but the vines were absolutely dead, so there was nothing left to do.

One of the Turk’s turbans has also come home, as it was pretty much off its vine. The stalk is a little moist, but I’m hoping it’ll dry out ok. Three more gourds plus a small one remain on mostly dried out vines. The handful of small warted gourds still have pretty green vines, so I just tidied them up.

All these gourds are now in the grow house to keep drying off and curing. There’ s a total of 8 pear-shaped ones in addition to the round warted gourd (which broke off) and the Turk’s turban.