I missed last weekend and had forgotten that I’d left the plot in the middle of a job. It’s rained a lot in the last week, so the bucket of earth we’d left out was now a bucket a mud. The poles had all been washed off quite well though.

The tomatoes were completely killed off with blight, so the first job was to cut them down and bag them up for the bin. There were a number to take home – some actually red, some that may ripen. I only trod on a few, but we’re sure to get more volunteers next year.

The kalettes suddenly look a little different. There’s a million whitefly, which appear when you touch the plant and the actual kalettes are beginning to form properly. It will be a while before they’re worth picking though.

The robin came back to see me and enjoyed the newly empty plum tomato bed. Excitingly, there were also several signs of a hedgehog having been around in the plot. I may have to think again about a hedgehog house.

In doing lot of big weed removal, I pulled up the volunteer potato in Bed 1 without seeing its foliage. So that was quite a nice surprise.

 

After lunch we finished the tidying of the side of the shed and this time we put down the weed membrane that we didn’t last time. I’ve pinned it in a few places to try and stop the weeds just coming round the edge. All the wood and the wire fencing is back in place.

The next issue is where to put all the covered fencing that’s been supporting the tomatoes. All the walls and rings and currently just stood out of the way by the apple tree. Possibly I can flatten them, tie them together and file them down the side of the shed over winter.

I’ve dug up the volunteer currant bush and put it in a pot to see if it will make it through the winter. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it at that point. Bed 3 in place of at least some of the yarrow maybe?

Mum came down to the plot to pick the rest of the apples. We got another basketful and added some more green plum tomatoes to the harvest.

The main job was to make a start on clearing out the mess at the side of the shed. The edging wood was thrown down there when my renovations started and then at some point this year something went digging in next door’s compost heap and threw loads of soil through the fence on top of all the mess.

We got well down in the morning and propped up all the removed wood behind the shed and in the compost heap. A couple of buckets of earth were removed with more yet to come. But then the rain came down in the afternoon and that was that. It was heavy enough that I’m hoping it will have helped to clean things off and perhaps wash away some of the earth.

Apple time. I cleared up lots of apples that had fallen under the tree. Most were rotten to some extent, but there were also others that I rolled out for the harvest basket. There’s also a self-sown currant bush growing under there among a bunch of weeds.

I picked a basket of fairly good apples and there are some more left on the tree out of my reach. Although I took the harvest photo in sunshine, it was a one shift day as rain stopped play.

The first job was cutting the grass. The main path got a 1, the rest had to put up with a 3 and 2, at which point I needed to direct my energy elsewhere. The little pumpkin had been nibbled and fallen off the vine.

There were a couple more runner beans on the vine, but that will surely be it. The tomatoes definitely have blight now so I’m just doing what I can to gather the fruit and ripen them before they get too infected.

I did a bunch of seed collecting – morning glory and corn cockle. I have some cornflower seed – and there are a few self-sown cornflowers in Bed 7 already – but it’s difficult to get out of the seed heads. So I’ve finally given up on the dead plants in the bed and pulled them up for the council bin, rather than my compost bin. So that bed looks much tidier now.

Just a quick visit to check on the plot as I’ve been away for a while thanks to being under the weather and having things to do. A number of plum tomatoes had managed to start turning red although the plants are starting to look a bit blight-infected.

Even though the runner bean vines have given up there was a little cluster of beautifully flat pods.