We really are being spoiled with the run of three day weekends we have had since Easter, it’s a shame we have to wait until August now for the next one!
After coming back from Spain on Thursday we knew that while there had been some warm days, there had been mostly cooler temperatures and quite a bit of rain. This was to bode well for how things had got on in our absence! However, as predicted last week the tray of calabrese that had suffered in the heat had not had a miraculous recovery and so I had to sow some more calabrese green sprouting, purple sprouting and summer purple sprouting broccolis. But at least the old dried out tray did not go to waste, as we discovered the culprit in ‘cat bum gate’!
We had a lovely lunch with friends today so we only got to the plot after 4pm. We had a long list of things we wanted to get done and managed to check off quite a few items despite the late hour. The tomatoes have come on well and suddenly looked tall and full of side shoots, so Neil removed them and tied them up.
We potted on the aubergines (jackpot and long purple) and most of the courgettes. Although, oddly, the zucchini variety hadn’t germinated at all so I popped another few seeds while we potted on the rest. We also potted on the chillies (which I think we were on the third or fourth sowing of after a strange run of issues with them!) and as a result of all of these jobs, Neil had to take down one side of the staging to make extra room.
On a slightly smaller scale I sowed some more Savoy cabbages as they had some patchy germination and I pricked out some leeks (almera) into larger pots to get them a bit stronger while also sowing a large pot of the jolant variety.
In the greenhouse on 118 Neil hacked back some of the grapevine, and I do mean hacked back. It grows with abandon and I’m convinced that the harsher you treat it, the more it likes it! We try and train a central line along the apex of the greenhouse roof so that it doesn’t get too much in the way of the other produce in there but it still persists in trying to, literally, branch out!
As for outside jobs, there was lots of re-jigging of the coldframe to be done to fit in the cauliflower (snowball), zinnia, aster (milady), chrysanthemum (mixed) and celeriac (prinz) that were ready for some cooler conditions. I also gave the shallots a water, as while they didn’t need the moisture after a lot of rain in the last day or so, they did need some organic feed as they had some yellowing tips and generally looked in need of a bit of a boost.
We dug up the spinach that had most definitely gone to seed! In fact I was joking that we had been keeping it in until it grew as tall (yes I said tall!) as me. Well it had exceeded that height, so it was most definitely time for it to come out. We’ll add some manure and feed to the bed once we dig it over to get it ready for whatever is next to come.
There are still jobs left on the list for tomorrow’s bonus weekend day but we are hoping for drier conditions to get more done outside, fingers crossed.
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