I only have one major harvest to report this week, but it's quite a good 'un.....a lovely big load of purple sprouting broccoli. I helped out at the community farm again and it was the last harvest from their site before they have a bit of a hiatus whilst sorting out the next place. So I did actually pick this myself but didn't grow it!
It was nice to actually help with the harvest as up until now I've mainly been hauling stuff around / folding up absolutely huge sheets of enviromesh (one of them was ginormous, I cannot describe how massive it was...and a real challenge to fold up and tie with rope to be transported for storage, even with three of us manhandling it).
So anyway, this was my portion of the PSB....delicious
Back at home, my tomatoes are getting rather large....ideally I've have potted them on by now but I'm holding off until I've collected some horse poo with a friend (hopefully this weekend coming). The pots are drying out really quickly, they're far too small. Luckily, even if the toms get a bit droopy they perk back up quite quickly after a watering.
I did plant out two of the toms though, just using some bought-in compost (peat-free). I also popped in a little basil plant with them as its meant to help keep pests away. When the basil gets a bit bigger I'll pinch its top out to encourage it to bush-up. I have some other basils that I've potted on too. In the tub behind the toms I've got a couple of cucumbers - I haven't grown them in here for a couple of years as I started to get red spider mite and wanted to break the cycle. So we'll see how they do this year. I have an old bit of trellis for them to climb up (that I got from a skip of course). The sticks are to stop our cat digging up the compost (which she would definitely enjoy doing!)
I'm continuing to harden-off the plants that will be set out in the back garden or allotment eventually. It's a bit of a faff taking them all in and out of the lean-to each day but it will be worth it as they'll have got used to being outside. It's also important to check under / along the sides of the trays for slugs and snails as they try and hitch a lift and then rampage through all the plants overnight.
This afternoon at the allotment I've been weeding the two beds where my sweetcorn will go....they're my priority to get planted out first as they don't like having their roots disturbed (here they are in the pic below in loo rolls). The beds were riddled with couch grass..so tedious to weed, though quite satisfying when you pull out a really long root all in one go.
I have a few runner beans in loo rolls too for up at the plot, which also really need to get planted out....another job for this week but more weeding needed first. The squashes are all getting big as well...basically everything is needing to go out, argh.
So that's me...weeding, potting on and (hopefully) planting out this coming week. Oh, and re-sowing things that didn't work or have been eaten by slugs, ugh ( I have found some slug hidey-places and am trying to be more vigilant checking them).
I'm linking in as usual with Harvest Monday hosted by Dave at Our Happy Acres
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