Wind Store Weeds & Spuds

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There was a high wind warning for last night and today and I have never seen wind like it down on the plot 

The storage rack made from old blow away tube and fittings that I installed at the covered storage area behind the shed finally started to collapse, and with the blue water pipe and other materials I have been scrounging I could not get to the wheelie bins that are in the internal corner formed by the boundary wall to get at the weed membrane sheets that I have stored in there. 

There was also no room to shelter and sit in the shed when the rain started, so the next dry spell I decided that I would remove everything from the storage area and I gathered enough wood to install two bearings and I cut roofing battens to length to make a shelf not unlike the one in the onion rack. 

You can't see it in this photo but I can comfortably store and stack the food buckets four high under the upper shelf. At the moment the upper shelf is holding mushroom trays & gravel trays that will ultimately go in the new greenhouse.

As the sides of the extension are now load bearing, I added two feet to the front of the side panels to take the load off the brackets attaching the sides to the rear of the shed. 

I spent some time pulling the weeds from paths and beds around the plot and clearing paths from invading Squashes

Because there is a step in level between Plot 1A and Plot 1 - I've had a change of mind about putting a full 1.2m wide bed at the interface, as if I work on that bed from the 1A side the path will be 200mm above the ground level until I manage to fill the bed up.

So using off-cuts from the Roof Joist I have been cutting for the beds, I cut four 600mm long timbers and gave them a couple of coats of paint during the day after the showers had stopped and the timber had dried in the sun. 

The sweetcorn cobs have finally arrived in less than a week! They are finally there waiting to be germinated, the problem I see is that the wind was so hard that there is little chance that the pollen got to where it needs to be, but only time will tell. 

The other problem was that the high wind pushed over a couple of corn so the two 1.2m bamboo and cable tie rescue plan was implemented to hopefully save the plant.   

On the left is bed 9 Butternut Squash and it's taking over the paths and invading the beds next door. In Bed 10 we have a low level mesh panel with Mini White Cucumbers and I have harvested another two today and can see at least another half doz growing and the Pumpkin is also in competition with the Butternut Squash for plot domination. 

      
The runner bean cantilever frame has become detached from the brackets thanks to the wind and its now hanging in space, so it looks like I will finally have to put in some permanent support rather than the Heath Robinson solution that has worked for the last three years but was only supposed to be a stop gap for a year. 

There are at least four more Cucumbers growing on the climbing frame. I have decided that I'm going to make a couple more of these frames but I will use a more open mesh as as usual I have found a cucumber that has grown in one of the holes and there is no way to remove it whole without cutting the mesh and I'm not going to do that I will have two half's of cucumber instead. 

It's always nice to come home from the allotment with a harvest, and today's was first early spuds from six buckets that were emptied. I have another 12 buckets to empty and three beds of seconds and main crop spuds that the foliage is dying off and will need to be dug up shortly.