Sunday 29th September

Arrived at the allotment just before 8:00 and started by harvesting the last of the runner beans, ended up with a plastic storage box full from the two beds, stripped the first bed of foliage and added to the green compost dalek.

Next on the agenda was to harvest two cabbages, and the netting enclosure for the bed thus being removed to allow so, a liberal sprinkling of slug pellets were added before re- pegging. The lower leafs of the cabbages that had been nibbled a little were also added to green dalek.

A layer of comfrey to assist kicking off the composting process was then added to the green dalek.

I harvested all the beetroots and carrots from bed 7, adding their foliage to the green dalek. Pulled out the lower sections of the sweet corn stems and cut them in slices to add to the green dalek. A layer of tea leafs that gone past their sell by date was sprinkled on before more runner bean foliage was added. Bed 7 now being free of plants, it was turned over weeded and then covered with a sack of mature farmyard manure.

Dug up half of the potatoes on bed 4 and covered what was left with the half framed netting cage to keep the fox from digging the ones on the ground up. And before I knew it, it was nearly 1:00 which is when I planned to leave for home for lunch.

Harvested all the red and green tomatoes in containers and buckets outside the grow houses and cut them back.

After lunch I went over the Merton and picked up the two sheets of twinwall polycarbonate sheet, each approximately 1250x700 mm, and took them to the allotment and added then to the pop bottle cloche for the mean time. I have plans for these to become doors to a mini greenhouse built on the side of the shed once I remove the plastic framed grow house after the tomatoes have finished.

It took quite a time to wash all the potatoes and carrots, Jen cooked off the beetroots and removed the skins and cut up the runner beans and bagged them up into meal sized bags for freezing, and we created three food parcels one for my sister, one for Jens and a third for our neighbour Sid.