Plot 23B Bed 4 is in

The plan for today was to get bed 4 dug over and weeded, so first thing on the agenda was to uncover the area and expose the bed to the air. 

On inspection there were slugs that were dispatched to sluggy heaven. An ants nest that was dug around and finally turned over and the ants went about saving their eggs. I don't particularly want to put ant powder down but I can't have them living in the middle of the bed.

The bind weed has done it's best under the plastic to grow and I dug out the live and growing bind weed first.

There was a 900 mm long spiked metpost that had to be dug out so that I could get the bed frame in place,

Half way through the morning I took a break from digging and strimmed the path at the rear of the plot and up to the water tank and stand pipe. I want to form a slot in the path and sink the hose is so that it does not get strimmed and punctured

Once the battery ran out it was back to digging, it was hot but at least overcast and I'm so glad I took a flask of coffee and a 2 litre bottle of fizzy water. I need it to replace the sweat from all the digging and weeding.

I managed to remove nearly half a square bucket of stones and concrete from the area and came home with a black sack of weed roots, bits of timber, glass, metal and old weed membrane from the area of bed 4.

In total dug and weeded about 5 square metres of bed and paths.

The frame was put in place and I started raking the soil and removing more stone and debris. Before I knew it I had to start packing away and recovered the path and bed 6 with the grey plastic damp proof membrane over the ground and the tarp covered ground and put the weights on top to keep it in place.

The metpost spike can be seen in the photograph of bed 4 & 2. The Burpless cucumbers are climbing and there are little cucumbers behind the flowers, The purplette spring onions are fattening up and the beetroots are now forming larger leafs and I'm hoping will fatten up a lot more than they are at the moment  

I'm guessing there is about another 30 - 45minutes of raking, weeding and removing stones to do before I can put the spring onions in Bed 4, but with white rot on plot 1A they really have to go in on plot 23B.

The Butternut squash are beginning to wonder around bed 1 but I can't see any squash forming yet.

Days like today make me feel that I'm making headway and I'm hoping that have at least another four beds in by Christmas which will mean that 50% of the infrastructure will be in place.   

I'm hoping that next year is a much better growing season than this year has turned out to be at least I should have two greenhouses on the allotment in play next year.