Weeds Weeds Everywhere....

Another Mill Green Sunday morning visit to continue with the battle against the weeds, the paths are in desperate need of new woodchips as they are turning into really nice soil and the weeds know it !

To say I'm behind on growing and maintaining the plots this year would be an understatement, due to works undertaken at home & health problems in the family that resulted in a couple of stays in hospital for my good lady wife, I'm not where I would like to be with either plot, but the basics are in or about to be in, just in time I hope.

  
The sweetcorn is looking good and for the moment the fox barrier appears to be working, I have another bed load of sweetcorn underway in the Space Saver Greenhouse at home.

Lots of the soft brick milk bottles are becoming brittle and on each visit I'm finding one or two that need replacing, so they go into the greenhouse to dry out, then I fill new bottles with the sand and hopefully they should last another three to four years before the sand needs to be decanted into a fresh bottle.

Not a lot of action on bed 11 where I sowed the green manure yet, I cleared the weeds around it again and the weeds in bed 14 ready for a sowing of late carrots on the next visit as I never got around to an early or a mid sowing. 

I direct sowed beetroots in the rest of the bed up to the white strip, that area is reserved for a trial of a new variety of Dwarf French Bean called "Satelit" which Marshalls press release states is

"A great tasting string-less white seeded bean. Produces straight beans approximately 13cm long and 6-7mm in diameter. A very early variety which will crop right to the frosts with no loss of flavour. Pods are held up and away from the foliage cropping 60 days after sowing. Disease resistant to Common Mosaic virus and Anthracnose."

The sprouts are growing well and looking good, I would have been really disappointed if I had not managed to get them in on time as they take so long to grow, but the different varieties I have in should give me a longer harvest period.

The SoilFixer Potato in buckets are looking good, but bearing in mind that we are supposed to be having another heatwave coming and we have not had a lot or rain I gave all the buckets a little drink to keep them moist.

The guy on the plot next to mine has done less than his usual and I'm now dealing with invasive brambles, stinging nettles and bindweed coming in on the boundary between our two plots. I may have to result to weeding his path that is on the boundary to create a fallow area between our plots.

With the wheel barrow fixed and an empty boot the two concrete blocks, four paving bricks and slab used as a platform for the Comfrey on Draft Water Butt were taken to the car and loaded into the boot ready for transporting to the Spencer Road plot.