It's great to see that there are some onions buried under the mass of weeds. There's something about onions that weeds just love, so next year I think I may be growing them through black plastic as, therapeutic as it may be to spend hours clearing the bed by hand, it's a bit of a back-breaker and doesn't seem to attract a lot of willing volunteers, which is why I ended up on my hands and knees once again this week.
On Friday, Paul, despite having lost his voice, made the effort to come along and managed to weed and mulch one of the rhubarb beds while Peter and I tackled the other one.
I also, rather rashly, set myself the target of clearing up the tomato plants in the polytunnel and tying them in before Alan had the chance to come back again, shake his head, and make car mechanic-like noises about how out of control they are. What I didn't reckon on was the heat - a mere 35 degrees in the midday sun under the plastic. It made for hot work, but they're much tidier now, far less of an embarassment, and there's even room for some chilli plants inbetween.
When it cooled down a little in the early evening, I transplanted the brassicas - sprouting broccoli, swede and cauliflowers - into their final positions in the main bed and gave them a thorough soaking to try and reduce the chance of them wilting on me and giving up the ghost.
We've now got some seaweed, fresh from the beach, to mulch the asparagus in about a month's time, but for now they've had a mulch of straw to keep in the moisture from the recent rain.
The hoses have come out this week as, before last night's rain, it's been really dry and I've realised how little sunny days we have had so far, as worrying about water hasn't been top of my list this summer.
The hops needed a thorough weeding around their roots (and, as usual, despite the gauntlets and all my body covered I still managed to get stung by copious nettles). Nettles look a little like hop leaves, but hurt a lot more.
I've also installed a soaker hose around the base of the hop plants so I can connect to the hose pipe through the fence and water them gradually whenever they need it.
No comments:
Post a Comment