Escaped

Sometimes things go right. With frost forecast last Monday I had two choices, do nothing and hope, or attempt to run round and try and cover everything up. I chose the later and thankfully fate smiled on me. Whilst various other plots on both the Bracknell and Sunningdale site suffered minor damage to potatoes to devastation of an entire row of runnerbeans I escaped with no damage to anything.

I had hoped to get more done this weekend but the weather had other ideas, especially today. On Saturday I did manage to get all bar one tray of onions in; I would have planted them as weel but found them lurking in the coldframe when I got home. I also managed to get all of my maincrop potatoes earthed up on both the Sunningdale and Bracknell plots. The one thing preventing me from having space available on the Sunningdale plot is not being able to earth up the International Kidney. Whilst the maincrop are all 12" out of the ground, the Internation Kidney are barely above it and they went in two weeks earlier.
I also managed to get various bits of digging done. On the Sunningdale plot I put in an hour and got another 6 feet of what will be the next raised bed done, then I went down the Bracknell plot and put in another couple of hours. I managed to get the top end of the 3rd raised bed in place, broke up the pile of sods I'd created at that end a month ago, then started in on the pile of couch, bind weed, and globe artichoke's I'd created last year when clearing the first bed. Having sprayed it last summer 90% of it's dead and composted nicely, its just the remaining 10% that is growing like crazy that's giving all the problems.

I hope I now have a solution, having taken my original square compost bin down to the plot, and installed a heavy duty wire mesh half way down, to turn it into a dryer. Everything coming off the moon pile is getting loaded in the top in the hope it gets cooked in the hot summer sunshine, assuming we get any.
So that was pretty much everything up until last night. I went out early this morning in the rain, picked up a few supplies, then returned to the workshop to cut timber for a pair of new protection fences for the Bracknell allotment. I can then shuffle the existing ones about and get another 20 of the sweetcorn in.
The rest of the day, up until about 4:30 was then spent twiddleing my thumbs and watching the rain run down the windows. By about that point it had eased off to a drizzle and I opted to get on with the big job of repotting the asparagus. It's all pretty much done noe having taken just over 140 litres of compost mix, 75 litres of fresh multipurpose, 5 litres of old compost as a bulker, 30 litres of topsoil, and 30 litres of my home compost - although this is more like topsoil than multipurpose.
Now I just need to get that digging finished and that raised bed done so I've got homes for my brussel sprouts and the rest of the sweetcorn. I must also get around to sowing some more lettuce and remember to get it out of the greenhouse before its gets too leggy to be usuable.
Last on the list is a quick run down on this weeks photos. From top to bottom, the Sunningdale plot from the bottom left - potatoes in foreground, bean frame behind, then the bean and pea framework - there are still a couple of nets missing, the plot from the bottom right - calabrese in the foreground, early cabbage and calabrese behind, and lastly a low shot of the shallot and garlic bed. I did have one of the asparagus and the liles but I took these tonight and in the low light the digital couldn't cope, so I'll have to wait until the weather improves.