Gone to Seed

The past month has been really unsettled with lots of rain but warm; our max temperatures have been in the 30's for nearly 2 weeks now. This has forced the salad crops and a number of them have gone to seed; spinach, coriander and rocket.



The Chard is also suffering at the moment because it was damaged by the hailstones from last week's storm. The hailstones seem to have punched holes in the leaves!




We've not been out on the vegetable garden much this past week whilst our friend Betty was with us, so today Sue was out there even in the light rain tidying up. Because of things running to seed she wanted me to prepare another couple of beds for some more follow-on crops. This thus forced me to pluck up courage and get the rotorvater out. You may remember that it blew up a couple of months back and we had to take it back to be repaired. We've had it back with us for a couple of weeks but I've been a bit scared to take it out onto the veg patch in case the stones which are just under the surface proved too much for it. I'm pleased to say that everything seemed to go OK. The only problem was with the operator. I was steaming along and I thought that, whilst I was at it, I may as well get all of the remaining beds turned over. But, as I was quickly reminded, I was only supposed to have done two, since Sue wanted to spray any regrowth of perennial weeds.

I personnally think that she just didn't want to have the job of stone-picking all of the beds yet!

However, not downhearted, I took the rotorvater over to where the 'Birch Copse' has been marked out.

We will be planting 3 Silver Birch trees here and the idea is to have them underplanted with wild flowers and bulbs. Hence why I'm breaking up the ground to prepare it for the wildflower seeds. I'm sure that the neighbours haven't got a clue what we're doing!

I realised later that I didn't hit one stone in the Birch Copse. I think that previous farmers must have dumped all of their stones in the corner where we've made the Potager.