We are having one of the hottest summers ever, with record breaking temperatures and virtually no rain - so daily watering is required. However, planning for winter still has to be done and I have started a bed of chard - see video Tuesday August 9th
I am experimenting with my own form of 'campanion planting' starting with my fruit trees and now my fruit bushes too. Wednesday August 10th I think I have now found the optimum distance from the trunk of the large apple tree (in the centre of my plot) to grow my beans and I'm planning (in my head) a new type of structure for nexr year that the beans can share with squash or cucumber. One of my main crops are potatoes that we like to eat in most weewks of the year. I have couple of favourite varieties - Maris Bard is a favourite early potatoe and Wilja a favourite mid season. For the main crop the ones that do well on our land are Cara.
My hedge on the road side of the plot is well eastablished now with a number of cherry plum trees interplanted with blackberries - but the cherry plum can get just too big and do need pruning every year.
The material that I cut off I use in a variety of ways - pea sticks, props for the branches of the apple trees, props to hold the nets over the greens etc. etc..


2006

Monday August 7th 2006. We have had a fair amount of rain in the last week and that has transformed the plot. I planted out purple sprouting plants today – a little late maybe but I’m sure they will catch up. I still need to finish planting out the leeks.

Wednesday August 9th 2006. Planted more leeks and did more digging. The next stretch of space that I will need will be for the Japanese onion sets in September.

2005


Tuesday 9th August 2005 I am pleased with the cuttings I took some weeks ago of my Lemon Verbena as they now look as if they are ready to be moved on into individual pots.

I dug up some nice clean potatoes (Wilja) this evening that didn't have a sign of scab on them, unlike the Kestrel that I dug some weeks back that seem to have no area of the skin without scab. Peeled or scraped the Kestrel were OK when cooked but the Wilja didn't need peeling or scraping just a good scrub and they cooked fine with the skins on.

I planted out more purple sprouting broccoli this evening from plants grown from my own seed (saved from plants grown the year before last) and as I left the allotment it was raining quite hard so that should make their move to new quarters easier to take. I have one selected sprouting broccoli plant with seed pods on in a large bag for this years saved seed. That was a plant that cropped early and I have another plant that cropped late yet to harvest so that I will have an early seed and a late seed to sow next year.

2004


Thursday August 12th In past years I have sown Japanese onions seeds at this time of year - but this year I am not going to. I will plant out the Japanese onion sets again and have begun digging the ground ready for them. I'm using the same ground as I used last year and as we have had an extraordinary amount of rain in the last week (after almost a month without any at all!) the ground is like it is in spring - maybe I should sow the seed after all in previous years the ground has been as dry as dust at this time of the year.

Tuesday August 10th It has been raining on and off today and yesterday - time to plant out the summer/autumn calabrese broccoli. The seed was sown by John on Geoff's plot in the enclosed bed that I dug, weeded and fed after planting out the spring cauliflowers earlier in the year. That bed also has my (seed swap) lettuce growing nicely and a selection of salad greens sown by John at the same time as the calabrese. The calabrese will crop in November if all goes well.

August 8th 2004 Took off a some more honey and checked through the WBC hive with Geoff. He spotted the queen that was moving from one side of the frame to the other at some speed. She looked good - a leathery brown colour. I was intending to to put some strips into the brood box to control the mites but in the end we decided not to and I put some empty frames back on. The original queen that started the year in this hive and was moved out of this hive to another brood box earlier in the year has produced no honey at all so far. I am afraid that she will not see the end of another season.