We plough the fields and scatter...

The weather is turning decidedly more Autumnal – with a frost for some last week. No such worries yet for us, but with the change in the weather & the nights drawing in, it does make me wonder about the fate of some of our more ‘tender’ crops – it would be a shame if the tomatoes having been rescued from blight were struck down with the cold!

The Hungarian rye seed from the Organic Catalogue arrived this week, & so the main job has been to get that sown. The snag here is that ever since the potatoes were planted, there has been a distinct unevenness in that plot, which is only highlighted by the slabs which I plonked on a few weeks ago, so now is the time to correct that.

The redistribution of the soil seemed to take an absolute age, because you can’t see how you’re doing till you step back a bit, so just when I thought I’d done a fine job, I’d look again & see that there was more to be done. Eventually it was to my satisfaction, complete with the repositioned the slabs now much flatter & ‘sitting’ better.

Teacher Barry was on hand to offer a Monty Don tip with regard to sowing the rye seed – I was all for a ‘broadcast’ approach, but he suggested that I sow it roughly in rows so when it is time to dig it in, in the Spring, it will be easy to put the spade down in between each row. Good thinking! I created a path along the middle of the bed & scored out about 25 short rows on each side, sowed the seed & raked over – & very good it now looks too, if I say so myself!

Whilst I was on the landscaping, Jane came along & was on picking detail – & we both went home with a bumper crop – helped in no small part by Mrs neighbour Ted who invited us to help ourselves to their cucumbers which they had rather a lot of. This was an understatement – Jane came back with a great armful of them (about 8) & she said that there were many more to grow yet!

Besides the cucumbers, between us we had:
FRENCH BEANS (blue lake)
RUNNER BEANS (reg-next-plot)
a couple of PARSNIP (white gem)
TURNIP (snowball)
a few CARROT (multicolour)
SWEDE (best of all)
a CABBAGE (primoII)
a small pumpkin which had popped up on the Prize Pumpkin plant
RADISH (saxa 3)
LANDCRESS
…and the absolute icing on the cake was a few cobs of SWEETCORN (conqueror f1)

I had my fabulous corn of cob just as soon as I got home – going ‘mmmm’ & with butter running down my chin! Superb!