Planted out a few more sweetcorn yesterday, and purple sprouting a few days before that. They were quite overdue, and there was space ready, but could not get round to it with the endless rain. Tomatoes are being martyred by blight already, especially the big ones, they seem increadibly susceptible.
Broad beans are all finished and out, as are the main crop peas – they did quite well and then suddenly fell prey to something horrible, probably mildew. The sugarsnaps are still going, but only just, and are also quite diseased. Started cropping the climbing beans, beetroot and the first lot of carrots from the raised bed, which are free of carrot-fly so far. Eaten lots of frilly lettuce.
The much awaited Russian swedes turned out to be purple turnips, not at all sweet, so I ripped the lot out to clear the space for something better. Also just ripped out the Bushy cucumbers, which were doing so well that were spilling out everywhere, swamping everything else, but tasted bitter, especially near the stalk end, despite my best efforts of picking off the male flowers etc. Trying to salt all the ones I’ve got so far, in the hope that it will break down (or at least mask) the bitterness.
Finally sown the next batch of seed: Giant Winter spinach (2 short rows), mustard (both red Frills and the Unwins ruby’s and Gold, that we liked last year), lettuce (mix of Lakeland and Pinokkio, to keep going into the winter), duchy-ever-so-organic Wild Rocket (having ripped out the overly butch garden variety and donated the lot to people who like that sort of thing), and little infills of coriander, parsley and dill.
Raspberries do seem to be recovering on their regime of intensive feeding, so let’s hope that’s all they were lacking. Pruned the apple yesterday, which had some mildew-infected shoots, and a fair bit of aphid damage.
Am planning to do lots of kale in root trainers to be planted out later for winter and spring.