November days and blue skies

Don't let the blue skies fool you. Over night the temperature went sub-zero as evidenced by the ice on the water dip tanks, and the weed mulch bucket. It also took a toll on the last remaining sweet potato plant. Definitely time that this was dug up.

The corm were a reasonable size. Not massive, but definitely sort of edible. I say sort of, because there was a lot of evidence of worm activity. However if they are anything like the normal potatoes that were dug from the ground, then it's not worms which are the major problems, but ants. They do like making their nests inside. They get a decent meal, are reasonably secure inside, and can carve out their nest chambers with ease from the inside out.

Elsewhere on the plot the flower bed has finally stopped producing flowers. It's been a good run and we let the all go to seed. So hopefully there will be more next year. But given that this flower bed was built on top of the old spinach bed, there a still a lot of spinach plants that want keep rearing up. As the saying goes, a weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place. And these are definitely considered a weed. Albeit a delightfully edible one.

Time to attack and pull them out. Some will go for tonight's dinner. Others will grace the compost heap.

The Kale has also come under attack. But from aerial predators. The "rats with wings" (aka pigeons), have take delight at the bounty now before them and have happily munched their way through a whole load of leaves. They seem to have managed to unhook the netting that was being used to protect it. But then again that may have moved in the storms.

Hopefully it'll regrow.

There is still a lot to do over the winter. I spent most of today digging the fox mound. Those foxes seemed to have been very house proud as I dug out some industrial carpet squares and paving slabs. They seemed to have been using those as roof supports. Although technically I suspect they simply dug under the existing, buried, slabs. Either way, the mound is being moved off to the side to become next years courgette mound, and make place for a new long bed which will probably be dedicated to strawberries.

I think I'll have to do a separate yearly round up post as we have had quite a few successes and quite a number of failures this year. It'll be good to make a note of what worked and what didn't.

But our mound of beans has dried off nicely.