No frost - but they're all dead

So I popped down to the plot to do a spot of mid-week watering. We've not had any rain for ages and the ground is bone dry.

Nor have we had any cold temperatures. Being in the middle of London we're in a "heat island", so we don't get the late frosts like you do "out in the sticks". So imagine my surprise when I found that our recently planted Crown Prince and the Courgettes all exhibit signs of frost damage.

It's only the outer leaves that appear to be hit. The inner core of the plant is fine. (Apart from the one CP which appears to have been sheared off at the root).

What I suspect has happened is that the recent winds have caught them as they are in an exposed part of the plot. A wind chill could easily drop the temperature another couple of degrees and made them suffer, despite there being no actual frost.

Good job we have a few spares courgettes in the greenhouse. But I hope the CPs recover, because we have no spares of those and we can't get any more seeds as everywhere seems to be out of stock.

Hard day in the sun

I nearly passed out.

We went down to the plot early as we knew we had a lot of work to do. But even trying to get The Wife out of bed in the morning is quite a struggle. I've always been an early bird though. But we eventually managed to roll up to the plot at about 9am. Surprisingly there were a few others who arrived before us.

Any way I made a finish on getting the remains of the compost sieved out. The bed is now clear of compost. But it still needs a little attention regarding the grass and other detritus that spilled out from the digging.

Meanwhile The Wife was on a mission. She had to improve her Strawberry Empire. So all the little pots of plants that were scattered around the plot were rounded up and forced into trays and bigger pots. And now The Empire spans nearly half the plot.

Although I'm sure there are more hidden around, just waiting to ambush me when I turn my back.

After digging the compost, I finally finished off digging the Deep End bed No.4. The one which had all the clay in it. It did get a liberal helping of the compost that was previously recovered from the afore mentioned compost bin. But it was at this point that I started feeling very faint. I crawled away into the shade to nurse a drink of water and get my breath back. I think it was sun stroke. Or just plain exhaustion. But either way, The Wife finished off planting the 15 Crown Prince squashes into this bed.

Last, but not least, before we left for the day, we picked a whole load of non-snail eaten Pak Choi leaves. This will be tonight's dinner.

Hopefully it will replace the leaves picked with loads more tasty treats for us. Now I'll see if I can get home without passing out. Maybe it's the fact that we left early without breakfast?