Behold! The bog of Eternal Stench

Lets just say that things are a little fragrant down the plot at present.

Not only do we have a bog, but we also have an added hazard of the great Stick-in-the-Mud if you try and get into the greenhouse.

But not all is lost. There are still some decent pickings to be had.

The 2016 Courgette Tally:

4

Flooded!

As the ravers attending the mud-fest known as Glastonbury will attest to, we've had a little bit of rain recently. So it's with a little bit of trepidation that I parked the car in the car park and headed to the plot...

And yes, like last time, most of it is under water.

The onions are totally drowned. They'll have to come out otherwise they'll rot in the ground.

The Beetroot are also flooded, but they will probably survive.

Even the greenhouse is underwater (again).

Actually, I tried moving that bag of compost... boy was it heavy. It had obviously slurped up the rain water.

But did it stop there? No, whilst we were dashing around trying to tidy everything up, it started throwing it down again. Into the greenhouse to keep us (relatively) dry.

Not much we can do in conditions like this except head for home and try to dry out.

The 2016 Courgette Tally:

3

2 and 2 on the longest day

The longest day of the year, and this evenings trip down the plot proved productive.

The first couple of courgettes of the year.

And a couple of strawberries for dessert.

This time I'm going to count how many courgettes we get. We kind of lost count in previous years.

The 2016 Courgette Tally:

2

The Toms are taking over

It's getting hard to get into the greenhouse now. To quote a phrase, "It's like a jungle sometimes. It makes me wonder how I keep from going under". This particular jungle is caused by the tomatoes taking off.

Time to kick some of them out. Of course the only problem is, is that once they're outside, there are slugs and winds and allsorts of things which will try to damage them, so they need somewhere secure out of the way.

Well today I covered the far side of the plot (the part which failed to be rotovated) with weed membrane and moved the potatoes into position to act as anchor points. This opened up some space to build a little tomato sanctuary.

It won't win any beauty contests, but it won't get blown over.

Looks like the sweet peas could do with some support as well.

Elsewhere on the plot it's been all hands to deal with the invasion of the weeds. The recent rains have proliferated the weeds (and the slugs). So all the beds got weeded and the front verge next to the track got a digging to oust some annoying grasses and dandelions.

Not complete though. If I step to my left it looks like this...

Still have to deal with all that, but I'm just too damn exhausted.

All I can say is "soon"...

Jam time again

A quick trip to the plot this evening showed the rhubarb about ready to fall over. It was nearly as tall as me. So I pulled a few stalks.

After giving quite a few away to the neighbours, I put about 4Kg on to "soak" in sugar for 24 hours.

By my reckoning, I took about 10%-15% of the plant. At this rate I'll be in Rhubarb and Ginger Jam for the next decade. And that's just the Front Rhubarb. I already pulled a similar amount from the Back Rhubarb to take into the office canteen. I don't think Chef wants me to bring any more in. We've been having Rhubarb this and that for the past few weeks.

Seems like it's a seriously good year for rhubarb this year. At least the slugs didn't manage to get much. Or if they did, it wasn't noticed.