Taking Advice

It was a cold start to Thursday with the temperature falling to -1.2°C in the early hours but then recovering well during the day to reach 11.7°C. It was a dull day with bits and pieces of drizzle throughout the day.

If you are a regular reader you’ll know we've used plenty of weed control fabric on the plot over the last year and been very pleased with the results. I did blog about how tricky it was to harvest our leeks through the fabric. CJ over at Above the River and Sue had suggested sort of rolling up the fabric as the leeks were lifted so that the leek had just pass through the hole in the fabric rather than the entire process of digging up the leek through the hole in the fabric if you get my meaning.

This how the fabric looked, buried along its edges to keep it place during windy weather. The empty holes show where leeks have already been harvested. I wasn't too keen on lifting one edge and then having to secure it again having dug up a few leeks. On Wednesday whilst I was waiting to give my bonfire the attention it demanded I thought I’d see if the rolling up method might work.

I uncovered the edge of the fabric, which was easier to do as the row of Prizetaker leeks adjacent to the edge had already been harvested, and rolled over the edge of the fabric.

I lifted a few leeks which as you can see came out intact without the root snapping off in the ground as had happened before.  I’d found a couple of lengths of old warped decking boards on my scrap timber pile and thought that they could be used to hold down the edge of the fabric.

The decking boards are wet and heavy so I'm hoping everything will stay put through the next spell of windy weather. If this method works it will avoid having to cut long slits in the fabric keeping weeding down to an absolute minimum. 

Copyright: Original post from A Gardener's Weather Diary http://ossettweather.blogspot.co.uk/ author M Garrett