Well at least we got some sunshine on Tuesday making a welcome break from a week of cloudy weather.
On the plot our plum and greengage trees are now in full flower. This is a surprise as it should be their lean year after producing an excellent crop of tasty fruit last year. As far as I can remember lean years in the past have been obvious from spring onwards as the trees have produced very little blossom.
That’s not the case this year. All three plum trees to the left of the path in the picture (Victoria, Marjories Seedling and Oullins Gage) and our Greengages to the right of the path (Mannings and Reinne Claude) are in full flower. Of course that doesn't necessarily guarantee a bumper crop but there’s more of a chance than years with only a few flowers.
I was busy preparing a bed for our onions and shallots. Half the bed had been covered with weed control fabric since last summer’s crop of peas, beans were planted and the other half covered once the potatoes were lifted .
The fabric had done a good job and the soil beneath looked good and was weed free having been covered for the best part of a year. I gave it a couple of runs over with our little tiller to freshen up the top surface so that it will be easy to plant our plugs of onions and shallot.
After a quick tilling job it looked like this but then my problems started. I’d had a few problems when removing the fabric. Whilst it was a nice sunny afternoon it was very windy. The fabric over this bed consisted of two pieces each 5.0m long by 2.0m wide. Once free of any holding down material they were almost impossible to control in the strong wind. I just about managed to fold them up into a suitable size but at one stage this involved chasing one of the pieces across a couple of allotments as the wind caught the fabric and a large black sail headed off across the site. As I almost caught up with it another gust of wind came and it was off again out of my reach. In the end I managed to out manoeuvre it and get an all important boot on one corner getting the fabric back under some sort of control. I decided I might be better off waiting for a calmer day to place last year’s onion fabric over this year’s onion patch.
Posts
Now that I'd have loved to have seen. Wasn't Sue there with her camera?
ReplyDeleteNo she wasn't so I was luckily spared some embarrassment.
DeleteReminds of when the littlest boy made a kite out of a Tesco's carrier bag on a windy day and I ended up sprinting about half a mile across the park after it while several people from school looked on. I got it though. Hope there's a calm day for you soon.
ReplyDelete