I recently put in the rest of a pack of some kind of quick growing late crop brassica, japanese broccoli or something? I'd never heard of it so someone must have given me the pack and it was definitely beyond the sell by so I turfed it all in a seed tray in the greenhouse to see if I could get an odd plant.. The tray is full of seedlings and I've no clue what to do with them as the beds are either full or overrun by chicken dustbaths and probably cat litter trays
and my brassicas and beetroots are hiding under the sheep haiks and fleece tents from them which just means harder to weed but gives a chance of survival..
My late beans are in full flower but not a bean yet, so no doubt I need to empty the freezer for what's to come. I've taken up the red onions and shallots as they were dying back and some had bolted, those are still in for the bees but I'm not sure when the seed is ready to collect or I'll have thousands of onion seeds all over the onion bed and no chance of rotation.
Rogue tatties everywhere have flowered but still green. Hens dug one up so the tatties that side are green but the rest are still buried - gave me a snapshot on development underground tho
I can't eat any more leaves at the mo, spinach, kale etc, leafed out. I usually eat a lot of curly kale over winter in soups with the tatties and whatever, so that's no problem.
I left 2 beds empty due to chook protection issues so there are fewer species but no shortage of what I have. I even got a few calabrese to sprout heads, not big ones like in supermarkets, more like green PSB, but who cares, it's a first tho the cabbage whites are into those now which is a shame.
One of my better years for weeding effort, possibly due to less beds in use, but I think I really need raised beds for next year for my back's sake - and with chook protection. A polytunnel would be ideal but not on my budget sadly, so I'm thinking about those scaffold planks Bloomer mentioned and trying to work out how many I need and whether to do the end to end beds with the current breaks between for access, or as one long bed I can walk around but not across..
Problem here is I'm meant to be selling excess produce, and there isn't much at any one time, so hard to attract customers for maybe something but not exactly a box full or even a soup recipe. I need to think about that and either scale up next year and find a bit of marketing skill somewhere in me, or cut back and withdraw all claim to it being for selling.
