General Summer Allotment Chores

The first thing I did today was to water the onions with comfrey liquid.  They are still growing fairly well and I think they will produce some big bulbs.  As I was on a roll I did the sweet corn and the pumpkins too.

I weeded around the lettuce carefully and then put my beer traps along the first line.  I have had some big slugs and snails in the lettuce but I did not see any when I was weeding.  Hopefully, they will go for the beer rather than my lettuce.

The beer traps consisted of a plastic cup dropped into a hole with some beer in it.  I covered the traps with broken slabs mainly to keep the rain out.

The rest of the onion bed was weeded and watered with comfrey liquid.

I had a cup of tea and a flapjack cake.  My favourite.

I was going to take the blackcurrants bushes out because they had big bud mite on them.  However, when I looked at them carefully they had all made some really good growth from the base of the branches.  I decided to just prune hard back to these ground level shoots.  As I pruned them back I took all the currants off the stems.  Most of them were ripe but I took off the unripe ones as well.  If you are only making jam with them the green ones will help the jam to set.

To pick black currants you need the patients of a saint.  It is incredibly pernickety.  Still I got another 2kg of currants off the pruned branches.   


Put some more beer traps under the climbing French bean supports.  The slugs and snails are still devastating the beans here.  The runner beans are fine and have flowers on them.  


I picked some American land cress and lettuce to take home.  I have had them for salad this evening.  


As part of the allotment competition you need to have compost heaps on the go.  Mine are just piles of stuff I have taken off the allotment - like the blackcurrant branches.  I thought that I might as well cover these up with some grass mowings and soil from the mega compost heap.  I got five barrow loads of grass mowings but only one barrow load of mega compost.  Looks a bit more like a compost heap now.  


I don't know why I am bothered about the allotment competition.   I just want to know whether my allotment is as good as others in the town.  I think that I will find that it is better than some and not as good as others and I will be none the wiser.