A hot morning!

This morning was very hot again here on the Isle of Wight, but I knew it'd be shady at the plot so I spent the morning there. I did a mountain of work and brought a lot of produce home.

First I hoed all the paths.
Then I picked up and bagged all the onions to take home.
Then I dug up a week's worth of spuds.
Then I tied up the squashes and re-directed the pumpkins that are absolutely rampant at the moment.
I realised last week when I saw the cabbage whites within the cabbage nets that I would have a caterpillar problem. I picked off a load of 1/2 inch ones from one Brussels sprout plant. I also checked the undersides of the leaves of the other brassicas and found the telltale yellow clusters of eggs. These have now been rubbed off.
To stop the butterflies getting in again I have redone the netting. The problem was that the Brussels sprouts were growing too tall for the nets, and pushing them up from the ground so that the b'flies could get underneath. I got
another net and the two now do the job better. I also staked the Brussels.

The cabbages are hearting up beautifully, and the caulis are coming on. We had one yesterday, but I'm leaving the others to get a bit bigger.

I picked all the sugar snap peas, some French beans, and the courgettes. Chris gave me a pile of baby turnips. So when I walked back up the path I was very heavily laden....spuds, onions (whole crop), courgettes, turnips, peas and beans.

We are going to have lots of winter squash. They are hiding just about everywhere on the plot.
We will also have enough sweetcorn to set up a stall! The tassels are turning brown, but I have investigated the cobs and they aren't quite yellow yet

When I got home I set out all the onions to dry in the tunnel. I cut off the foliage that had withered and put that in the dustbin. I am trying not to spread the onion white rot spores to the beds here at home so won't be composting any of the onion waste from the ones grown at the plot.

This evening I started getting a bed ready to sow some winter cabbage and other stuff for the late Autumn and winter...tomorrow.

We had a splendid stir-fry this evening with a huge variety of home grown veg...tasty! We have some teenage boys (aka hollow legs) coming to stay next week...I'll be filling them up with veg, and rhubarb crumble.