Last week was as predicted, interesting. I don’t like not being competent and I spent Thursday and Friday reminding myself that I’m not expected to know everything on my first two days. The commute has been fine but I need to be up earlier so I can get a desk, this is the first time in 25 plus years of working that I’ve worked in a hot desk environment. 
I also had a migraine on Sunday morning, which was not fun, I’m blaming heat, stress and not being good about my diet this weekend. Plus side, it was on a weekend and short. When you have migraines, this is a good thing. So it was horrible but it was a good migraine as migraines go.
Of course after the migraine I had to shop and go to the plot and thankfully, Ma had a car this weekend so it was pretty easy but the plot part had to be cut short because it was too hot. Watering got done and there hasn’t been too much slug damage, so all good, but it appears that this year is going to be a year that I am tasty to bitey things, it goes in cycles, some years I get bitten a lot and sometimes not at all.
My basic plan for this week is work, rest and prep for Junipalooza next Saturday. What are you guys doing this week?
Ok so June is going to be interesting, I have a new commute and a new job to work out. The only social thing currently on the slate is Junipalooza and my weekly walk with Sarah and Fred, while I still can!
On the plus side, the french beans are doing well, we picked our first broad beans, the salad bed is in overdrive, as is the beetroot bed which I thinned this week.
The various summer and winter squash plants are ok and we’ve worked out where all the winter squash are going to go.
So now we wait and water. And sow some kale and chard and cauliflower for winter and more buckets for radishes and cauliflower and salad.
Everything is behind this year but this week we still had chard, spinach, salad, rhubarb and broad beans, we also had cabbage from my plot neighbour! This is what I sent Ma home with this week.
One day every weekend, looks like this. Fred the dog refusing to give the ball back. Usually because he’s stubborn and very attached to his ball but the last couple of weekends because he’s been to hot to chase the ball. He is very good dog. When I get to Sarah’s he gets very excited because it means a long walk for him but he also knows I don’t like him jumping on me. So he starts to jump, remembers and turns while in mid air. I find it very amusing!
The other day of my weekend generally looks like working on the plot, followed by drinks..
The jury is out on how many will survive, the tomatoes and cucumbers look to be in a bad way right now. I have some spare plum tomatoes that can replace the dead tomatoes and I have resown some cucumbers, cherry tomatoes and a crookneck.
I should be a better plant parent and harden them off and so on but I don’t. Apparently, being a seedling in my care is the plant equivalent of being raised by Spartans. You live or you die!
We planted the four other uchiki kuri plants in the containers, to hopefully grow up the arch! The ‘soil’ in these containers is amazing. When I first got the plot, I moved both containers to this position and it’s where we put all the weeds we were digging up, which we covered and left, the rotted down and last year I filled both containers with a bunch of wood chip and then more Wilko value compost and I planted squash in them last year. In the autumn, I added manure and the spent compost from the buckets and covered. It’s rotted down really well and I’m hopeful that it’ll grow some amazing squash this year!
We also planted out courgettes and cucumbers and sowed sweetcorn. I had three spare cucumbers that went in with the sweetcorn. When (if) the sweetcorn is about 9-10 inches high, I’ll sow borlotti beans next to them to climb up. Hopefully the cucumbers will survive and provide ground cover. The worse that can happen is that it doesn’t work!
I know that I’m going to end up with more stuff in buckets, I want to do another bucket of radishes and carrots and you know that there will be spare tomatoes. At some point I need to move that cloche and plant something there..
We did all the planting on the plot on Saturday and this morning when I went to water, some of the plants where not doing too well, I’m a bad plant parent.
Nic Dempsey 