Mooching

I am waiting for the builder to arrive, so have decided to stay indoors at the computer instead of starting on weeding around the olive trees. It’s a grubby and slightly damp business. The weeding that is.   So best to be pristine for the indoor job of stairs, floors and kitchen plans for the guest house.

And while I’m waiting I thought I could do a little picture essay of the top vegetable plot. I call it a potager, but actually it’s just a food factory. Straight lines of asparagus, raspberries, potatoes and brassicas. No flowers, no clever designs. So it doesn’t deserve the potager label.

I have finally tied in the raspberries. They are growing so whippy and long that they need corralling.   It is a bit of a heath robinson affair, but it does the trick.

And next up was to take off the black weed proof fabric that has been covering the part of the plot destined for the overflow of the cabbage stock.   I would have preferred to have planted them down in the lower vegetable bed (a real potager) but I don’t have enough cloches to protect them from cabbage moth butterflies and deer and hares there.

Up at the top vegetable bed is an almost stout fence (four legged deterrent) and I think I have some long straight and frankly ugly netting for this part of the out of sight plot.

We are keen on our brassicas, but I suspect they always germinate so well that I am forever trying to fit them in somewhere. Always an excess of seedlings.

So here it is. Off with the fabric and an inspection of the soil underneath. Not bad at all; lots of straying raspberry suckers. But they come up easily and the rest just needed a good dig over.

Dig and rake and out with the string to measure up the rows.   The whole plot curves somewhat, so I have taken my lines from the raspberries.

In goes cabbage, kale, white broccoli, and a whole row of swiss chard.   They are tiny seedlings and may not survive, but I need to get things out of the potting shed and into the ground. I have two week break in London and Scotland coming up and have to get that shed clear.

A final job of mulching the whole area where I planted out.   In with the sticks and on with the nets.   Stand back, admire, almost gloat and then weed the rest of the plot between the potato rows.

Done. It is complete. No more room for any veg or fruit or flowers. I just need to make it less unslightly with continual covering with the future grass clippings.

Oh yes, and for an encore, I potted on all the eragrostis seedlings. 107 plants. Bring em on!