October has been surprisingly busy so far, mainly to do with tidying up the plot I'm leaving, #10. The first job last week was to remove the frame and nets covering the Winter brassicas. The threat of Cabbage White's has gone and the plants are large enough to withstand a peck or two from the local wood pigeons A quick weed of the area and the removal of old leaves was par for the course.
Having dug a few Sarpo Mira potatoes at the end of last month I finally got around to harvesting the rest. Just like last year, I got three large hessian sacks full of good sized potatoes from three 30ft rows. Of course, I'll be planting fewer next season but, I still hope to get a sack or two. The Sarpo Mira are a bit scabby (probably due to lime in my soil) but, even into the second week of October, the plants were still standing and feeding the tubers.
Since the potatoes have been dug and the squashes picked, there's not too much left on plot #10 except my Winter veg bed. I decided to clear the fruit bed over that side which contained mainly raspberries and strawberries. I've already potted up a load of strawberries and moved them to plot #11 so, I transplanted a row of Summer fruiting raspberries over as well. I cleared the remaining canes and strawberry plants and had a bit of a fire to burn the bits and bobs.
So, not too much to do now on plot #10, I just need to transplant some rhubarb into plot #11 along with a few canes of 'All Gold' Autumn fruiting raspberries. I'll leave some rhubarb on plot #10 along with a blackcurrant bush; the Winter veg will be there until February but everything should be ready to hand over to a new tenant for the 2018 season. (Pic - pot #10 largely cleared except for the Winter veg bed and a few Autumn raspberries).
I pulled the first carrot from my new carrot barrel. Yay! No carrot fly at all. The Sweet Candle carrot was absolutely perfect. There's about a dozen in the barrel which doesn't seem much but one carrot does us for a Sunday lunch. The Sweet Candle are the nicest carrots I've ever tasted; they're large, thick and stump ended so have no long useless roots.
That's it for now. See you next time. Bye.
