Compost bins and runner bean frames

I have managed to piece together a pair of compost bins from the boards acquired by Jonathan & Irene and painted them an organic green. Here is a picture!

The next thing is a frame for growing runner beans constructed from some old garden posts from Chez Tetard no longer needed. With help from the 2 neighbouring plots, I managed to borrow step ladders and a big hammer from Ron Gamble. Both of these are in the shed, so if you see Ron, please give them back!

The last things is a picture of the inside of the polytunnel, which is now blessed with a lot of salad leaves. It is deceptive how much produce we have grown, so please help yourself to more.

Polytunnel - second bed now cleared

At last, the strawberry side of the polytunnel is cleared and ready for anything we wish to plant. There was a degree of guilt in that we had to evict a family of frogs (of all ages) in the process - and to make us feel even worse, every time we placed them outside, they kept coming back!

Positively, a surprisingly large population of snails and slugs also got their eviction orders and were treated to a free 'river cruise' for their troubles.

I've moved the paving slab at the backdoor of the polytunnel - again, it was hiding a number of well fed slugs. My view is that the more we minimise the 'hiding places', the less of a problem they'll be. Seems to have worked well with the purple sprouting as some of the more munched plants are recovering strongly.

Irene has managed to secure some wooden panels from work. These are now up against the side of the shed. Once we've levelled that heap at the back, we can get the compost bin built. They should be good in that unlike a lot of pallets, there are no gaps in the slats, so we can 'hot compost', which takes a considerably shorter time than 'cold composting' - allegedly.

Have finally started to see some aubergines developing at last. Gave them a feed, so hopefully they'll continue to develop.

All in all - looking good ! Don't forget to take the mixed salad leaves - there's plenty now....

More plantings

Geoff and I bought some more produce from the man on the market. We planted the seedlings out. You'll see outside that we've planted some purple seedlings, 15 in all. These are kale, which should be ready early next year. Alongside are a couple of rows of chard and a few lettuce seedlings.

We've bought some finer mesh in the hope that this will be more successful in detering pests than the mesh inherited from the Trevors.

In the polytunnel, we've planted out the remaining chard. It apparently can be cut early, like salad leaves. We also bought and planted some more lettuce seedlings, some of which (but I can't remember which) are cut-and-come-again. Finally there is a row of mizuna, easily identifed by its spiky leaf.

Geoff has some onion sets. We were advised to sow these at the end of the month.

Update and Cabbage whites

The trench is now being filled in after spreading 2 bags of the bagged manure from the shed. Jonathan has been working hard in the polytunnel clearing the strawberries that have become inextricably linked to the twitch roots, but creates some space. Plan to but some Bok Choi, onion winter sets and other seedlings from market on Thursday for planting.
Jonathan & I watched as a cabbage white butterfly found its way through the netting and settled on our broccoli. Obviously the mesh of the netting is too wide! We will probably soon have caterpillars competing with the slugs for our greens (provide the slugs can evade the newly distributed slug pellets!)