Last week was first round of judging, I got up early on Saturday morning to get up to the plot and collect another load of chips to try and get my paths completed but unfortunately G.P. Gill's were doing some work on their woodchip store and so the woodchips weren't as good as they normally are and I only got one load.
It did, however, give me change to weed and get the last lot of hops onto the fruit bed so that bed looked lovely. I also weeded all of the remaining beds and down the back fence (where they come over from next door). The ladies who visited my plot got to the gate and said "wow!" which is always a good start. They walked in and one of them said she felt relaxed already. I showed them around and they awarded me full points, saying that it was almost as though I'd read the criteria...
I will have a second round of judging from the professional judges so all of the little bits I wasn't quite happy with I will have to get resolved. That means that this weekend I'm still carting woodchip up the hill and I'll need at least 1 more bag to finish it next week and I need to keep on top of the weeding to make sure that it doesn't go mad with the nice weather.
I also want to get some seeds in the polytunnel for planting after the potatoes have finished. The potatoes are actually ready to harvest but I don't want to have 2 empty beds when they come come back to do the second judging so they'll have to stay in the ground for now.
This week I got 2 more loads of woodchips and so now I only have 3 of the north/south paths that need covering and it will be done. Hopefully that will just be 1 more load although I'll probably still get 2 and perhaps use it for mulching in the strawberry and/or sweetcorn bed. Talking of the sweetcorn bed, as you know I tried out a variation of the 3 sisters but it hasn't been hugely successful in terms of peas. The sweetcorn are looking good (except for the ones that the birds have munched) and the pumpkins look fantastic. I have 3 good sized pumpkins already and at least 1 more that looks promising. I've used some of the leftover strawberry mats to rest the fruit onto. They are impregnated with copper, which will hopefully keep the slugs away and they will mean that the pumpkins aren't sitting directly on the ground.
The sun was so hot again today that I left at lunchtime with the intention to go back this afternoon to water everything (especially in the polytunnel) and trim the lower leaves from the tomatoes to help them ripen. There's no way I could have done that at lunchtime because the polytunnel was sooooooo hot it was unbearable to be in there. In the mean time I've come back to the house; Mr L is cutting the tiny patch of grass that we have and I've tackled the weeds in the drive and at the front of the fence. I don't understand why we seem to get loads of weeds on the path in front of our house when nobody else does but we do and so I need to keep on top of that.
The other things I need to add to my to-do list for this weekend is to net my strawberry bed, which surprisingly given when I planted them in have started to flower, and I want to get some wires in to start training my cherry tree against the back fence.
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