Hazel's blog

H has started a blog covering her walking the Dales Way. The link to the blog is on the listing on the right of this blog.

A bit of rain

I managed to get to the lottie for an hour today. There have been heavy showers over the past few days. It has not made a great deal of difference to the soil. We still need some more rain. I dug up the Broccoli and Lettuce that had bolted. I chopped the plants up as I put them in the big compo bin. I watered the peas and beans. They are looking very poorly.

I had a trip to the bees as well. Hive B is fantastic. It has big brood pattern. Brood at all stages and evidence of successional laying. I put on an extra supper. The two that are on are only part filled. I will just leave that hive alone to create stores for the winter. Hives A & C show signs of day old eggs. I did not see the Queens which is a bit worrying. I think hive C has a laying worker but there are lot of bees. I think Hive A may have had a queen which has now swarmed again or not. It is hard to tell. There are not many bees though. I will have to find the queens in those two boxes. I have to think about combining the two hives to make one good colony to see out the winter.

Weeding and talking

The evening was so nice and the Calebrase won't stand much longer so H and I went to the lottie. H harvested the Calebrase whilst I did did a job over at the new plots. When I came back H was chatting with our lottie neighbour whilst they weed their respective plots. It's a trait amongst lottie friends - weeding and talking. There was also a tray full of Calebrase and a few Lettuce sitting on the front of the plot. H had a bin full of weeds and was still pulling them out by the hand full. I emptied the bin into one of the compost bins and gave the empty one back. H set about weeding the Leeks and Onions patch. I got busy digging up another row of spuds. After that I tidied up the french beans. A few leaders were not running up the canes properly. To finish with I watered the peas and squashes.

The weekend before last.

This summer is flying by without me. I have been up to the bees each weekend. Hives A and C are giving me trouble. They are queenless at the moment. I hope that will resolve itself by my next visit. if not I have a plan B, pun intended. Last weekend I took my honey extractor up to the apiary. It was quite nice extracting honey in a field with the warm sun on me. Then I was able to put the wet supers back on the hive straight away. I might do that again. It felt quite efficient. The bloke combining the wheat field across the River Mease from the apiary stopped. We had a shouted conversation across the river and over the sound of the combine harvester at tick over.

The allotment is struggling in this prolonged dry weather. I don't have enough time to water as often as I should. The good thing is that the hoeing I did and the dry weather is keeping the weeds down. I have started harvesting the potatoes. They come out of the ground nice and clean. The dry soil just falls of them. My Sprouting Brocolli has bolted and and I am up to my armpits in Calebrese. The Caulis and sprouts have been hit with whitefly.

The new allotments should be finished at the weekend. That will be a load off me once that is signed off. Steve, Pete and I had an impromptu work party to set up the path edgings on one of the new plots. Pete was especially chuffed to get out his power tools. His circular saw made short work of trimming down the pegs.

Work has been a pain, I even had to work a weekend recently! It is easing up again. It is the lottie bbq in a month. That will mark the turning of the year.

I still have a load of stuff to plant out from the greenhouse. I must trying and do that this weekend. I said the same thing last weekend and the weekend before that!