Just a handful of beans

There's not really much to tell you about last week. The rain is still preventing us from making any progress at the allotment. When it isn't actually raining or drizzling, everything is just too wet and soggy to do any gardening.

On Saturday we headed into Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales for the day. 

 At least plenty of rain is keeping the grass lovely and green so the sheep aren't complaining.

Although there were several light showers and the constant threat of a downpour we managed to stay mostly dry.

Ribblehead viaduct without steam train

The sun even managed some brief appearances although the dark clouds were never far away.

The wetness may have curtailed our activity on the plot, but the slugs and snails are having a party. The hardy annual seedlings, that were doing so well, have been mowed down meaning my vision of lots of early flowers next year will no longer become a reality. There's lots of other things that these molluscs could feed on so why choose my little seedlings? It's all very disappointing.

We did manage an afternoon at the allotment on Tuesday when, Martyn started on our main 'project' for this autumn/winter. We have an overgrown bed containing  a couple of cobnuts and four honeyberries. Really the bed has been neglected for a while as the honeyberries have never even provided us with a taster crop. 

The decision has been made to clear the bed and put it to more productive use.

Mini chainsaw in hand, Martyn 'pruned' the cobnuts.

The stems in the background are what are what are left after Martyn's 'pruning'. Put a chain saw in his hands and he becomes Attila the Hun. The squirrels will not be happy. Video here.

Instead of two large cobnuts we now have a large pile of debris to deal with. One of the grapevines had woven its way in amongst the upper branches of the cobnuts. The outdoor grapes never really produce grapes of dessert quality. I guess that they could be used for wine making but we don't make wine.

Whilst, Martyn was playing with his chainsaw, I cleared the remains of the sweet corn, sweet peas and squash, all of which have had a disappointing year.

One surprise of the afternoon was to find a pair of loppers that we lost on the plot a couple of months or so ago. They were rather rusty but some squirts of WD40 and they were back into use. 

Each year the quince tree sends long branches skywards and each year we trim them back in order to restrain it. The discovery of the loppers meant that this task could be completed.

There's no harvest group photo this week as all that we actually harvested was a punnet of dwarf French beans.

It wasn't that we had run out of things to harvest, it was just that for last week's meals that was all that I needed. I had everything else that I needed stored at home. Even our summerhouse is full - video here.

I hope that is enough to qualify me to join in again with 

Harvest Monday at Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

By the way if, like me, you find spiders fascinating  you may like to view the slowed down video, Martyn posted here of a garden spider spinning a web.

Thanks to those who responded to my invitation to make a comment. I appreciate you taking the trouble to say hello. I know I get lots of visitors who never comment and I'd love to know who you are - unlike the annoying spammers who can't seem to grasp that their comments go straight into my spam folder and never see the light of day.  I am getting lots of Anonymous spam comments which go straight into the spam folder and then deleted as there are far too many to check through so I'm afraid that if you comment anonymously this may happen to your comment.

You don't have to have your own blog in order to join in conversations. It may seem that everyone who comments knows one another but bloggers always welcome new commenters, after all that is how we all started.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett