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I went digging again at the weekend. The weather was nice for some of it, so I took the opportunity to put in the last of my spuds and put in and net the cabbage.

As you can see, the soil was dry on the surface, but quite moist underneath. It wasn’t hard to dig it, but it wasn’t easy either.

Now that the cabbage are fully netted I can relax a bit, except for the watering, which I will have to do most nights until they are well set.

I also took some time to check on the onions. They seem to be doing well and have come up strongly.

I went to the plot at the weekend to carry on with the digging. I have done most of the plot and it is doing fine, but there was the extra bit to do this year.

After all the rain we’ve had over xmas it was hard going as the soil retains a lot of water and I only have little legs.

As you can see I got to most of it by the end of the day and spread the last of the hops and manure on it. I dug some of it in as well, so don’t worry.

Just to show you what you can do when you have the time, here is a picture of a nearby plot. This person is retired and spends a lot of time at their plot. I wish I had the time, but I don’t fancy retirement just yet.

I then checked on my sprouts. Where they have grown above the netting the birds have been at them and stripped them bare - I hope the leaves make them poo through the eye of a needle!

I have been out digging today. It’s been the first dry weekend in a while and I wanted to get as much done as possible.

So I borrowed a Terex spade to get the job done as quickly as possible and with the least amount of effort. If you don’t know what a Terex spade is you haven’t lived. See one in the pic below.

This flips the clod over very easily and spares your back a lot of pain later on. Though I still need the odd ‘nip’ to ‘recover.

The other picture is of the collection of weeds - some of which I killed beforehand. You can see the hops bag that I collected from the brewer. These have all gone into the soil well so far and unfortunately for all you beer drinkers out there, will not impart any beer flavour to the vegetables.

I still need to go back as I am harvesting my sprouts now that the frosts have arrived. I am hoping some will last beyond Christmas and into the new year, but we will see.

Today we dug out some of last years spinach. It has over wintered surprisingly well and we were able to get a few salad leaves from the plant we dug out.

There are still a few plants left, but we will have to have these out soon as we have set some spinach seeds for the new crop.

You can see that it takes a lot of effort to dig it out as the root is quite thick for something that gives such delicate leaves.