Between the Showers

There was nothing done on the plot since Friday due to the worsening weather over the weekend.The greenhouse needed watering so I went out this evening. I intended pulling the remainder of the beetroot and the carrots and clearing the bed for the winter.The carrots had been very slow germinating and I thought not a great return from them, until I removed the Enviromesh which has sheltered them all summer.
The beetroot has been fantastic  all year, all from one sowing ,I have been using the thinnings as baby beetroot in Balsamic vinegar but they have now grown tennis ball size, I think they like being under the mesh the same as the carrots.
 I had pulled some carrots  to thin them out and I didn't think they were doing at all well, did I get a shock?!
 I began pulling them but then found that some were in bunches and it would be better to thin them out and leave the others grow on a bit longer.There is a bunch of baby carrots, a bunch of full grown carrots and a bunch of the purple skinned ones and as much more still in the bed.
 I thought I may have over done the sand mix in the bed as it seemed to dry out very quickly in the hot weather, it did help to grow straight ( for the most part) well shaped carrots.
Sweetcorn, tomatoes and more Sugar snap peas completed the harvest.

I weeded the bed ,cleaned it up and recovered it with the enviromesh as there is a second wave of carrot fly due in September I think?
 The carrots are clean and unmarked from carrot fly or slugs so hopefully the remainder will escape too.

The onion bed put to sleep for next season. I covered the bed with old mushroom compost, cardboard and today finished off with Mypex to keep nutrients in and have the bed ready to go next year as soon as the ground warms up.

The seaweed is amazing after all the rain, the two lots which I had put down early in the week had completely dried out and shrunk but I was surprised to see today that it is all back to its original bulk as it seems to have soaked up the rain?!
 There was a programme on RTE1 this evening called Gliondar about unusual hobbies and this episode was about growing potatoes!
A competition was underway in Co Kerry called Spud Off to see who would grow the best potato. They were using sea weed as a mulch and digging it in with the seed potato also. I had missed some of it when I turned on the TV so now I must check on the RTE player to see if its on there.