The weather this week has been pretty mild, but with it has come rain. Pretty much non-stop rain most of the week.

I was hoping it was going to clear up by the weekend, but alas it was still raining hard when I took the dogs out for their morning walk. I decided to walk down the plot to check everything was okay, but it didn’t look as though I was going to get much done there.

In a way I don’t mind. I’m ahead of where I want to be at the moment, particularly as I got the fruit bed weeded last weekend, so having a weekend off isn’t going to do me much harm or the plot.

Both the broad beans and (finally) the sprouts look like their coming good. The latter might mean that we have some in time for Christmas! I’ve had my doubts that the sprouts were ever going to come good, but it looks like we might get some, although they are still looking rather small. I don’t recall them being a small variety although the description on the suppliers website says:

“The small, tight buttons are a lovely dark green with good flavour.”

So maybe they’re not going to get much bigger. I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with growing sprouts, as they are something that I can’t seem to grow consistently (either well or badly) and so don’t always bother.

I think a harvest might be in order to check out that flavour!

I do need to also check out the celeriac plants next to them too, to see if there is any improvement with them.

The broad beans are an overwintering variety (Aquadulce Claudia), which I sowed several weeks ago. If the mild weather keeps up they will continue to grow, but ideally I’d like them to stop around about now. They big enough to get through the winter, but if they get too big, and then it gets very cold, they might suffer. We’ll see.

I note that something has had a peck or a nibble on some of the leaves though, so I’ll need to keep an eye on that, I’ve never had to cover them before, but maybe I might need to.

If the weather clears, I’ll be down on the plot later in the week. I have everything I need now to do the repairs / upgrade to the timber frame cloche, so I want to get cracking with that as the materials are taking up room and getting in the way a bit. I’m aiming to try and video that if I can.