This has to be my favourite time of year for working on the allotment plot.

Firstly, my beans are still doing great and producing like crazy. I’ve recently found a ‘new’ recipe for them which has led to everyone in the house eating them very happily (let me know if you want me to do a post with that).

I did a quick pick before I started working:

Recently I worked on tidying up the brassica bay and covered it in home-grown compost. So the next bay to be done is the peas/beans bay. The peas have definitely had their day so it was time to clear them away and the weeds are loving it on that bay.

I think it’s very easy to see a mess like this and feel overwhelmed and I admit to feeling that way more than once on the plot! However, I’ve developed a strategy which seems to be working both here and at home:

Whatever ‘mess’ is facing you – don’t waste your time and energy analysing it, just make a start. Do something. Do anything.

As our family motto goes “Everything gets done eventually”.

This approach really helps me so I’m hoping it will help someone reading this too. I think there is so much time spent focussing on problems, analysing and labelling them instead of just dealing with them! That’s not to say I don’t get distracted:

Our little robin friend is becoming very brave and almost a little too friendly! (My last YouTube video shows just how ‘friendly’ he has become if you’re interested – it has ‘crazy robin’ in the title).

Despite all of that though, I managed to get all the peas removed and a fair amount of the weeds. It isn’t finished but we are aiming for at least 2 trips to the plot a week at the moment so over the weekend, more progress will be made. Here is how the bay looked when we left it:

I even managed to find a few pea pods to use for seed next year.

It might not look great but it’s a vast improvement and the weeds are coming out pretty easily – I still weed everything out by hand, as many are deep rooting or the trailing type with ‘chewing gum’ roots as I call them! That’s mainly a weed which is a type of sorrel and although edible in small quantities, I really don’t want to encourage it in any way so out it all comes!

Here are the before and after shots: