The baby brassica plants nurtured from seed in the cold frame were becoming too big and in danger of scorching, so yesterday I removed the black tarpaulin from the end bed and dug it over ready to become the new brassica bed (last year it was beans), revealing an alarming number of ants and prodigiously fat worms! It was (almost) a pleasure to dig as the soil is now so much healthier than the solid stony clay of the early years. This was the last bed I dug, so it’s a year or two behind the other more established ones.

Hungry pigeons were looking on greedily from the surrounding trees as it started to rain, so fast action was required. It was pretty easy to bash in the corner stakes, less so to organise the butterfly netting over it. In the end I had a brainwave and trotted off to buy some cup-hooks which, screwed into the wooden base, meant I could attach the netting taut along the bottom on either side and still have the bed accessible for weeding and, eventually, harvesting.

So this is how it looked in the end. From the front: purple summer sprouting, white sprouting, cavolo nero, red cabbage and finally, nearest the path, January King cabbages. Just hope I’ve left enough space between them. It always pains me when there’s not enough room to plant out all the seedlings, but there’s always the compost if I can’t find someone to give them to.