Only a few more days to our holiday.........got our tickets yesterday at last ! Everywhere I look I see little jobs that I MUST do before I leave......if only it would stop raining !

I've managed to finish some wooden and mesh frames to go around my stump rooted carrots in the slab beds. These will be an absolute godsend for keeping the local neighbourhood cats from digging in the sand and leaving me little deposits. The sand in the stump carrot beds needs to be kept reasonably moist as opposed to the long carrots where you try to keep it dry. The best 'stumps' are about 6-10" long to the stump end before the fine hair like tap root starts. If you keep the bed dry the stump will end up longer than necessary and be harder to match up.

As you can see my onions are also continuing to swell nicely. The biggest is now 4" diameter which is as big as I've harvested them in the past. I have at least another 3 weeks growth left so I reckon they'll be 5-6" dia. by then as there is plenty of vigour and life in the foliage yet. That won't be huge......say 2-3lbs.......but the quality is very good and that is the most important thing. I'll try and harvest them over a period of a week or so to try and let some catch up with the ones harvested first. I think I should have about a dozen to select from............but trying to get 5 matching onions from such a small quantity won't be that easy. Some will be slightly taller, some may have flattened bases, some may not be exactly symmetrical.