The ground's been on the soggy side for digging this week, so I've spent a couple of days barrowing dead leaves to mulch the asparagus. I was trying to dig a patch which has been invaded by ground elder, and it's really hard going. Fortunately, most of it was done before the freeze, and another go at it should finish that.

Ground elder is the bane of my life; it's in the hedges, it comes through from the next plot, and there doesn't seem to be any effective way of controlling it organically. I was reduced to using glyphosate last year, along the hedge bottom, but I'm not sure how much difference it will have made.

Yesterday I did what I should have done the other day, and put an empty 14x12 broodbox with drawn comb on top of the box that Hive 5 is in. It's the only hive in a standard broodbox. The bees will move up into the new box over the next few weeks, and then I'll be able to take the old one away and melt the comb. That'll move them painlessly onto the stuff I use, with slightly smaller cells, and give them more space. Since I've yet to have one of my own strain swarm from the larger size (it's bound to happen eventually) I think it's well worth it.