preparation

I've now been down to the allotment two days running, and have dug over 1 and a half beds quite roughly, and a half bed extremely finely. It would be perfect for carrots and beetroots, except that it's in the wrong place! I am trying to work out if I switch it or just dig anew tomorrow.

The new crop map is updated, and the area I've got looking gorgeous is the fallow pile that was last year's onions section.  Right next to the leeks that I abandoned, and which have apparently grown nicely for me despite being ignored for 3 months! 

This area is earmarked for squash, and the area I should have been digging out was the next one down, which was squash last year. I think I'll see how well it digs over before deciding, because the soil that I've done today is quite light and fine, which would be better suited to carrots than the normal clay base I have.

I am not looking forward to digging out the half row of potatoes that I left in, as they were too small to bother about. I am hoping for a better crop of potatoes this year. But I've never been great with potatoes. The only saving grace is that everyone's were small last year.

There are also several rows of sprouting broccoli that have not been attended to, and would have been nice to harvest. Once the snows hit I just didn't go down there at all! I am not going to feel guilty about that though, not with how busy I was over christmas!

In the back room I have my potatoes chitting, and 4 seed trays on the go with the peppers, chillis, tomatoes, courgettes and cauliflowers.

We are now back in business!

Today was an excellent demonstration of the changeable quality of April weather (even though it's May). We had rain, hail, gales and sunshine all in the space of an hour. Rinse and repeat.

I had hoped to get down to the allotment and finish digging the last few rows, but in the end I spent the entire afternoon in the backyard being intermittently rained on, and repotting a few more of the seedlings.

I now have tomatoes, gemma courgettes, random pumpkin and minipop sweetcorn in individual pots.

I also got the first of the brassicas sown in segregated seed trays.

I am hoping to get a lot of the seedlings into the ground a lot earlier than last year, as I have much more area prepared than I did at this point 12 months ago. That should mean that I don't have to repot the rest of the sweet corn in individual pots, as I can just put them straight into the ground.

I just need to know that there will be no more frost. God, do you have some kind of definitive word on that one?

My final two sets of peas are looking quite gangly, and I am sure the roots are badly entwined, but they are in a large segregated seed tray, so they are only tied together in groups of 4, so I could just plant them in close clumps with greater spacing between.

I noticed that the pea weevils are back again in the rows I've already planted out though. I had them hitting last year, and I can't remember what I did about them. I've read that a nicotine spray can work - all you have to do is boil up old fag ends. Well, the disgusting smell that pervaded the whole house when I created garlic spray last year was bad enough! I can't imagine how revolting a nicotine spray would be. And where would I get the fag ends? I don't want to hang around outside The George and pick up the leavings at night!

Today was glorious, and so of course I spent all day in the garden enjoying it. Oh, and I repotted my beans into their own pots so that I don't have to play root detangle games later when I plant them out.

Tomorrow I'll spend the day down at the allotment digging away. With the recent dry weather the ground should now be diggable.

The seeds planted in the recycled strawberry punnets and other trash receptacles before our holiday have been very busy indeed! The sugar snap peas especially - as you can see below.

The beans are following suit now too though, including some old spotted beans that I think are Borlotti, but can't remember. (The picture below is one of those, not a runner bean, that's the tray behind!)

These ones are blue lake climbing french beans, which we had a glut of last year. I blanched and froze them in portions and we were still eating them mid autumn.

I was a bit worried about my seeds while we were away on holiday, because I'd left them in the veg-table seed bed with a plastic cover over them, and instead of cool weather we had quite a lot of unexpected sunshine. I was very relieved to come home to this:

I hoard stuff that might come in handy. It sort of overflows from the top of cupboards and takes over a bit. I blame it on on the fact that I grew up in a house big enough to keep extra stuff, but now live in a wee little british domicile.

But in this time of year, all is forgiven - because there is a reason behind the hoarding (sometimes) and this pile of fruit punnets and mushroom trays is about to be put into service for seeding the crops. Watch this space.

Now that my veg-table has sat pretty much unloved all winter, it's time for a change. With the allotment still undug and my previous experience with using a seed bed had lead to the largest weed collection ever seen, I decided that the veg-table would make an excellent weed free seed bed and cold box combined.

And voila, the pictures speak louder than words! (also, after I took the photo above, I removed the seed packets. So this photographic evidence is how I'll know exactly what is planted in each row!