First session of the year

I had my first proper session of the year on the plot on Saturday.  3 hours in all.  Bliss on such a gorgeous Spring day.  I badly needed to get back in touch with it after such a long, enforced (it felt like that) break.

The priority was to freshen up the white and purple sprouting plants in the top right corner.  They still had tunnel nets covering them and I was hoping they had started into growth.  They had indeed (slightly) along with the neighbouring Spring cabbages. I weeded, fed and watered them all and recovered them with the enviromesh that had been covering the Brussels sprouts to hopefully allow more light in.  I may change that for wider gauge netting soon.  Surprisingly, it was the purple sprouting showing more promised, with 4 or 5 plants sprouting tiny purple heads in the middle, despite my expectations (set by the labels) that the white sprouting would come first.

I took one of the 2 compost bins I had been using for pernicious weeds at the bottom end of the plot and placed it (emptied) at the top left corner to restart the compost heap.  Into this, I tipped the Brussels sprout plants, tired chard plants, and foliage from the leeks and parsnips (which I dug up, taking home quite a haul later - a whole carrier bag full for making curried allotment soup).  I'll now need to take the old weeds to the tip as I can't seem to "do" bonfires.

Near the main gate to the site, just one plot away, there are plans for a concrete standing so that plotters can bring on trailers if needed.  Two reliable sources informed me that the crowns of rhubarb there were for the taking (or destined for the compost heap) so I forked up 3 small crowns with healthy looking buds and put them on my plot where the chard had been.  I figured that my craving for rhubarb crumble (currently satisfied by expensive trips to the lovely greengrocer in town) needs more than the single young crown I had.

I finished off by weeding, feeding and watering the broad bean patch.  Hopefully they'll soon get away.

I was a tad worried that I just don't have room for anything else to go in but now the parsnips and leeks are out there is some space immediately freed up.  There are also 2-3 patches of plot that have been covered over Winter so are ready to by dug over (slowly and carefully).  There should then be room for tomatoes, summer brassicas, courgettes, sweetcorn, leeks, parsnips, beans, Brussels and other things.  Maybe even flowers (I've a free packet of poppy seeds to use to attract bees).  I've decided to forego spuds and onions this year as they are easily bought but will do those next year.

Next weekend, I hope to have time to weed and feed the garlic patch as it is all up now and the soil seems capped so needs opening up (or perhaps the capping is a good thing?).  I also plan to sow lots of seeds at home including chard, celeriac and brassicas.

Talking of home, I stubbornly dug up a 0.8m-wide strip of lawn in our small back garden to give me some sunny-ish space for planting (much of the lawn is in shade) and forked in some well-rotted manure.  While little one was napping on Wednesday, I planted some yellow tulips, daffs and mixed sweet peas purloined from the local farm shop and a "hedge veg" stall (a term I picked up in Guerney where they are very popular) on the side of the road in the next village along from us.  Since then, I've nipped in a bay tree (which was over a foot high and very bushy and a snip at £3.75 from a nursery) and some bronze fennel.  The colour scheme I am aiming for in our back garden is bright yellow, orange and green (our wedding colours) while there will be a focus on pinks, purples, whites and blues in the front garden.  Little one has since announced that pink, purple and white are her favourite colours.