Seedy Sunday

We managed to get most of our seeds sown this afternoon. It was warm and bright and the wind had dropped since yesterday - Thank Goodness.
Our potatoes have started to appear. This is the most advanced in the second row - it appears to be a Red Duke of York which fits in with the plan, so that's a good start!

These are two rows of Paris Silverskin onions, for pickling, and one row of Apache red salad onions. I'll hopefully succession sow a few more rows of salad onions in here too. As ever, my rows aren't straight, but they're labelled and topped with seed compost so whatever :-)

This is Jamie, very neatly, sowing our carrots, Sugarsnax F1. Three rows under the enviromesh cover. He used a wooden pole to make the straight drills - wish I'd done that for the onions!

We also sowed the following and they've gone into the greenhouse:

• Tom Thumb lettuce (half a tray)
• Lambs Lettuce (corn salad) Cavallo (half a tray)
• Swiss Chard Bright Lights (I've sown these in modules so I can keep the most colourful ones)
• Celeriac Asterix F1 (in modules)
• Brussels Nelson F1 (in pots)
• Cabbages Minicole F1 (in pots)

The squashes are sown 3 per pot (apart from the Cornells Bush Delicata). I really only want one of each type but I'm sure the others will find homes if they germinate and grow.

• Winter Squash Cornells Bush Delicata (in pots)
• Winter Squash Uchiki Kuri (in pots)
• Courgette Ambassador (normal green type) (in pots)
• Courgette Floridor F1 (round yellow type) (in pots)

These were sown into the raised bed:

• Turnip Oasis
• Radish French Breakfast 3
• Radish Chinese Dragon

 

And night scented stock have been sown around the grape hyacinths so they'll produce a lovely evening fragrance when we're sitting on our bench.



Flowering and Germinating

Various visits to the plot this week - Jamie's been digging during the day (back permitting) and then we went up each evening to shut the greenhouse down. The temperature is ranging from -2° to 20° out in the open and between 2° and 38° in the greenhouse!
The seeds have appreciated it - the marigolds have all germinated but no sign of the beetroot yet.
The strawberries are flowering - this one looks a bit frost-bitten so probably won't fruit.

And the broad beans have real flowers now :-)

And look how much the hedge has grown - so pretty!

Rotten Start to the Day

Of course, it was only rotten because it was an all-too-quick visit to the allotment before going to work! And what a beautiful morning it was; the birds were singing and there was no-one else around.

Look at that lovely blue sky!

I only nipped up to do a couple of things:

1. Open the greenhouse: The temperature gets up to nearly 40° in the sunshine - just a bit too hot for our little seeds! Overnight the temperature was 2° outside and 3.4° in the greenhouse, so it doesn't make that much different but may prevent some damage if there is a bad frost maybe...
2. Water the grass path that we sowed at the weekend.
3. Give Robbie a few mealworms - he was there waiting for me on his usual fence post.

The radish seedlings are up - I just sowed a little row in front of our broad beans, which have quite a few flowers now. There are loads of bees and other flying insects around so hopefully we'll get some beans fairly soon.

And that was it, time for work :-(
Then a quick visit after work to seal the greenhouse from another cold night ahead...

More Seed Sowing

We had a good afternoon on the plot even though the cold wind was horrible. The sun didn't shine but at least it stayed dry and there were loads of plotholders on site.

Jamie and I put up our little green house for germinating seeds. We've piled bricks all round it as it was trying to take off in the wind already. We've put perspex under the seed trays to help warm the ground underneath as that's where we'll be planting some flowers once the greenhouse is moved on. We're hoping the perspex will encourage weed growth so we can pull them before we put wildflowers in - otherwise we won't know what's what!

We sowed the grass path between the two newly aligned plots - hope somebody wants to lease them soon so they don't stay unloved too long!

I did the meet and greet of a new couple (welcome to Andrew & Gill). They arrived armed with tools and had planted a row of donated potatoes within a couple of hours of setting foot on site!

We left after we had sowed some beetroot (Moneta - monogerm variety), calendula (Daisy Mix) and french marigolds (Oranges and Lemons). They're all in the greenhouse.

  

 

Well, it is still April, what did we expect?!

We may have been thinking that it's been a slow year, but April is proving to be just as we'd expect - full of April showers.

Time to go!

Jamie was digging plot 8B yesterday and got caught in hail and snow showers and today we didn't do any better! In between there was some lovely sunshine but it felt chilly (8°) and the nights are still cold, 0° last night.
Our plants are enjoying the weather though. The onions have green shoots and the salad seeds sown last week have germinated.

We're really pleased with the rhubarb, this is the original Victoria which we were concerned about in February - it's certainly made up for it over the last couple of weeks; it seems to grow before our eyes!

Today we were doing HAHA work; changing a couple of empty plots and making a path between them. We'll seed the path tomorrow and then we can get back to our plots. We need to get our little greenhouse up so we can get some more seeds sown.