Mass potting

Hot and dry: is this a portent of the summer to come? I went up to the allotment in a t-shirt. And the day just got hotter. I was cleaning the shed (well, it’s actually rather clean right now. I was really looking to see if I had remembered to bring the parsnip seeds and left them in one of my hanging plastic bags; I didn’t) and found a small bag of seed potatoes. Rats. It meant that I had to dig two more trenches for the potatoes. Does this crop ever end? I sweated my way down near the end of the bed and put in two rows of Cara main crops. So now, surely it’s all over and they can just get on with growing.

I have about six feet left at the very end of the plot in front of the apple trees now. And that will be the perfect place to grow the cucumbers. I’m going to grow plenty this year, just to beat the slugs. And am looking forward to putting up some nifty structures for them. Anything to keep them off the ground and away from the beasts. And if all goes well I want to underplant the cucumbers with lots of trailing nasturtiums as a sacrifice crop.

I decided that the suffering sweet peas in the cold frame need to get planted, even though it’s too early. They are disintegrating in their soggy loo rolls and not looking pert. I was watching an old re-run of Sarah Raven on Gardener’s World and she mentioned that they are tough as old boots and can cope with a bit of snow. So I have put them in at the end of the bean poles. They look a bit sorry, so we shall see. The entire bean plot is a sorry site / sight. All compacted clay and heavy soil. I have been diligently putting rotting compost into the crossroads of the plot where the beans went last year in preparation for a good soft bed. But I decided to put the beans somewhere else this year. Sigh, you just can’t plan for everything.

The cold frame (now well secured with lots of bricks) is full of just sprouting peas and broad beans, plus a few of the tomato plants that survived their ice bath when the lid blew off last week.

I inspected the pea rows: can’t see anything sprouting and suspect they have all been eaten by mice. So this is my salient lesson. Everything has to be grown in pots, root trainers or jiffys and only transplanted out when they are of a size to cope.

I tried to prepare the parsnip bed. The soil is rock solid at the top and rather soft and damp underneath. We just need a good shower of rain to get things softened up so I can plant. Something seems to have eaten half of my Nerines as well. Grrr. But finally the onion sets are showing a bit of life. I think they were well checked by last week’s cold weather.

Back home – perspiring mightily, but clutching some lovely purple sprouting broccoli. No one told me they were such a long lived crop. Must grow more this year.  And I continued the gardening theme by having a mass potting. So much fun: we are going to be away climbing for a week, so I need plenty of things to germinate while we are away.

Sitting proudly on the kitchen window are 12 celeriacs, 12 parsnips, 24 land cress, 4 nasturtiums, 2 sweet peas, 1 climbing bean (ran out of loo rolls) 15 capsicum, 5 marmande tomatoes, 5 mizuna lettuce and 5 salad mix. It has exhausted my entire crop of peat pots, and labels, but I feel that the numbers are about right. I only had four capsicum plants growing last year, and could easily have grown fifteen. The same about my parsnips and celeriacs. Forget the neat rows that Mick always manages, I think I only germinated about three parsnips last year. And I nurtured just a single celeriac plant. It tasted gorgeous and I really wish I had planted more.