More stripes
Another quardrant of startling stripes. The sun was about to set when I took this last shot of the potager. I had planned to go in well before 7pm, but I suddenly remembered the nets. There’s no point spending a morning weeding and lovingly mulching the peas and broad beans and then forgetting to cover them up at night. 
It would be just my luck to get a visit from marauding deer on the only night I didn’t have cloches in place.
So I ducked up to the potting shed and actually found the special pea and bean net rather quickly. Orderly or what? I had stuffed it underneath the potting tables a year ago and actually saw it poking out under the cloth. Yippee. And thank goodness for a very large lawn the lets me spread it out and prepare to move it into position. And now it’s temporarily in place. Tomorrow I will tweak it and fuss and get it perfectly tucked in. 
It was a wonderfully productive session: I managed a row of onions, two of carrots. No three. And then two rows of parsnips to fill the quadrant. And I mulched salads that are already in the garden (overwintered) and left a space for more when they come out of the potting shed and take their chances in the big wide world.
Getting so many rows in meant I created quite a good system. Line up the string and spike to get a straight row. Hoe the line. Crouch down and scoop out the soil. Mound up the soil on the lower side to create a barrier. Water the row. Add one layer of new mulch in the hole, water, tamp down with a rake and choose the seeds. Sow carefully, then add one more mulch layer. Press down, water again and find the sticks. 
I have to make this beautifully neat area Artur proof. He does love to roll in the dirt. So down each line of newly sown future plants I have a double technique of sharp sticks every foot or so and then pink string drawn taught along the line. It’s not that Artur doesn’t do pink, he just doesn’t like anything getting in the way of a langorous roll in a large expanse of freshly raked earth. He won’t be pleased.