Anyway, being a work day it meant I could pop in to the
allotment on my way back from work. I wasn’t planning on doing much, and I
didn’t stay for long. I gave a quick raking to a few of the beds to loosen up
the soil, reduce the tilth and to disrupt the now frenetic weed growth. There
is a light spattering of tiny green annual weed seedlings across the soil that
seem to have sprung up in the last week due to the sudden warmer weather. I
raked the leek seed bed the most and I will have to get down on my hands and
knees soon and break up the clods with my hands if I’m to sow those leeks
before they should be being transplanted. After deciding not to go with my
bright idea of sowing in trays indoors, I have heard some expert say they do
exactly that!
After raking I sowed a row of Swiss chard in section 1 next
to the salad leaves. The variety is ‘bright lights’ which give different
coloured stems. I will sow a few at home both as a salad crop and an autumn and
winter coloured leaf plant. I sowed 2 more rows of Chantenay carrots, and 2
more rows of Autumn King in section 2. I think that will be it for carrots at
the allotment. If they don’t do well in the thick, heavy soil, I don’t want to
have given over vast quantities of land to failures. I may sow a large
container at home with them in a lighter soil and see how that goes. I peeked
under the plastic tunnel covering the last carrot sowing and there were little
seedlings showing. I didn’t know if the first leaves of carrots are feathery or
if they are the usual first leaf like any other plant so I didn’t know if they
were carrots or weeds. I phoned my Dad later and he thinks they are carrots –
yippee! Mind you, this ‘what do the early leaves look like?’ thing raised
another query in my head – how will I know the salad leaf seedlings from the
weeds, especially as they are mixed salad leaves of differing varieties?
When I arrived home, the family were out in the garden so it
did not take much persuading to join them. I brought a few plants out to harden
off (and they were later watered by a sudden heavy shower which looked great
from the kitchen as I washed up after dinner. The sun was still shining so
there were back-lit curtain rods of water coming down at a striking 45 degree
angle). I also potted on some of the petunias my Dad gave me into 4 mushroom
pots. I noticed for the first time, that our sycamore tree is in leaf and you
can also see the dangling catkins in their early stages. I hadn’t noticed the
detail of the tree since it was all bare. It’s good to see. Later, after the
boys were in bed, as my wife used broadband for the first time, I washed a load
of plant pots.
Tomorrow the plan is to plant out the brassicas under the
cover of my home made cloches – the 4 pint milk containers with the bottoms cut
off. I have calabrese plants, and some good seedlings of my 2 sprouts varieties
and some good cauliflowers as well. The cauliflowers I sowed on the 8th
April have been terrible. Of the 15, only
6 have sprouted, and until today, I had only seen 3. Maybe
the 2 latest and shortest ones can be made a going concern, but the rest will
have to go. That is my executive decision. I also plan to put up the brackets
for the hanging baskets, and maybe even plant up as well, we’ll see. Having
made my plans for tomorrow, it will now probably rain.
Next post: 1st May
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