23rd - 26th May

I potted up the last sweet pepper and filled the new, salvaged salad box with the sieved soil, topsoil and compost and gave it a watering. I also had a large black plastic round pot that I put more of that sieved soil in and I will sow Chantenay carrots, as they don’t seem to be doing well on the hard clay soil at the allotment.



More from the Eden project (and following)

Speaking of the allotment, it is becoming a concern. A while ago I mentioned that with all the dreaming, planning, work and expense, things can still go very wrong. I have been unable to do much at all for 2 weeks and will probably not get there to do anymore work until next Tuesday. There is so much weeding, there is concern over the carrots and the leeks (although this may be impatience) and I really don’t want bare earth yielding nothing of any use to our larder. I really need to get a decent netting over all the brassicas too as white butterflies have been spotted! (if you get what I mean).

24th May

Today was a good opportunity to tidy the garden. My wife’s parents are back from holiday and we had a family meal here for them and my wife’s brother and his family to celebrate her Dad’s birthday. This meant that we were not going out anywhere and we needed the garden tidy so our 4 year old and I set to work. I sowed the salad seeds and the carrots and a pot of rocket after watering with hot water to aid fast germination. I took bags of soil and compost to the end of the garden, gave the concrete a really good sweep, cleared away bags of garden cuttings to the front of the house as well as some sections of drainpipe and guttering that has been littering the place for a few months. I made 2 tripods with bamboo in the wider section of the border in front of the privet hedge and planted my now untangled sweet peas at the bases. I spread some topsoil over the border to make it look nicer, found 4 primrose plants at the back of the border that I had moved out of the way of spring bulbs as I didn’t want to plant them right on top, but now I could plant them aside from the stumps.

After our fantastic outside meal and everyone had gone home, I tied in the sweet peas, watered well and put down a spread of coffee granules and organic slug pellets.

25^th May

It rained like nobody’s business last night and this morning. Thankfully I had covers over my salad and carrot sowings. It was quite bright and sunny later in the afternoon and so we sat out and simply enjoyed the garden – no work!

26^th May

Bank holiday and lots of rain. I had planned to plant out the petunias, but all I did was to sow some more herbs as the ones I planted out are doing poorly. I sowed fennel, oregano, sage, sweet marjoram and Russian tarragon. They are sitting on the kitchen windowsill now. I inspected the sweet peas and they look as though they are settling in.