7-9th May

To the allotment after work for a watering session. I watered the sweet peas, or at least the site where they are planted as none have emerged yet; the salad leaves, which are indistinguishable from the weed seedlings as they are so small at present; the chard, rocket and carrots – again no positive identification of any of them. One is supposed to be patient with carrots so I am just waiting! I opened up my packet of horticultural fleece and spread it out over all of section 2 that had been sown and weighed it down.

8^th May

It has been very hot this week so I decided that the tops of the cloches covering the sprouts, calabrese and cauliflowers had to have their tops cut off. This was a rather mundane and slow job as I had to be careful not to dislodge them as they are quite tricky to get firmed into place in the soil so that they stay in when windy. I gave all the brassicas a thorough soaking which is important for these plants, and I covered some with plastic netting borrowed from my Dad.

 

We go on holiday on Saturday and it will be a rush job to get all that I want to do out of the way. There is much weeding to be done at the allotment. Yesterday another plot holder said that today would be given over to hoeing, and judging by his plot, he has done just that, it looks very neat. I won’t have time to do that. It is amazing just lately how well the weeds have grown.

 9^th May

My birthday – my 37^th. I am on the cusp between mid thirties and late thirties! I had a good day off work and we went out as a family and when we came home, my wife made tea for the boys and left me to sow some veg seeds. If I can do this now, they can be germinating in a nice warm conservatory while we are away.

I sowed green and yellow courgettes, pumpkin, butternut squashes and crown prince squashes, sunflowers, claret sprouting broccoli, chard, 2 more gartenperle tomatoes and 3 Ailsa Craig tomatoes. Our eldest sowed 3 cucumber seeds. I potted up the 3 Anaheim chilli peppers, and all the sweet peppers into larger pots but not their final pots. As they are quite large pots it would take a while to do, these are just an interim measure. The peppers look healthy but really need staking up but there is no time. With all of the pots I gave a really good watering before sowing and a sprinkling after. I will water once more tomorrow before we go away and leave a key to the conservatory with my neighbour who will make sure the compost is kept moist while we are away in north Cornwall. I did want to plant out the shop bought sweet peas – the Spencer varieties, but time was too short so to give them a chance at life while we are away, I simply potted them on.