7th May

7^th May

Lunchtime was high time to do something with the leeks. The seedlings have been fine in their little seed trays but there is not much room for their further development and they are too small to be planted out at the moment. In a skip at work I have found a series of wholesale vegetable boxes that I have rescued and brought back and one of them I lined with a plastic bag, filled it with a mixture of soil and multipurpose compost and transplanted 95 leeks into it. There they can grow more until they are thick enough to plant out – the famous pencil thickness. Before actually eating lunch I just had time to plant out 5 more teasels at home along the back of the rockery.

At the allotment after work I forked over section 5 which was the membrane-covered one from last year. The membrane certainly works well, and not only is the soil fairly weed free except for the slits where the plants were, but the soil is light and friable – really easy to stick a fork into and give a little twist to loosen up the soil. I think the fact that the membrane was down and therefore I did not walk over it helped the soil to not become compacted. The other end of this section was a totally different matter however. This area seems to be the epicentre for bindweed production with some thicker, older stems plunging down deep into the clay subsoil a foot below the surface. I cleared as much as I could. The ground was very hard and needed a lot of effort not only to fork up a section but to break it up and clear away the thistle, dandelion and bindweed roots. I didn’t finish the section simply because this end piece where the membrane had not been laid was so riddled with deep rooted weeds and compacted.