Let it grow, let it grow, let it grow...

OK, I admit I'm a bit late in publishing this post, so you'll just have to cast your minds back a couple of weeks to the 14th, a lovely sunny spring Saturday...

We pottered about on the plot for a couple of hours, doing a bit of digging and sowing. The bulbs in the old wheelbarrow are growing now so it'll be interesting to see what we planted! I think we had some daffs and some bluebells, and the little ones might be scilla. We'll see.


I sowed the first two (nearly straight) rows of peas. I'm trying to be a bit more organised and have got three pea varieties this year, one which sows and crops quite early, one which has a long cropping period, and another which is later. So hopefully we'll have fresh peas right into autumn. Now we have to figure out how to keep the pea moth (?) off them as we had some teeny caterpillars in the pods last year, which takes a bit of the fun out of podding.

Also need to go on a twiggy stick hunt to give them more support. I've read that if you get really twisted gnarly twiggy ones it also helps keep the pigeons off... We're going to have all our peas and beans down the bottom of the plot this year. I still can't get my head around this whole crop rotation business - I have to go back to a diagram in a book every time - so maybe bunching our similar crops together will help.

While I was pottering about with the peas, Adam sowed another row of broad beans. The first shoots from a couple of weeks ago are just starting to show. I then sowed the first lot of carrots, including some exciting purple ones. Rather than sow them delicately in rows, like last year (when our carrots were, frankly, crap) we decided to try broadcasting them across a finely-raked tilth, a la Jamie Oliver... Anyone who watched the Jamie At Home series a year or so ago will have seen Mr. Oliver scatter carrot seeds willy, and indeed, nilly, across the earth and then pull up huge handfuls of small but sweet carrots. No Thinning Needed. Not sure ours will be that successful, but you never know.

What else did we do... Adam dug over the first bed, to get rid of most of the grass which had started to take over. Oh, and the big water tank Does Not Seem To Be Leaking (yey!!) so once we have it filled we can move some of the other water butts to go along behind the shed and then we have the perfect space to hang a hammock or two... Now we need some lazy summer days, cold beer in hand, picking fresh strawberries and simply, well, lounging. Not sure that happens much on an allotment, there's always something else to do.