All in a Day

We had to work around the weather this weekend, so what was to have been a two day bed building and planting session had to be done in a day.

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Saturday morning was spent doing a Farmers Market in Tetsworth, with LH nipping here there and everywhere picking up, and ordering parts for the tractor and plough and a huge 'poo' pickup. The afternoon was to have seen us donning wellies and digging for Britain, instead the heavens had other ideas and sent forth torrents of rain, a quick meeting later and we decided to down tools and head off to the garden centre for some necessary supplies and a very civilised cup of coffee and slice of cake.

On Sunday we woke to sunny skies, so after the usual animal feeding and cleaning out we set to work. First job was to fill with top soil the middle three beds, built a couple of weeks ago and currently holding only well-rotted manure (these poo pick ups are good in many ways!).

Once they were turned over and filled up (many, many wheelbarrow loads later) we stood back briefly to admire them, the chickens inspected them and then we moved on to the next jobs of the day.

For LH that entailed building three more raised beds and for me it meant going over to the polytunnel for a marathon planting session.

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I have just managed a second planting of peas, beetroot, cabbage, spring onion, cauliflowers, leeks, peppers, french marigolds, sweetcorn, perpetual spinach, and feverfew.

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Just poking their little faces to the sky this week are some of my tomato plants, I was only complaining to LH the night before that nothing was showing in the tomato trays and then Sunday morning there was one tiny seedling, by the afternoon there were three and when LH came in to inspect my work (he had heard the radio blaring away and suspected a rave was going on instead of a planting session!) I proudly said "here are my three tomatoes" and he looked at me as though I was mad and said "there are four" one had appeared and was one whole centimetre tall in an hour!!

The six beds at the back are now all covered with polythene to warm the soil ready for the potatoes, going in soon. There is lots of in filling needed around these last three beds as the ground level drops suddenly here, which is the reason we have had a foot deep puddle there all winter. Unfortunately we ran out of time and muscle power on Sunday night.

My favourite plants - courgettes. There's something so chunky and substantial about their leaves, I love them.

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More on my latest planting idea tomorrow.

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Sue xx