The Warmth of the Sun

Can you dig it?

Heading to the plot for a concentrated session of digging at the weekend taught us several things.

The ground is definitely drying out and is a marked improvement on last week but the occasional squelch is still encountered after the fork has gone in.

On the whole the soil is still sticking together in big lumps which need to be broken up with the fork.

During the digging we’ve been mixing in good quantities of compost and well-rotted horse manure. This should provide nutrition for this seasons crops and help to break the soil up a bit more.

A fellow plotter did suggest adding a couple of spadefuls of grit sand to each bed to break the soil up further.  This is something that is now on the ‘to do’ list for the next visit.

Bud the spud

We’ve put some desiree potatoes in a tray and plonked them in the cold frame. They can now chit to their hearts content.

When the sprouts are around 2cm long they’ll be ready for planting into the freshly dug bed we have reserved for them.

Rocket Man

About a week ago we had an industrious seed sowing session. By the end of it the cold frame was filled with a dozen or so trays of seeds.

The first seeds to break the surface of the soil were the rocket seeds. Not much of a surprise there.

Second place goes to the radish seeds – they are in the same tray as the rocket seeds so maybe they had extra encouragement.

Coming in third is a tray labelled ‘Chinese stuff’.  This label was written late in the day at a stage when we really couldn’t remember exactly what was sown in that particular tray.  Probably a mixture of pak choi, choi sum and kailan – we think.

Here comes the sun

The weather really was lovely over the weekend. Ideal for working on the plot and for that reason lots of people turned up.

One advantage of the warm weather is that people are more inclined to stop and chat in between jobs on the plot and this social aspect is always enjoyable.

We are told that the dry weather will last until perhaps the end of the week though the current forecast shows the weekend as being a return to the rain and lower temperatures of previous weeks.