
The weather seems, finally, to be perking up a little, but having very little faith in all matters meteorological, I insisted we go to the allotment on Saturday morning before the rain started again. Things did look more promising than they had done the previous weekend. The gooseberry bush (newly planted only a matter of months ago) was looking in fine fettle (see above snap). We'll see how it goes this year, but I think we will be adding at least two more plants before the end of the year. Our potato trenches from last week still looked good, so we added two more trenches for the second earlies (maris peer).

While the tame photographer was busy digging potato trenches, I busied myself tidying up the edges of the grass path. At home we have the greatest difficulty growing grass, but here at the allotments there is no stopping it.

The next task was to cover the newly emerged broad beans with netting. We have heard tales of ravenous green parakeets which are especially fond of young green shoots so, anticipating the worst, we set to. We found some blue piping in the shed that had been left by the previous owner and used the netting I had bought the previous week. I must admit, it was a harder job than either of us expected, but we were very pleased with the result. And to cap it all the following day one of our neighbours commented that it looked like a very professional job.


The above is the view you might get if you were a rather stupid parakeet and got caught under the netting! If you look very closely you might see the broad bean plants. Every single one has germinated - a miracle!
I finished off by sewing half a row of carrots and half a row of beetroot and digging one of the newly uncovered patches, ready for sewing later in the month. Before we left, one of neighbours offered us some of his leeks as he had too many. Well, of course, I was unable to refuse - and they do look delicious!

The following day the sun was shining again but the tame photographer had lost his enthusiasm for gardening. I did, however manage to persuade eldest son to come along. He dug yet another trench for one row of maincrop potatoes which we duly planted - and that will do for potatoes this year - we have run out of room. I raked off a bit more of the winter mulch and dug over the soil and then sewed some radish seeds, coriander and salad bowl lettuce. The radish seeds say they should germinate in 4-7 days so maybe we'll see them next weekend. This doesn't seem like much, but it did take a fair bit of time. After tea and hot chocolate (which eldest son deemed too watery) I tidied the shed a bit as it was getting very hard to get to anything.
Finally here is a picture of the tree at the end of our plot in full blossom - and very pretty it looks, too!
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