The Beauty of Nature

Today I planted some summer cabbage.

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Once I had planted them I netted them to make sure that the birds wouldn’t get them. I also put down some slug pellets to keep away our slimy friends who would like nothing better than to munch away on the tender leaves.

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Having been back to check on them, they are doing fine, though a good day of rain would be nice to save me having to water them

Here you can see that we just placed the cut up spinach in the composter. There is no need to do much more to it, it’s fine as it is.

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In this weather, it will break down quickly. Though I am hoping for a bit of rain soon.

Here we cut up the spinach root we dug up.

The important thing about composting roots is that you cut them up into smaller pieces. This aids the breakdown process and we will soon have some lovely rich compost to bed some more plants with.

Nature is so good to reuse itself and so perpetuate the life-cycle. If only humans were the same.

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Today we dug out some of last years spinach. It has over wintered surprisingly well and we were able to get a few salad leaves from the plant we dug out.

There are still a few plants left, but we will have to have these out soon as we have set some spinach seeds for the new crop.

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You can see that it takes a lot of effort to dig it out as the root is quite thick for something that gives such delicate leaves.

Today we planted some onion sets.

Don’t forget to nip the tops off to stop the birds thinking they are worms and pulling them out.

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Today I checked how the parsnips were doing. They seem to have grown a little and are doing well.

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I also point out how you can tell the difference between a weed and your seedling as it comes up.

We decided to check the Dahlias we had over-wintered in the cold frame to make sure they were good to plant out later on.

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Unfortunately we found that a leatherjacket grub had also over-wintered with the Dahlias and had been feeding on it.

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It was nice and juicy fat when we found it, but didn’t last long – if you know what I mean 😉

Just thought you would like to see how the courgette and cucumber were doing.

This is a week ago, so they are even larger now and have been re-potted into larger pots.

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Today we planted out some broad beans. As it was a little windy we staked them in as they had put on quite a spurt in the greenhouse.

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When we planted them, we added some manure to the hole to provide a little extra nutrient for them.

We are using some cut up tights to hold them to the stake. Remember to tie the support to the stake first and then to the plant so that you don’t damage the stem. Leave enough room for growth as well.

Well, as you can see, we need to dig the allotment at this time of year. It has over-wintered well, but the soil needs to be broken up and we have to remove some of the grass that has grown with the mild winter.

We could have put a carpet over it like some of the other allotment holder, but we didn’t have a spare 50sq ft carpet to hand.

So we dig!

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As you can hear it was a very windy day. Perhaps we will use a rotavator next year?