Allotment Seedlings

Planting and growing has begun! We have three trays of Meteor pea seedlings waiting to go in, but they’ll need some kind of cover or they will simply rot in the ground and the greenhouse is burgeoning (isn’t that a great word?) with leeks, both Babbington and annual, broad beans, alpine strawberries and sweet peas.

We’ve put out our first early potatoes – some went into tyre stacks three weeks ago, but the rest of the first earlies went out last weekend. The first early carrot is showing in the raised bed that is covered with horticultural fleece, and the currants are all budding beautifully. At least two of the transplanted raspberries have started to bud too – mind you, that means that at least twelve haven’t budded yet. I gave them some potash, to try and encourage them.

I put potash around the strawberries too and dug out some more free-ranging raspberries – I don’t know why I bother mentioning it, I’m going to be saying ‘I dug out some more raspberries’ for the next five years at least. These were in the spot where I want to plant sweetcorn.

But still I’m panicking about getting seeds started – why does everything have to start off at once? Himself has been busy thinking about runner bean supports and also a brassica cage, because the horrible, awful, nasty pigeons are dead keen on picking purple sprouting, calabrese and even kale, and strewing the remnants on the ground. So a cage to keep them off seems like a good investment.

Labels: allotment broad beans, allotment-fruit, allotment-potatoes, allotment-seedings