More planting out ...

Everything is growing nicely now, including the weeds(!), but we are managing to keep on top of it all. After a couple of hours weeding around the spuds and onions the plot looks like this:

On the left hand side you can see that we have put up some more pea netting along the remaining part of the fence that divides the plot into two and planted out the french climbing beans and the runner beans. The sweetcorn (variety Incredible) were planted out in a grid of 5x3 next to the onions.

After a week in the ground the beans look really sick (the leaves have gone yellowy/green you might be able to see this in the above pic) so as a precaution we have also sown some seeds direct in between the beans.

The cutting flowers have also been planted out, these include cornflowers, cosmos and nigella - you can see two of the cosmos plants on the right hand side in the above pic.

Since the cayenne chillis far exceed their supports, they have been moved into larger pots with taller stakes:

They now reside in the plastic greenhouse as they are far to big to live on a windowsill! All the tomatoes have been potted on too.

Finally, I have taken some soft-wood cuttings of the lavender and rosemary in our garden to see if I can raise some new plants:

I have put these in our utility away from direct sunlight where it is cool and bright. The growing medium is a mix of compost and vermiculite. I have not used hormone rooting powder (since I don't have any!)

Lots of plants are coming into bloom in our garden. How about this amazing oriental poppy:

Or these foxgloves (apricot purpurea) grown from seed purchased at Gardeners World Live 2 years ago:

Making tunnels

Had a "flexi" day so managed to spend some time up at the allotment today - got some covering in place for the cabbages and did some general tidying. The cabbage patch which was dug over the weekend now has a tunnel made from 20mm MDPE pipe stuck onto canes which are in turn stuck into the ground:

Into this we planted cabbages ("hispi" [pointed spring cabbage], "golden acre" [white cabbage]), cauliflowers (generic, "all year round") and some salad, before covering with enviromesh and using bits of pallet (what else?!) to hold it down:

Also did a little more digging and also strimmed some of the paths to make for easier allotment circumnavigation (also a nice view of the windbreak)

So the plot is starting to come together now - from the NE corner facing SW looks now like this:

... including a second section of pea netting to grow some beans up, and the newly cleared area which will soon contain wild flowers, both on the left hand side. Starting to have some space worries, in that we still have a lot of plants to go in including sweetcorn, squash, 100 more onions and leeks, but it's not immediately clear where these plants are going to go (feel a double-decker allotment coming on here!)

May update

The plot is coming on really nicely now:

The spuds are beginning to emerge, onions are starting to grow as are the peas. To the far left, next to the onions we have started turning the soil for our wildflowers. The flowers I grew from seed are ready to go out now. We have also planted a few sunflower plants against the pea netting. The two varieties we have grown are "Moonwalker" a compact multi-headed variety and "Velvet Queen" a dark crimson coloured one.

In the raised bed, germination rate of the carrots has been very poor and the beetroot is non-existent:

I have added some radishes to make up for lack of beetroot! I suspect the lack of germination is because I used some out-of-date seed. In the other side of the raised bed the lettuces are growing away happily:

As you can see these are mostly lollo rosso with a couple of oak-leaf type lettuces. I have also added a couple more cos lettuces since this pic was taken.

The strawberries are growing away happily and a few have flowers on them:

The black fabric sheet was a complete waste of time though...it has been ripped to shreds by the wind. I think we will replace this with some black plastic.

Since re-potting the cayenne chilli peppers 3 weeks ago, they have grown a huge amount and now far exceed their supports:

We have been putting them out during the day to try and ensure the flowers are pollinated. Our greenhouse is still chock full of plants:

The leeks are beginning to fatten up a bit now they have been potted on. The french beans, runner beans and sweetcorn (bottom right of pic) are being hardened off and will hopefully go out next week. We have already had our first harvest .... a bucketful of radishes, cherry belle .... now replaced with some little gem lettuces The spring onions (white lisbon) in the green tub to the far left of the pic look like they will be ready soon.

Chipping in and digging up

A couple weeks back we joined the Wantage Gardener's Association and as a part of this we have the chance to help out at the shop - which I did yesterday. The shop itself is ... well hidden:

However they stock all manner of useful stuff at reasonable prices. Have to say it was an entertaining morning and I found out lots of things. In the afternoon went to the allotment to dig some more of the cabbage patch (no dolls found) which was a bit clay-like but otherwise unremarkable:

We also installed a windbreak made out of strong green netting (pictured above) to try and protect our plants from the prevailing wind. Hopefully it will also reduce the number of wind-blown seeds.

In other news we also have some of our spuds coming through - though not much to see yet:

Somewhere under there I hope the roots are going mad...