It's been a lot of work, but somehow it feels as if we're just inching along at the moment. Busy weekends are partly to blame, and the season has been cold. The shot above shows the state of play at the end of a rather dogged afternoon's work last Sunday. Between the posts and the Weed Heap the potatoes are coming along nicely. The net and post contraption is the site of the first lot of green peas - 'Ambassador'. In the foreground are the ten celeriac plants that I put in the week before, and some short rows of a random mixture: two rows of beetroot, one of 'Boltardy, the other of 'Barabietola di Chioggia'; a row of rainbow chard; a row of spinach; and a row of radishes. Here's the celeriac in more detail. I hope to convert my family to it: I was first seduced by celeriac at school lunches in France when I worked as an English language assistante, and have hankered after growing it ever since.
The peas have come along slowly, probably because they haven't been watered frequently since planting. In fact although it's been cold it's also been very dry - the grass hasn't really grown again since it was strimmed the previous week.
I'm taking no chances with the pigeons and the green peas, so have swathed the young plants in netting.
Salads are still just creeping towards maturity. Perhaps I sowed them too early, in April. The lamb's lettuce is at last showing, but the spinach at the top left of the 4 rows in the photo below is being very grudging.
Now my early season ordering has caught up with me. The first of the phased delivery of purple sprouting broccoli arrived this week from Delfland Organics, and had to be potted up temporarily. The replacement raspberry canes arrived too, and are also in temporary quarters. I remembered with some dismay that I also ordered alpine strawberries, and they too will pop up midweek sometime soon.
Meantime I'm flat out at work finishing up before I go on leave for a glorious 7 weeks. Just 2 weeks to go, but the cost of that pace is a distinct lack of energy in the evenings. Add to that the end of term shenanigans at school and spare time is hard to find. Tomorrow I plan to be out in the garden at 7.00 a.m. - weather permitting of course.
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