Last week we managed to clear most of the beds and, Martyn went over them with the rotavator. The only bed that hasn’t been dug over is the old strawberry bed, where the soil is hard and cracked. It will need a good amount of rain to soften the soil before it can be dug

I planted the last of our seed potatoes. Most of the ones that had been planted previously, are through now and the ones planted in tubs at home are growing strongly.

I also planted more onions. These were a mixture of sets and plantlets. Having had no success with growing red onions from sets we are trying some from seed.

All the onions and shallots planted previously are shooting.

The garlic that I planted on 3 May is also producing shoots. As usual details of what we have planted are given here.

Martyn, planted out the tomatoes in both the garden and allotment greenhouses. He described his tomato support structure in his post here.

The allotment is now filling up and the lack of any ‘real’ rain has meant that time has had to be spent watering. We only had some light showers last week which only dampened the surface of the soil and soon dried up.

The photo above shows from left to right, carrot seedlings covered with enviromesh, over wintering onions and sweet peas.

In this next photo we have our new strawberry bed. Fruits are now setting and so this has now been covered with netting.

Next to the strawberries are the broad beans. 

Behind the strawberries – out of sight are the early potatoes and next to these are our early brassicas. The brassicas are growing well and are covered with enviromesh as protection from pigeons and any white butterflies, a few of which are already about.

On the other side of our plot, the photo below, on the left shows a clump of self-sown cerinthe. We have worked around them as the bees were enjoying browsing the flowers. The next bed, with the rows of compost, is where I planted the last lot of onions. We fill shallow trenches with compost to give the sets and young plants a good start.

The photo above on the right shows our All Gold autumn raspberries in the foreground. Alongside these is a bed of potatoes and then the first lot of onions. The enviromesh is covering a bed of peas. So far pea germination has been a bit hit and miss. Exactly the same thing happened with the first lot of peas that we sowed last year. We thought that the seeds had been eaten by some hungry creature which is why we covered the bed, but this hasn’t prevented the problem from reoccurring.So far we have only planted up potatoes in the area of the allotment shown above. The other beds have been newly rotavated. To give you some idea of the space, the enviromesh that you can see is the pea bed mentioned earlier.

Back in the garden, we have quite a few clumps of wild garlic which is a lucky bonus. We bought some native bluebells and the wild garlic stowed away amongst the bluebells. 

During our weekly visit to Nostell, we managed to catch sight of a pair of mallards sitting on a nest with their ducklings.

Mrs. Swan had disappeared from her nest but neither she nor any cygnets were visible.

I just hope that the parents of the young birds remain vigilant as the heron and cormorant were still on the lake. They are not averse to taking young birds should the opportunity arise.

Finally, last week’s meals included a chicken tagine that used some of our Crown Prince squash, onion and garlic. I used ras el hanout instead of the individual spices. This was served with couscous.

Our frozen French beans, sweet corn, cauliflower, peas and an onion were used to make a vegetable and quinoa dish. Instead of just quinoa, I used a quinoa and bulgur wheat mix.

More stored onion and garlic and some of our frozen peas went into a turkey and rice dish. I had some mushrooms to use and so I added some to the recipe.

That’s all for this week, so until next time, as always, keep safe and well.