The weather warmed up last week and so did our gardening activities which were more or less confined to the allotment.

It’s now one of the busiest times of the year as far as planting goes.

At the beginning of the week, we planted out our first batch of broad beans. For some reason it always seems to be windy when these are planted, and last week was no exception, so I tried to offer the young plants a little protection in the shape of a makeshift windbreak. The beans had been sown two to a small plant pot. Gardening wisdom tells us that if two seeds germinate we should discard one, but we plant both young plants out as if they were just a single plant and we have never had a problem with this.

I also found some plantlets had grown from suckers sent out from plants in our old strawberry bed. The variety – Sweetheart – was always a prolific fruiter so I retrieved several plantlets and planted them in our new strawberry bed which is now full.

We also planted our early brassicas plants – a mixture of cabbages, cauliflowers and calabrese. These were given the protection of an enviromesh tunnel without which they would quickly be decimated by the wood pigeon population.

In order to do more planting beds had to be cleared and turned over with the rotovator.

Once they were prepared two of the beds were planted up with potatoes.

In another onions and shallots were planted. These were set into trenches filled with compost and the bed was covered with enviromesh to give some protection until the sets begin to shoot. We have still to decide whether or not to cover the onions permanently to protect them from the potential allium leaf miner. The problem is that plants hidden under enviromesh can be neglected and weeds can take over unnoticed.

Details of what we planted are here. Details of what we planted are here.

We gathered a small harvest. The early rhubarb is now growing strongly and we managed a few pickings of purple sprouting broccoli.

In the garden it is the tulips that are providing the biggest splash of colour.

They are not the only flowers making a statement as the garden is gradually springing into life.

Away from the garden and the allotment, the bluebells are beginning to flower at Nostell. To date, the bluebells that I planted in the garden, a couple of years ago, have still to show any signs of producing flowers.

On the main lake at  Nostell, Mrs. Swan was still sitting patiently on her nest whilst Mr Swan was at the other end of the lake enjoying food being thrown by visitors making the most of the good weather coinciding with the Easter holiday period.

Fortunately, Ruby had been clipped just before the weather turned warm, so wasn’t sweltering under a thick woolly coat.

I’m still trying to use up our stored onions before they grow. To this end, Martyn made some onion bread.

I braised the red cabbage, that we harvested the previous week. This was cooked with onions, and eating apples. Also added were ground cloves, ground cinnamon, sultanas and apple cider vinegar. The vinegar provides the acid content which prevents the red cabbage from becoming a less appetising blue.

Some of the broccoli was served with some of the cheese and onion crisp bakes that were made the previous week and frozen. These provide a handy quick meal for days when we are busy at the allotment.

So it was a very busy week and weather permitting we will probably have a busy week this week too.

I’m linking this post to Dave’s Harvest Monday hosted on his Our Happy Acres blog. Why not pop over and see what he is doing across the Atlantic.

As always stay safe and well and enjoy your gardening.