Sunny Saturday

Today has been a lovely day - sunshine all day.  Mr Milly came to the lottie with me today, due to the terrible weather he hasn't been to the plot for a while and I think he was quite pleased!  I have had a bit of doubting Thomas moment in the last couple of days - and felt that I had lost my way a little,  so Mr Millly's company, reassurance and a bit of guidance was really needed!

We did make the most of the sunshine and spent most of the day at the plot - tonight we both have beetroot red faces, it must have been hotter than we realised!

We made a start with the grass and with my new grass strimmer/brush cutter I cut all the borders and edges of the overgrown grass - immediately that made the plots looks much tidier.   Then we set about the brassica cage.  I had decided earlier in the week that I didn't like the one I had put up - too tall, too untidy, too unstable,  just too not right for me!  Yesterday I had deconstructed it giving us a clear run at it today.   Last year I had picked up some hosepipe from Freecycle,  at the time I didn't really know what what I was going to do with it, but convinced both of us that we would eventually find a use for it.   Today the use was found,  and we have made 3 brassica cages, 2 short ones for cabbages, kale, and lettuces and one taller one for sprouts and broccolli.   We used bamboo canes connected with short pieces of hosepipe,  debris netting to cover them and all neatly pegged down.   I was on a roll then and used the off cut pieces of cane and more hosepipe over the strawberry bed ready for their protection netting to be placed.

New brassica cages

Strawberry bed ready for netting

The next job was the potatoes - again they had appeared above the soil, Mr Milly made a start and was able to cover one line of the tatties,  and of course he covered them differently to me.   A bit of tuition and a lot of supervision followed and the rest of the tatties were covered in the same way.   I think one more earthing up only will be possible as the earthings are now quite tall and we are running out of soil.   Hopefully we won't be seeing any more frost now and one more earthing up should be Ok to protect the potatoes and give us a good crop.

Across the middle of the plots - all the potatoes nicely earthed up.

Talking about crops - we had a little harvest today;-

Spinach from the front of the plot,  a few rhubarb sticks,  four lovely leeks and a couple of spring greens.  The trug was quite full and considering it is not quite the middle of May a pretty good harvest we thought!

Tidy plots.  The Bunting seems to have multiplied!

A few more jobs are planned for tomorrow,  the weather forecast is good so hopefully all the planned jobs can be completed and we are nearly ready for mass planting!!