Hoeing and Sowing!

A really satisfying day at the Hill today – it felt like I got a lot done…but then again with over 4 hours down there, it should do! Lovely in the sunshine - but the wind was cool enough to make you want to get on with it!

I thought I’d start with the ‘heavy’ stuff, so donned my gloves, hefted my spade & put in the final rows of POTATO (maris piper).

I had to do a bit of a fudge on the last row – each time I’ve put a row, I’ve covered the row over with the diggings for the next row, but when I got to the end, there wasn’t a ‘next row’ to dig & use to cover the previous so I had to just jig it all around a bit. Nett result is that the height of the potato patch decreases towards the one end, but no doubt it’ll sort itself out when I come to earth up.

On a nose-blowing break – have a cold at the moment – I turned round and saw a cheeky robin sat on the spade handle! The photo doesn’t do him justice – & I must say it was lovely to see him!

Once the potatoes were in, I got onto hoeing the weeds – mostly chickweed, some convolvulus (I didn’t see any of that last autumn…) & some nettles coming back up. Every time I started to flag, I thought of how much BIGGER the weeds would be next week, and how many more of them there would be and just plodded on.

I hoed over the allocated ‘seed bed’ – I think that anything that wants the nursery treatment can be sown in pots/trays/jiffys at home & then be planted out at the Hill later on. The two very early rows of lettuce did nothing, & any edible radishes that came up were eaten last week on our ‘taste test’. This area will be used for the ‘three sisters’ bed.

While I hoed, I thinned out the rows of turnip, radish & the spinach. My rule of thumb here is to pull up seedlings to the point where adjacent plants are just about touching, then repeat as they grow & I can then use the bigger thinnings to eat. I’ve actually got no idea at all if this is the right way to go about it.

The prize once I had finished the hoeing was to get a heap of sowing underway, & to this end I had a wonderful surprise packet through the post this week – I’m one of ten lucky winners of a seed giveaway from the lovely people at GoGrow seed suppliers via the Kitchen Garden magazine. I received five different seed ‘collections’ including their summer salad, herb garden, traditional allotment, childrens seeds & patio vegetable collections – 9 packets of seeds in each, worth £6.99 per collection. How neat is that!

I put a short row of TURNIP (snowball) in Plot A. Then I put a row each of NASTURTIUMS (trailing mixed) & MARIGOLD (crackerjack) in plot B between the garlic rows, & a short row of RADISH (cherrybelle) & LETTUCE (mixed). In plot C I sowed a ‘catch up’ short row of PARSNIP (f1 gladiator) to make up for the gaps in the long row already in, along with a row of BEETROOT (woden f1), CARROT (early nantes), and SPRING ONION (white lisbon).

I picked the rest of the first radish row, chatted to retired Maureen, dropped some of the radish off at Jane’s & agreed that we’ll all go en masse to the Malvern Spring Show in a couple of weeks, then home for a well needed cup of tea & a bath!