Peas, Potatoes & Planting Out

I've had a busy bank holiday weekend, although only part of if it at the Hill - there was some most welcome light rain for most of Saturday & yesterday I was otherwise occupied.

Looking at the seedlings still at home on the bench or in the mini greenhouse, it stuck me that not only are the tomato seedlings looking rather small, it is the end of May and I have quite a lot of seedlings still to get planted out.

The tomato plants will benefit from being put into their buckets (these will be in the courtyard garden at home, hopefully safe from blight), but that's a job for another day, so I packed the various pots into the car along with the trowel & headed to the Hill.

A scrutinise of the plot reveals that Saturday's rain had done very little good - although there are flowers on the PEAS (red flowered) & 3" long pods on the BROAD BEANS (witkiem manita) - I'll be picking some of these next weekend, I think, to eat whole.

After I planted out the FRENCH BEANS (contender), MARROW (long green bush 2), COURGETTE (black beauty), PUMPKIN (bag end) & BUTTERNUT SQUASH (brampton), I got the watering can out & got busy giving all the plants a good drink.

I got bored of this by the time I got to the furthest beds from the tap - which was a bit of a shame as these are the potato beds, and stood to benefit the most from a good watering, but there you go. I did have a poke around under one of the potato plants to see if they are ready to harvest (answer: not yet - this one is about an inch across).

Before I left I popped down to John Badger (at the bottom)'s plot to drop a note off to thank him for collecting some empty wine bottles for me.

When I'd enquired at the homebrew shop about larger corks to fit into the necks of screw top wine bottles, I was told that I shouldn't be using these as the glass is weaker at the screw top bit, so I ditched any spare bottles that I had & asked JB if he could have a scout around for non-screw top bottles (saves looking like a bit of a loony hanging round the bottle bank).

Peter & Jane (behind returning allotmenteer Chris) were planting out leeks, along with inquisitive young daughter A - so we had a chat & when I'd dropped the note off, A came back up to my plot to compare the progress of my competition sunflower against hers, skipping off back down the bottom when she was satisfied that mine was no further ahead.

I nipped up to the club house before going home & heard some sombre news that one of the Saturday Old Boys is very unwell, so tonight he is in my thoughts & I have toasted him with his favourite tipple, a nice glass of red.