Seeds, Shallots and the Storeshed

I spent a very happy evening this week in the kitchen surrounded by pots, seed packets, trays and a bag of compost starting off the first seeds to put in the mini greenhouse.  I now have a large flowerpot sown with leeks, twelve pots of sweetpeas, and three trays of fifteen pots of crimson flowered broad beans.

Before I started, rather than my default setting of sowing a tray of fifteen pots (or multiples thereof) of each seed regardless of what the seed are and how many I would like , I actually spent some time thinking ahead and working out how many plants that I actually want to have to plant out.in a couple of months, and sowed accordingly. Gosh - how organised am I! 

Today at the Hill - in the drizzle - I raked and raked one of the beds which has had one of the compost daleks emptied on it and cleared some rough twiggy leftovers until it looked a bit more respectable, then planted out half a bed of shallot sets.

I picked some kale, and then set about trying to find a committee member to sell me a couple of scoops of fertiliser from the store shed, but with no luck - because of the drizzle, I guess, I had the whole site to myself.  

The club house was open, however, so I had a look in there too, but there were no plotters in evidence.  Mind you, it was a good excuse to have a swift half pint before coming home to change out of my damp clothes.

Shopping

With the weather very gradually warming up, and the afternoons staying noticeably lighter - hurrah! - my thoughts are turning to what to grow for this season.

It kicks off with a potato day - I went to the Shropshire Potato Day (about 40 miles away) last Sunday and having done my homework beforehand came away with two varieties of first earlies (lady christl and arran pilot), two varieties of second earlies (wilja and charlotte) and two varieties of maincrop (picasso and carolus).

The carlolus are a new variety to me - they are supposed to be blight resistant and tasty, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they perform.

Also on sale were shallots, so I had a couple of bags of those, and - joy of joys - my beloved crimson flowered broad beans, for £2 per half pint mug. Magic!

The first seeds for sowing will be parsnip now things are warming up a little - as fresh seed is recommend each year, I nipped into Wilko and whilst I was looking at the seed display found this value-for-money multipack, which looks good to me.

So I'm all set!