The day before, I left (storm) Hannah alone at the plot while I transplanted seedlings into larger pots. today I had a look at what she had done. I wasn’t expecting anything much as it is quite sheltered but I was wondering how the over wintered broad beans, now heavy with leaves and flowers, had coped. Inspection showed some of the beans had been bent over by the wind even through that were originally tied up. Just one bit had snapped off, loosing some young beans, but that was it. The only other damage was the green netting had blown off the carrots I sowed the other week. It allowed me to notice a lot of young carrot seedlings had appeared. That in itself was good news, last year when I sowed carrots in April nothing came of them. It seems we managed to just about survive the storm….

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It was still a windy day but the recent warm weather and rain had super charged everything, the bare wire fence facing the field next to us was quickly being covered in greenery. The sun was out all morning and the wind blew over the top, it made for very hot working.

I bought along the seed trays from home as a number of plants were more than ready to be planted out. I had already moved cabbages and cucumbers into larger pots. For today I would plant out the first lot of peas up against the wire shelving I had erected the week before. I have further peas starting to grow, mainly because I thought you can never have to many peas the other day and planted a load more of them. The small module seed trays worked well, I was able to pop out the modules and pop into holes I had dibbed into the ground with no problem.

The plan for the plot this year had not included room for turnips as I had decided not to grow any due to them not being the nicest things to eat. However, the seed packet was there so it seemed silly not to sow some in little modules of three. I prepared a bed and planted these out, along with some young beetroot. The last ones to plant out were some small radish plants, put in the same bed as the existing ones. These seedlings had started to go a bit leggy which was a bit unexpected after the March sown ones didn’t suffer at all. They are still a bit small I think but I planted them out anyway, covered over with fleece.

The previous lettuce plants and radish were looking good. Close inspection of the radish showed some were ready to pull, which is what I did. All potatoes were now showing along the two long rows.

After a bit of weeding (bindweed popping up all over the place!) I came to the big event of the morning which was to pull up the remaining leeks. For months we have been living off of two leeks each week and had plenty, the rest in the ground would go to seed if we didn’t pull them all up today, which is what I did. It clears the last bed of 2018 so a bit of a milestone if you like, especially with pulling the first harvest of 2019 (radish, I don’t count rhubarb as that’s always there) and with nearly 2kg of fresh leeks destined mostly for the freezer. Next visit I will weed and put a new layer of compost on the bed, ready for 2019.

I noticed small gooseberries on the bushes and the start of black currants, next week I will have to sort out a plan to protect them from the birds. Last year they had everything. A bit surprised as I didn’t see any flowers on the fruit bushes and now they are starting to show fruit.

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