After a bit of a rainy week and next week looking like much the same, Saturday started off with warmth and sunshine, and a chance to spread over a layer of compost on the beds at the plot. I had left it a bit late and for the first time ever there was no parking spaces free, I had to park elsewhere, everyone else had decided to make the most of the nice day too. A further surprise was the number of plot holders around my plot being busy. After years of being surrounded by abandoned plots, suddenly there is a great deal of activity and hopefully it will continue through the year.

My main job for today was to empty last year’s compost and spread over the beds. Each year I add the shredded up cuttings from the bushes and buddleia from the garden to the compost heap on the plot. This fills it up mostly, and then composts down to half the size. It’s made enough compost this year to cover most of the beds on the plot which is quite a good feeling.

The gooseberry bushes I planted last week are still there, not much has changed over the week. I am hoping we will get a delivery of woodchip sometime so I can cover the polythene.

The path around the strawberry bed has always been a bit narrow and we have too many strawberry plants (of which the mice get to the strawberries before we do most often) so I decided to turn it more into a L shape bed to give more room. This has left me with a number of strawberry plants going spare, some of them I’ll take home and plant up in the garden.

I tidied up the edge of the beds, hoed in some of the straw around the raspberries and came home with our first of the rhubarb for the year.

At home, we have, in seed trays or pots:

• chili plants nearly ready to pot up
• onions
• leeks
• picked out lettuce and put in pots