Onions, garlic and trenches

Over the weekend we popped up to plant the garlic. Jean dug over the row again while I fitted a handle and catch to the shed door, which I hope will stop it getting blown open. I hope we'll see the garlic over the next few weeks. The first of the onions have sprouted in the two rows we planted.

The last of the fennel is starting to go over and the last of the cabbages are pretty ropey, but we might have a couple left to use. The parsnip tops are beginning to wilt so we'll see how the roots look. The leeks just get better and better.

We also dug out a shallow and narrow trench which will form the foundation for the extended greenhouse. When we have a few dry days forecast I'll mix a little concrete to fill the bottom of the trench, then lay a course of bricks to form the base of the extension. This needs to line up to the existing concrete supports to keep things level. My brick laying is not the best, but it is an allotment greenhouse not a palace.

Know your onions

We went up yesterday to dig the row that we want to plant garlic in. It needed digging over because we have been using it as a path between the beds so it was trampled down hard. It also needed some manure digging in. We gave away some more fennel to Ken and to Rob. Rob had planted some winter onions which have already come up. He had some left and he gave them to us. They were two types of small onion sets. Some white ones he described as Japanese onions and some yellow onions. We planted them to get them on their way. They should be ready in April or May, so we may well be able to plant something else straight after. The garlic should go in in a couple of weeks.

Do beans go with fennel?

Our sweet peas have finally finished after a great show. We've had loads of cut flowers from them and given loads away. We've had a good tidy up over the last few days, and things look good. There have been even more spears on the asparagus, they grow really quickly. The runner beans are now ripening increasingly quickly. It's a bit of a game hunting down the bean pods as they hide behind the huge leaves. There are loads of small pods growing fast and loads of new flowers too.

Our cabbages are filling out nicely too. We've pulled a couple to try and they were very good. We've had mixed messages about freezing cabbage so Jean tried freezing some, and it worked well. Fresh is better, but frozen is pretty good too and certainly not the mush some people predicted.

We took a couple of spring onions to try. They look pretty good, but there are not many of them so I'm not sure they were worth the trouble.

We have been growing Florence fennel as an experiment. The bulbs are beginning to fill out, so we took one home to try. It ended up much too small and very green, rather than the white bulb I was expecting. It tasted good in a salad, so when they are bigger we'll try some more. Gary on the next plot grows herb fennel for its root. I'll give him some of ours to see what he thinks of it. I wonder if it freezes?

Harvest

We've been a bit busy, so this is a bit of a catch-up. We've had two big harvests of broad beans. We've eaten some and given some away, but still we have added over a kilo of blanched beans to the freezer. There will be much more yet. The actual take from the plants is much more because the pods are so big. At some point we must let about twenty good pods ripen completely for next year's seeds.

We have also had harvests of raspberries and some more blackcurrants. There are still lots of raspberries to come, but both the strawberries and the blackcurrants have finished. We took our first gooseberries which are ripening in stages. We had to take the first ones to stop them spoiling.

We pulled the redcurrant bushes up. We don't really like them and can't find anyone who does. They are also not producing much fruit. We'll plant new gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes, either bought or from cuttings to replace them.

The asparagus has decided to put out new spears, I'm not sure why except that they have had a lot of rain lately so maybe that's pushed them on. I earthed them up some more ready for next year.

We had a really good weeding session to deal with the burgeoning weeds. The strawberries had nets over them to keep the birds off, so the weeds had flourished, especially nettles.

The runner beans have flowers, the fennel is fattening up and the first beetroot beets are showing.

Rained off? No way.

It rained yesterday. Then it rained. Then it rained some more. Today it's a lovely day so we went to see what the rain has done.

Everything has loved the rain. The broad beans are flourishing, but they needed a bit of support so I put up some string between canes. I think they may need more as the pods ripen and get heavy. The extra beans in the greenhouse have all sprouted so they went out too. They are the last ones and should provide beans later in the season.

The spring onions, beetroot and fennel in the greenhouse are all sprouting and they will be out pretty soon. The beetroot and spring onions already out are doing well.

In fact everything is doing well and so are the weeds. More of the dreaded bindweed is surfacing and there are some nettles in amongst the strawberries. Then there's the grass and other general stuff too. A wizz round with a hoe will help a lot.

Get out

The plot looked very dry, so today I watered it from end to end. I also topped up the water butts since its about a month since we had any decent rain. I will try to use one first to empty it because I want to raise its stand a little to match its mate and level the base which has settled under the weight. It holds 210 litres which is a fifth of a tonne.

We took the plunge and planted out all sorts today. We looked through the greenhouse and made our choice. The biggest leeks went out into deep holes which were simply filled with water. The surrounding very fine earth was washed back in, but there is still a hollow which will love some more water over the next few days. The little spring onions were pricked out directly into the plot and watered in. The beetroot seedlings were just showing their first true leaves, so they went out too. The runner beans were bursting out of their pots, so they went into the plot already prepared with a net for them to climb. I soaked everything that was planted and I'll do it again tomorrow.

We have already sown some extra runner beans, though I'm not sure we'll need them, and some extra broad beans which we certainly have space set aside for. We will sow some more spring onions, some more beetroot and start our first fennel. We moved our pots with chilli seeds in to the greenhouse were they will be warmer and so might sprout.

All of the tiny tree saplings we planted have sprung into leaf. So now we have rowan, whitebeam, oak and hazel trees in the margins. I'd like a lot more.