2023 - What I did today

Shifted only a bit of compost at the allotment, cleared some perennial weed roots, tidied some plastic and glass of the ground. Going to collect a load more cardboard from the next door neighbor's who moved in recently. Now that it's suddenly May, I feel the worry about getting all the new areas set up and useable!

Planted out fifteen bronze helichrysum (strawflowers).
Potted on some very small antirrhinum “Sonnet White” - still too small to go in the garden.
Potted on some equally small tomato seedlings - green zebra, girl girl’s weird thing, sergeant pepper, rapunzel, green sausage, orange banana and petit Moineau. Thank you to all of you who sent these in the tomato seed swop.

Popped over the plot earlier....

Covered the base of the 6 Fruit trees with matting to keep the weeds down.

Tidied all the wood into a different pile.

Topped 3 of the pallet collar beds with compost.

And lastly sowed a few more chitted Parsnips.

Planted out my gutter sown telephone peas.

Weeded and mulched fruit bushes.
Weeded and cut out the dead raspberry canes; despite being on the hugelkultur bed a lot went crispy last summer and haven't come back.
Cleared enough of the marigolds on this year's wigwam bed to plant out 13 assorted cucumber & gherkin plants.
Planted sunflowers amongst the wigwams and a couple of dahlia bishop's children at the end of the bed.

Went to the plot on my own. Evened out some ground, spread a bunch of cardboard, and brought up five barrows of compost to cover the card. It's not quite done yet, but will turn two small beds with loads of weeds between into one large bed spanning the width of the plot. It will also incorporate the area under a big rose bush. So much of the area has not yet been under cultivation (by us at least).I also planted out eight leaf lettuce seedlings.

Planted bunches of module sown spring onions then potted on pansies and cutting celery not grown that before.

More barrowing! Husband started to attach the gutters to the shed. Picked some rhubarb for the next door neighbour who has given us so much cardboard.

Started clearing GH1 to make space for the tomatoes. Any overwintered plants that had life left in them were dug up and replanted in the garden - mostly chard that was starting to bolt. Seeding plants - rocket and Chinese leaves were pulled up and chucked in the random bed. Anything past its best went into the Hotbin.
Only managed to empty 5 pots, refilled them with coir and compost and planted 2 x Derby Striped tomatoes, 1 x Irish Gardener's Delight, 1 x Aurora and 1 x Bitesize. All except the Irish GD are new to me.
Also planted in the garden a Taunton Deane Kale, the last of the 3 cuttings I acquired earlier this year. I was keeping it safe in case anything happened to the other 2 (so far so good).

A strange day for me - it was gorgeous out but I really wasn't up for doing any gardening so decided to finally get my pond fountain working in my cattle trough .... OMG! I had ordered in some bits, but had to find some extension cable, and had to use a waterproof junction box to join the cables. Everything went wrong, filled up the trough, the hose blew off while i wasn't looking for an hour while the tap was on full blast, the waterproof junction box was missing a screw so wasn't waterproof, i buried all the cabling and half way around realised I was a foot short so had to start again! Finally got to turn it on and the bloody fountain was so big it sprayed out well past my trough and nearly emptied it - not a good day. Came in soaked after trying afew nozzles to make it smaller/calmer, and then the OH came home and said "that noise is so annoying" ... mighty fed up!