Rainbow Chard

Funny time of year really, so full of potential. Work on the plot has been a bit slow, I'd have liked to have spent more time down there recently but nevermind eh.

I've sown a couple more short rows of parsnips, intercropped with spinach and lettuces (the spinach and lettuce will be harvested before they start competing too much with the parsnips, plus as parsnips grow down and leafy things grow up, they don't get in each others way. Well that's the idea anyway!)

My early potatoes are in. I dug a trench and added in a load of ripped-up cardboard, horse manure and chicken manure pellets, and watered the trench before filling it back in. I let it all settle for a week or so and then dug individual holes for the seed potatoes. This weekend I'd hoped to put in one lot of main crops but ran out of time.

These are some of my garlics. I grew most of them on at home first, in toilet roll tubes as I didn't have the ground ready earlier. On the plot I'm keeping them covered up with old net curtains to try and avoid the leek moth problems of the past couple of years. It doesn't look very pretty but fingers-crossed it'll help avoid problems (though the wind does keep whipping the curtains off every now and then so there's a chance they might not be fully protected).

This is one part of the plot, with two dwarf apple trees in the foreground, underplanted with strawberries (new this year). There's a bed of leeks in the background, which're still pretty small but tasty. I gave them a sprinkling of chicken maure pellets the other week which seems to have helped them get a bit bigger. I guess they might start bolting soon so will have to eat them up shortly. More softened leeks on toast with blue cheese mmmmm. (we did make leek and blue cheese pizza at the weekend too).