Gardening Between Rain Showers

The last few days have been fun – down to the plot, spend half anhour then run back through the rain. I’m being accused of being a
weather jinx.

Anyway, managed to do a little.

Laid
out a sheet (1M wide) of weed suppressant fabric. Being black it should
warm up the soil ready for tomatoes (Roma plum) at the end of the
month.

Took the cloche off a row of peas. They’re doing
well, much better than the early pea Dorian that was left to nature’s
whims. Planted the rest of my Dorian in modules back home as he
germination and growth of the row on the plot is so poor.

Had a few more radishes – they are nice.

Planted
a long row of maincrop potato Sarpo Mira on plot 29. As I don’t have as
much comfrey as I would like, a different method than the earlies.

First
I ran the Mantis with the narrow tines on up and down a row to loosen
and break up the soil. Then I dug out a hole at 16″ intervals and put 3
good handfuls of compost in, one seed potato and another 3 handfuls to
cover. Then raked the soil back over.

The idea is that
the compost will get them off to a good start despite this being fairly
poor quality soil. Actually it is better by far than I feared when I
first dug it over last year.

Next I’ll add some
fertiliser but as the rain arrived I only had the first row in. Some
chatting to Larry the rep in his polytunnel, which is now finished but
the rain didn’t stop.

So to home to wish for some good weather tomorrow.