Well, this March has brought tentative signs of Spring. My Winter salads in the polytunnel have leapt into action, though the seedlings are painfully slow. I have sowed lettuce, beetroot, flowers, tomatoes, peppers and aubergines. They are painfully slow, with only the lettuce showing any true leaves. It’s my own fault with the solanaceae, it took me a while to realise I really did need to climb into a very high cupboard and dig out the heated propagators. And only today did I improvise some plastic covers for the seedlings. I’m going to pay for this slackness with valuable crops about a month or more late.
Outside we’re not faring much better. It has been so wet that we haven’t been able to plough and muck. I have rotovated a 80m section, and I sowed it with Spinach on Saturday, and covered it with fleece. The ground was muddy and it was hard to move the seed sower, and I don’t know if the fleece will stay down. But there is a week of awful weather planned, so I just wanted to take a chance and get something in the ground. When the heavens opened I decided to call it a day…..
Mid March and there is still no sign of the spinach.
But we have finally been able to plough and cultivate so I will be sowing lettuces, beetroot and mange tout outside soon. Under fleece though obviously. The heritage Westphalian kale planted in Autumn is shooting up, and I’ve built a frame to keep birds off it. I planted red and green mizuna, pak choi and cherry bell radishes.
