27 March 2006

Do wood pigeons like champagne?

Our trip to the plot in the rain on Saturday was successful in that we laid the first two sheets of large black plastic, covering about half of the rotovated ground. It has been slightly nerve-wracking since then as the weather has been pretty windy and we’ve both been worried that the sheets would prove not to be secured well enough and that they would end up blowing round, terrorizing the good citizens of Kings Heath looking like death taken to the skies. So, it was with some trepidation that we made a brief sojourn to our little site this evening. Good news – all weed suppressant still in place. Result!

I also had a delivery today. My onion sets and rhubarb crowns (“champagne” – a rather posh-sounding variety) arrived. The onions will have to wait a while before I can attend to them, but the bed for the rhubarb was ready so we took the opportunity of our plastic-checking visit to stick ‘em in the ground, with the tip of the crown just above the surface, as per instructions. Given that the local wood pigeons have grown fat on all my brassica seedlings (no purple sprouting broccoli for me this spring), a few of my over-wintering onions (about half gone so at least they saved me some – how gracious) and one or two of my garlic cloves (not fans of strong flavours then), I am a little worried that these might disappear, but who knows?

I have potted on my tomato plants into the paper pots that will be their homes until I eventually move them outside. They’re going great guns and looking very sturdy so I’m hopeful that I might actually manage to make some pasta sauce and soup this year.

And finally, I sowed some sweet peas, the packet of which very helpfully tells me that they should germinate in about 10 days. So, of course, now I’m impatient and counting down. Ignorance works better for me.

Filed under: Baby plants, Hard labour, Sowings — Clare @ 6:21 pm