Moon phase: Week 1 (waxing)
Leaves and Shoots week is drawing to a close, and the weather forecast for the weekend is looking grim, so I worked from home today so that I could fit in a session at the allotment.
At lunchtime I sowed some pots of herbs indoors: lots of coriander; sweet, Greek and Thai basil; plus mint, dill, marjoram, chives and lemon balm. The cats are now shut out of the conservatory until I can work out how to stop them jumping up onto the shelves!
The big job, though, was planting out the plug-plants that arrived yesterday. Two beds had to be forked over and raked flat again, which took longer than I had anticipated. Although the summer's hoeing has kept the annual weeds down, the perennials keep creeping back (the little sods!), so there was a fair bit of bindweed and couch grass roots to get out. It's like painting the Forth Bridge...
Eventually, though, I got to the fun part - planting! One bed now has two rows of 20 Musselburgh leeks; the other has a row of seven PSB and another of eight "Nero di Toscana" kale. Now more careful than ever about pests, I have the brassicas under my two standard net tunnels, and the leeks are surrounded by chickenwire to keep the pigeons off.
The plot's starting to look halfway decent - if we can get the old raspberry canes out this autumn and the perennial bed (asparagus and soft fruit) sorted out, it might finally start looking like a real working allotment instead of a half-abandoned one!
N.B. Today's title is from the old music-hall song made famous by Marie Lloyd, for those of you too young to get the reference :)