Potatoes are in

Some may think its a little early, but we live in a very dry part of East Anglia and have found if we leave it till  Easter (the traditional time to plant potatoes) then the soil at depth has already dried out too much.

My husband borrowed this hand drawn ridger from our ancient neighbour to make the furrows and then go back down and make the ridges. The sub soil was damp, but full of worms, and the top loose and dry.  We ended up with 5 and a half rows. 2 First early and the rest Main crop. the last row was a mix of all the left over little ones from each of the main crop bags.  That left half a row in this first veg bed. So I re dug it to make sure their was no couch grass, thistles or docks and planted some spinach. Not done this outside before (we have done it in poly tunnel previously) but we were watching Charles Dowdling You Tube on spinach and he recommended this method outside and planting the whole module with no thinning. You pick the spinach leaves at a very small and young stage. So far, looking good but as it has not rained for a few weeks and the water butts up veg end are empty I have been trolling up and down from the house end with watering cans from those butts to bed the spinach in.

In the next plot my husband has planted 4 rows of onions grown from seeds and they are taking well and making good progress.  They enjoy the sunny open area.

In other bits of the veg beds we are trying to be much more no dig. I have been experimenting with putting some thick plastic on top of the autumn dug soil which is already showing invasive weeds - speedwell and thistles.

After 3 weeks I went back for a look. The thistles were up but spindly and loose, the speedwell had lost its grip on the soil and were easy to get the whole thing up (rather than it snapping at the base and leaving the roots to re grow).  So a quick surface turn over and re-cover and I will probably plant some beetroot there as there is just enough space between the brassica netted area and the garlic on the right. We are doing beetroot in the Charles Dowdling method to give them a head start - several in each module and then just plant them as a whole and thin as they grow.

Lots of heavy work this week in the veg garde, plus the fence is finally repaired.

Ok, not pretty and, yes, that metal joining piece is part of a big hinge off the old outside loo door! One day I will paint this side of the fence, or, I am going to cover it with climbing plants. The latter may be difficult as on our side, it is actually an old horse menage with 3 foot of sand under that grass so we would have to make containers at regular intervals to plant in.

Lovely day today and looking forward to some sewing time this weekend.  I have just been to the village to get some bread and on the way back cleared up some litter in the verges, then as I neared our house I wondered what this brown lump was in the middle of the road.

It was someone's MacDonald's breakfast bag!!! It had not been there when I went out 15 minutes earlier. Put photo on the village Facebook page straight away with the hopes of shaming them.