25 April 2010

April showers

I should really be grateful for any rain, but I called it a day today come the 3rd shower. It's been pretty hot in the sun, but once the cloud cover came the temperature soon dropped and I decided today was a day for being a fair weather gardener!

In between showers, there seem to be a lot of bumble bees around this year and I finally had the presence of mind to both take the camera, and use it up on plot no 2! Despite it not playing ball I managed to get one decent shot:



Prior to that I was attempting to get rid of some of the weeds and clear some space to plant my beans this year. It's dry on that plot on the top of the hill at the best of times, but at the moment it's like digging sand, there's absolutely no moisture in the soil at all. On the plus side it's easy to dig the weeds out I guess.

I still had a couple of trays of onions to plant out and wanted to plant some carrots, so I raked over a patch of soil to within at inch of its life - not to get it to a 'fine tilth' (not too dificult at the moment) but to get rid of the majority of the stones. Just after I watered the drill I'd created for the carrot seeds it started raining again...

I managed to plant a third of a row of radish, carrots and beetroot as well as the two trays of onions:


I also dug over about half of the remaining bed to be sorted out for the beans and added some rock dust before wandering off home for tea, rather wet.

7 comments:

Sue Garrett said...

At least the rain meant I didn't have to water.

The Mulch said...

Ours lasted 20 minutes. Enough for me to get wet but not nearly enough for our parched seed beds.

Great tip on the steaming of psb by the way.

Unknown said...

do you think the rock dust helps ?

Damo said...

good to see you managed to get some jobs done in between the showers

RobD said...

Re Rock dust: On my other plot there definitely seem to be more worms than before, which I take to be a good sign? Given both plots are suffering from a lack of nutrients it can't do any harm.

My Dad has used it as well and he reckons it's really helpful - and he's been gardening a bit longer than me! Of course this stuff coming down in the rain from Iceland is probably having just the same effect ;>)

Ian said...

Hi Rob,

I've got a plot on Hagg Hill too and am trying to get the soil into condition - was just wondering about sources of manure round there.

RobD said...

Sorry missed that comment, for deliveries I use Coppice House Farm (there's a link on the right hand side) or if you can collect the stables up the road.