7 April 2010

Plants everywhere!

As usual I'm late as ever potting on the plants from the propagator and lost a few. However when I did get round to potting them up I still have 44 plants of 4 different types of chillies! Having run out of plant pots - something I thought I'd never do, but sadly many of them perished in the greenhouse fire - so I bought another 48 cheap pots thinking that would be more than enough...

No. 1 child decided he wanted to come for a dig to see where the patch of ground I promised him is. He then proceded to dig a big hole whilst I pruned some raspberries and attempted to weed around the rhubarb on plot no 2. A quick tour round the plot with him revealed the ground elder making a come back in the warmer weather, the frogs have been, erm 'busy', as there's lots of frogspawn around, and indignation from no. 1 child when he saw the state of the greenhouse. "Why have the police not caught them?" he demanded to know. Sadly he got bored before I was able to do much else.

Some time later after lunch I went to plot no. 1 to plant a couple of rows of potatoes. I added to a few handfulls of chicken manure pellets to the bottom of the trench, then some shredded paper which I watered well, followed by some bagged manure (I know, I know), then the potatoes - Charlottes. They should have the best possible start with that lot.

After the hard work of the digging I thought I'd take it easier and clear up the strawberry bed. An hour later I'd worked my way down half of it - there were a few more weeds in there that I realised. The plants had also thrown out a few runners - a bucket full - but given the state of the bed it's difficult to tell which are the Gariguette and which are the Chelsea Pensioner. So I took them home to pot up and promptly used up the 48 pots I'd bought earlier...

First produced of the year!
Picked the first (forced) rhubarb of the year. Despite the fact I seem to be forcing the same crown as last year, it seems to be doing OK and it looks as good as ever:

5 comments:

Sue Garrett said...

I've been weeding strawberries too - and filling gaps with runners I potted up lat year. Trouble is the couch grass gets right in amnogst the starwberry plants which is a problem.

The Mulch said...

I grew 64 pepper plants from seed we bought from a market in Italy last year.

64 pepper plants turned out to be 64 headstrong chilli plants.

I cried twice when I ate the first one.

Shiny New Allotment Holder said...

Wow. 44 chilli plants - can you eat that many chillies?

Damo said...

I thought I grew a lot of chillies!!

Greenmantle said...

I have new plot at last, after nearly 3 years, and "Dig for Victory" lives again!
www.digforvictory.blogspot.com