Potatoes and currants

Beautiful morning and even though there had been a frost last night I decided that I was going to put my first earlies in today. They'll take a while to come through the soil and by then the frost hopefully wont be happening.

I read in one of my books to add newspaper into the trench to keep the plants moist. I had a bag of shredded documents which I though would do the job. Having spoken to one of my allotment neighbours she always adds slug pellets into the trench along with some fruit food. I had slug pellets and some growmore. I know neither are especially organic, but I lost most of last year's potato crop to slugs and there are a huge amount of the underground ones about so I thought best to give it a go.

Loaded up and ready to go

Chitted spuds (Arran pilot) shredded paper, slug pellets, growmore

Trench dug

paper, growmore, slug pellets - row one, forgot to water paper before adding potatoes

Potatoes  - did 2 rows like this, 2nd row got the paper watered before adding the potatoes

Row 1 - Earthed up

Rows 3 and 4 only added growmore and slug pellets as an experiment to see if the paper makes any difference at all.

Eek! Looks a bit like burial mounds!!

Again, a bit of an experiment to see what difference if any cloching has on the potatoes; not that I'm expecting the plastic ones to last long in the wind down there!! (But they were only £1 each from Poundland so they dont really owe me much!!)

Redcurrant and blackcurrants

Daft redcurrant already has berries on it!

They look so tiny now!

Am absolutely exhausted now, but feel like I'm making good progress :)

Parsnips amongst other things!

I've still got one row of parsnips left on the plot, but given how long they need to get to a good size I'm starting some more off today. I've tried several ways of getting a successful row of parsnips...have just sown them directly (patchy and mixed results)...started them off in toilet roll tubes and transplanted them (which did work quite well),....but 2 years ago I discovered a way that has lead to very successful rows of parsnips being achieved and I'll share my secret here ;-)

It does become quite fiddly when it comes to transplanting them out and a degree of patience and nimble-fingeredness is needed but it does provide fairly reliable results so am doing it again this way this year.
I start the seeds on folded over damp kitchen towel, with a side plate top and bottom.

I'll check them after a few days for signs of germination, and then when the shoots are about 4-5mm I'll take them down to the allotment, and plant them at the appropriate depth and let them get on with it. What it has ensured is that the iffy nature of germination of parsnip seed is eliminated as only the seeds which have germinated are planted out. It is more fiddly, but in the long run there is no thinning needed as I space them to the final spacing required and then the plants just look after themselves all season.

I am thinking about trying this method with carrots as well as I always seem to run out of time to properly thin out my carrots, or when I do I manage to let a whole load of carrot fly know where they are and they all get munched. I think an experimental row of carrots done this way will happen this year to see how that works out.

Other exciting news is that my brassicas that were sown the other day are all poking their first teeny pair of leaves out of the soil, and the cornflower (double blue) has as well.

I've sown today, other than some tender and true (old seeds - not hopeful, but giving it a go) and hollow crown parsnips,
pepper -'sweet' colour rainbow mixed;
Linaria - fairy bouquet;
Swan river daisy mixed;
Dahlia - dwarf double mixed;
Butternut squash - 'winter' butternut F1
and tomato - gardener's delight

I'm contemplating starting off peas in plugs as there is a really big weevil problem at the allotment and peas tend to get so nibbled that they cant get going properly and I've lost whole rows before to the things. I noticed my neighbours broad beans were showing signs of weevil's eating them, so I think that I may well start most of the peas off here in plugs and transplant them.