Second visit in two days - WOW!

Despite a poor forecast, the weather on Saturady allowed us to put in another good afternoon's work on the plot.

Unusually for us, Martyn and I both spent time concentrating on one area of the plot. (We are usually out of sight of one another). Martyn was mainly kept busy tilling the beds so that we could plant out another batch of potatoes and preparing the area that will become our second strawberry patch.

My first task was to weed the existing strawberry bed which I had earmarked as a big priority after Friday's plot visit. I want to try to keep up with weeding this bed so that I don't end up with strawberry plants smothered by weeds as happened in the old beds. After weeding I sprinkled blood, fish and bone around the plants and gave the whole area a really good hoe. The bed now looks presentable!

As you can see most of the plants are growing well and so I am left with lots of new plants in the cold frame. These were taken from last year's runners and were intended to take the place of any winter casualities. Typically with a back-up plan in place winter wasn't as destructive as it could have been. The solution will be to plant up another bed. Martyn has tilled this bed in readiness.

The plants in the above photo are alpine strawberries. I haven't decided whether to move these or not but I doubt the bed will hold all the waiting plants unless I put them much nearer together than is ideal. This bed is on the edge of our plot - the other neat beds belong to our plot neighbours - Jo and Pat.

You may remember that a couple of the fruit beds were also becoming very weedy and so I had tidied those up too and also added some fish, blood and bone fertiliser. These beds are on either side of the strawberry bed.

You can see the edges where my new lavender cuttings will be planted - I may need to take more!

We also managed to plant more potatoes so almost all the potatoes are underground. We have certainly speeded up our potato planting since we rejected the trench method. Now it's a case of just digging a hole as deep as possible with a trowel and popping the tuber in. The soil is earthed up over the newly planted row. Our method is described on this page of my website.

Martyn has posted a photo on his blog here and written more about the varieties of potatoes planted. He has also 'very kindly' showcased the photo that I took of our most weedy area. Well maybe not the most weedy as other areas are just as bad - if not worse! Happy Days!

PS:
Don't forget to enter the Herb and Spice Seed book competition. Just to encourage you it could well be that no-one has so far correctly identified every herb so don't put off entering because you can't answer ALL the questions. You could still win!