At least that's one job less!

One problem that we usually have when planting seeds directly on the plot is keeping them watered. Well this hasn't been a problem this year and in spite of the awful weather the seeds have germinated well.

The first seeds directly planted were the parsnips which now look like this.

They are just developing their first lot of true leaves which will change shape as the plant grows larger. I have a section of my website that describes the parsnip lifecycle - it's here if you are interested.

The second lot of seeds were the carrots. You may remember that last year we had a carrot disaster mainly caused by the carrots growing so slowly in the dry conditions that they were smothered by the faster growing weeds. (Why is it that weeds manage to grow whether it is dry, wet, hot or cold?) Being under the protective enviromesh we failed to keep a close enough eye on them. To be fair we were too busy ferrying watering cans about trying to prevent plants from shrivelling up.

This year in an attempt to prevent a repeat we have sown carrot seeds in channels cut into weed control fabric.

This bed was then covered with enviromesh to try and keep out the carrot fly.

You may notice that the enviromesh is in two parts as we sowed some seeds later without the weed control - just in case the first lot of carrots were unhappy! We really can't be without home grown carrots for a second year!

So far the carrots are doing well.

The radish and spring onions have also germinated. I was surprised at how quickly the spring onions came through as usually for some reason they can be a bit of a challenge.



We haven't forgotten the bees and have sown a mixture of meadow type flowers. The mixture has various hardy annuals and also seeds from packets supplied for the purpose of creating a bee/butterfly type meadow effect. The seeds have been sown in shallow drills of compost. Really the compost is just being used to demarcate the lines of flowers seeds and the weeds so I can hoe between them. All  sorts of varieties of seedling have germinated. I may have to transplant some where they are in too thick a clump.

We have also sown beetroot and garden peas but so far there is no sign of activity above soil level - then again they were only sown a day or two ago!

If you are interested in vegetable life cycles I have written about quite a lot of vegetable lifecycles on my website here. Just scroll down the page the find the links.

By the way - don't forget to enter the flower competition here After this there will only be one more chance to win a Field Guide.