24. Spring is sprung!

Finally, I made it to the allotment. A couple of weeks later than planned, but there you go.

It has been so long, that I had to fight my way through the hedge and find some oil as the padlock had rusted locked!

My over wintering shallots seemed to have suffered due to the snow we had, but I was pleased to see that there were some buds on the black current plants. I never got round to planting any garlic, so put a dozen of this years bulbs in the ground. They were already sprouting, so hopefully they should do ok, despite the lateness of planting.

The soil was so wet though, that I was doing more harm than good by planting, so I didn't stay long. Once home, I checked on the new nursery and when I took the lid of the new propagator, I saw there are two little seedlings growing! Not sure what they are actually as I forgot which order I planted the seeds in. But they are different plants and they are either tomatoes (stripey or yellow), chillies or romano peppers. As well as the electric propagator, I have a non-electric one that has a variety of salad leaves, spinach and rocket growing, well there are a few seedlings anyway!

My seed potatoes aren't doing so well, the 'eyes' aren't growing so well on the first earlies, and the pink fir apple potatoes which are lates, have virtually no 'eyes' at all. I have had them about a month now. It's a shame I can't put them in the propagator!

Oh and I almost forgot, I have entered a tallest sunflower competition. There was a seed swap day at Stonebridge City Farm so I took all my spare seed packets that I had duplicates of and swapped them. I got peas, mangetout, dwarf green beans and echinops (yeah I hadn't heard of them before either!)

A quick internet search found this:
"The Echinops which are also known as Globe Thistle are hardy herbaceous perennial plants with thistle like leaves and globular heads of pale blue globe shaped flowers. They belong to the daisy family - Compositae and grow wild in Southern Europe.
Being of robust habit and tall growth, echinops can grow to 10 feet in height.
Echinops or Globe Thistles are suitable for the back of the herbaceous border and will attract many bees and butterflies into the garden."

I made a vague attempt last summer to add a little colour to the allotment. But I didn't plan it very well. I also bought some seeds last summer with a plan to grow some flowers that I could cut and put in the house in a vase. So I am going to make more effort to do that again this year.