Anyway, in the last couple of weeks loads of things have been happening down on the plot. I managed to eventually tidy my shed (it's a tip again now!) I bought a shelving unit from Ikea which is perfectly serviceable and houses the majority of my bits and pieces. I put up my hooks so that I could hang my tools and that means that I can clear the majority of the floor space and now I can use my shed both for sitting in and hiding from the rain and also for pottering about. I've been using the table for a big bucket of water with my canna lily in because it wasn't enjoying the cold mornings; when I took it out of the pond I hadn't realised that there was a tadpole hiding in the stones so I had to fish that out and pop it back in the pond - oops!
I also had a think about how I would mark my plants; for the last few years I've just used the white plastic tags that you get from the supermarket. The problem with them is that they're often too small; they get lost and often by the end of the season when you're harvesting you can't read what's on them any more! I'm not the most artistic of people so I wasn't sure about drawing/painting things but I am good with writing so I decided to buy some wooden spoons (3 for £1 from the poundshop) and using a sharpie I've just written the name of the plant and then varnished them - I'm really pleased with the result!
The frogspawn has all hatched (is that the right word?!) and my pond is now chock full of tadpoles. They all seem to bunch together near the edges of the pond; which I suppose to for protection. One of my neighbours also found some frogs on his plot and popped them into my pond; a week later at least one of them is still there because it frightened me to death when I was moving some plants around to make room for a water forgetmenot. I've also planted some alpine/rockery plants into the rocks around the pond. They look really nice and I'm hoping that they will really help the whole area to bed in. The wild flowers that I sowed next to the pond haven't come up yet but there's some ground elder creeping along and the tulips have come up nicely. It's a really pretty area and I'm hoping that it will attract more wildlife into the plot. I've also got an area behind the shed where I think I'm going to put a hedgehog house.
I've planted my strawberry bed; I have 4 strawberry, 4 pineberry and 4 strasberry plants. I have lots of strawberries in hanging baskets at home and I wanted to try something new. I have no idea if they'll be any good but it will be an interesting experiment - I'll report back when I have a crop. I've also got my cloche hoops on and ordered my netting. I've gone for a heavier duty netting that I'm hoping will be easier to manage and also not tear at the slightest movement. I've also ordered similar netting for my fruit cage; which I'm hoping to put back up in the next week or so. I've planted my potatoes and onions this week. I ended up using 2 of my beds for the spuds - we eat a lot of potatoes and I've chosen King Edwards and Maris Piper which need wider spacing; once I'd planted the King Edwards I knew that I could double the crop and still not have enough so that's exactly what I did! I've planted 3 varieties of onions, again a crop that we use loads of. I used a 4" spacing and so I've got around 180 onions in the ground - I'm very excited!
The most exciting thing that has happened since I last posted though is that Mr L has made a start on my polytunnel, https://www.firsttunnels.co.uk/ I will be posting lots of photos in a separate album so look out for that. I went for anchor plates so Mr L had to dig 6 holes - essentially you dig the holes, put the plates in and then fill them back in. It sounds easy but as Mr L is an engineer, he finds it really difficult if things are in exactly the right place. We spent ages measuring the distance from the fence and making sure that we had the distance between the posts right. Getting the hoops up was fabulous, I'd gone for a 2 piece hoop and they are sent with self drilling screws (which I think is pretty clever). I've got twin support braces which I decided to use because my plot is at the top of the hill and next to a park so it can be quite windy. I thought it would help add extra strength to the structure. I've also got a crop bar - I only have one because you can't put them on the end ones; my plan is to put my strawberry hanging baskets from the house up there; apparently having strawberries in the polytunnel gives an earlier crop - so we'll see how they go :-)
I will try really hard to keep on top of things and get back into the habit of posting every week. Happy gardening everyone :-)
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