That's shallot Chelsea...but long carrots are a concern

At last we've had a weekend of decent weather meaning I've been able to spend two whole days in the garden (after watching Man Utd lull Chelski into a false sense of security yesterday of course). I've planted my leeks, the first of my potatoes (Kestrel), onion sets Stuttgarter Stanfield and sown my first batch of stump carrots (Sweet Candle). However, one worry is that my long carrots sown a fortnight ago are still showing no sign of life. Checking back in last year's diary they were through in about 11 days so they should be well through by now. I can only guess that the cold nights we've had have delayed them so I'll give them another 3 or 4 days then re-sow with fresh seed.

I've also thinned my shallots down to 2 per cluster which is about a week earlier than I've managed to get this done before and will hopefully allow the two remaining shallots to make optimum size. It's quite a fiddly job and requires a lot of patience. The outer skins have to be stripped back and the 3 or 4 bulblets carefully separated, The 1 or 2 that you want to discard are carefully snapped away from the base plate, usually leaving two that were opposite to each other rather than two that were side by side. This way the remaining two will have the most room to grow as large as possible. They will look a bit sorry for themselves for a day or two but will soon start to perk up and harden and they will be given a watering of phostrogen in a week or two. The 'thinnings' that I take out are dibbled into the soil next to the pots and these usually grow a little, giving me a lot of smaller shallots to use in the pickling classes.

The pics show the 3 stages of the thinning process.