A sunny day at last!!!

I managed to get the last of my parsnip drums filled today and gave the sand a good drenching with a strong bleach solution to kill off any overwintering disease spores or bugs lurking in the sand. I shall spend the evenings in the coming week sieving the compost and doing my mixes so that I can bore my holes next weekend. More on this in the week. Towards the end of next week I'll set some parsnip seeds on damp tissue paper ready to start them chitting.

I also hope to get some spuds in tomorrow but not in the ground as it's far too early. Instead I shall be putting them into a polypot set within a large bucket and start them off in my garage at first, then greenhouse when the first shoots emerge. This will make them fairly portable for a few weeks until they can be left outside. With this method I hope to have a set of 3 ready for an early show in July, which will take some doing as I shall probably only do 3 pots of Winston and 3 pots of Kestrel. The biggest problem will be supporting the foliage when it gets large so I'll have to poke some canes down the side of the bucket round which I shall wind some string. Should be an interesting experiment.



Last night we went to see the comedian Lee Mack in concert which was excellent. However, the warm-up Simon Evans gave me the biggest laugh with the following joke:

An englishman, a welshman and a pakistani were at the maternity hospital to collect their new baby sons. The matron met them at the door with the bad news that the babies had been mixed up and they couldn't be 100% certain which baby belonged to who. The 3 men had a meeting and decided to sort it amongst themselves amicably. The englishman went in first (as is his right!) and came out with what was quite obviously the pakistani baby. Turning to the pakistani man he said 'Sorry mate, but there's a welshman in there and I can't take the f***ing risk!"