A good time to bury uncomfortable news

I hate retired people! And people who own their own businesses so they can nip out whenever they want to tend their plots! Lucky bastards! This time of year is just so busy and I have so much to catch up on and the weekends go so damned quickly. I have managed to get all my large onions in the greenhouse borders. I say 'large' .....these plants came from a fellow grower a couple of weeks ago and I'm hoping to be able to get them to a couple of pounds or so. I've grown this strain in the past and they are a nice shape. The pots behind the onions are bottomless ones and are marking where my tomatoes will be planted. Not an ideal situation growing things so close together, but it has worked ok for me in the past. I'll plant the first batch of tomatoes (Cederico) along the far end (this weekend) which is the south facing side....that way the onions get maximum sunlight as the east and west facing sides won't be planted up for another 3 weeks or so yet. The onions will have been harvested before these get too big and block out the light completely.


These are the shallot thinnings that I replanted in a shady spot (actually one of my celery beds).
As I said at the time, these will root and make reasonable pickling shallots. I bury them quite deep, an inch or so to stop them rocking about.


I also managed to plant my blanch leeks, Pendle Improved. Again I recently got these plants from a fellow grower who has facilities I don't yet have. Some may call it cheating but I maintain the work really starts now, 'pulling' the plants up and blanching them as they grow. Keeping rust at bay whilst growing them outside as I do is also a huge challenge.



And I've also started to take a few dahlia cuttings. As it has been so cold my kitchen window cill has been doubling up as a propagating bench.

So all in all good progress but much remains to be done. I have two varieties of potato to get in, carrots and parsnips to thin out, enviromesh frames to make, tomatoes to be planted and staked, and a couple of hundred 8oz. onions to plant up the allotment. Like I say.....I hate retired people!

I wish I had more time to be able to compete with them, as I was really hoping to get more established this season and become one of the new kids on the block.....one of a crop of really handsome young growers who could challenge the established order of old farts who have been winning the big shows for years. Hopefully I'll have plenty of time to beat them in future years because as I said.....I'm dead young. So that's about all the news for now. Oh, and I'm going to be a grandad.