Potting up and getting on

Quick quiz: What's bright red and yellow and tastes great at
the moment? Read on to find out.

We really feel like we are on a roller-coaster at the moment. We've got several months work to do in the next few weeks, and just to top things off, we're having a dry spell! All the fun of the garden, with added watering, we're going to be really fit by the time we're done.

Today we got our tomato, cucumber, melon and pepper plants potted up before the polytunnel got too hot, basically setting up an assembly line and then going for it. We also planted up the sweetcorn and put it hopefully well out of mouse-reach (though with recent experience, we may need to start hanging things from the roof!).

Mark, Andrew and Chris pot up before the sun drives us out.

The final layer went on the key-hole bed and we started adding rock-dust to the beds. We're hoping this will help the soil to get a full range of minerals, so that our plants are extra-healthy.

In the Sensory Garden we started on the last big weed before the annuals really get going. We have some hopes that we can reduce the range of the various dodgy weeds but the roots of some of them are HUGE, so we'll see how long the effect lasts.

Getting the Sensory Garden into shape

And most exciting of all, our first asparagus of the season has appeared. The spears are popping up all over, looking pretty thick and juicy, not bad for a first season. We can't harvest this year, so that the plants have time to get really strong ready for next year. Can't wait.

Budding excitement!

We did manage to pick something though - the first of the rainbow chard that is recovering nicely from having over-wintered. It made a nice addition to an italian-style tomato sauce and rice dish we had for lunch. Spring is definitely here!

Rainbow chard stir-frying nicely.