Some planting - but Indoors

Tuesday was cloudy and cool and a bit breezy at times.

I planted up our onion sets and shallots into pots in the greenhouse. Details of the varieties are listed here. The thinking is that left in their net bags the bulbs will begin to grow as a matter of course before I get chance to plant them out. At least in pots they have some compost to grow some roots into by the time I can get them planted out. 

It’s probably just as well I'm happy to do this as in the afternoon we made a visit down to the plot. Sue listed our exploits here but whilst we were there I harvested a few vegetables, parsnips, leeks and Brussels sprouts. The one thing I learnt from digging up the parsnips and leeks was that our heavy clayey soil was in no fit state for digging. A wet December and January followed by 2 weeks of below freezing weather in February have left the ground saturated. I know from bitter experience in this condition our soil is best left to dry out before digging. So all in all our shallots and onions are probably better off in their pots and trays rather than net bags for the next few weeks.

Our garlic is managing to survive in the cold and saturated soil and this is typical of our soil condition at the moment.