Keeping Warm

Just one mild day yesterday and Monday was back to normal for this June, cool and cloudy although we didn't get any rain.

We visited the plot in the afternoon with the intention of doing some jobs that would keep us warm. It seemed like a good idea to dig over the bed of phacelia which had been cut down yesterday. The ground was a bit heavy but just about passable for digging over. 

We had a short row of “Meteor” peas which had been sown in pots on the 5th April and planted out on the 22nd May. They certainly hadn’t appreciated the conditions in the plot and weren’t giving any signs of growing away.

I decided it was time to cut our losses and start again. These pathetic specimens were pulled out and a new row of “Meteor” peas sown. The old peas pulled up easily and didn't seem to have made any roots at all. I'm hoping the new sowing will do better. 

We’ve also had a struggle with our tomato plants this year. They haven’t appreciated the cool conditions refusing to grow at all for weeks on end. I’ve eventually planted out the resulting plants into grow bags in the plot greenhouse. Only time will tell whether this rather motley looking collection of plants will provide us with some tasty tomatoes.

Each of the six grow bags has three tomatoes of the same variety in it. Going around the greenhouse in a clockwise direction, starting in the bottom left hand corner, they are Gardener’s Delight, Moneymaker, Jakarta, Amish Gold, San Marzano and finally Alicante.

The plants are in Levington’s giant tomato planter bags. I used one extra bag to fill up the rings that the tomatoes are planted in. There’s no telling these days what you will find in compost. This rather large piece of timber came out of this Levington’s bag.

It’s not what I expect to find in compost and it makes me wonder what else is in there and how the contents have been produced. I’d expect rubbish of this size to be removed in some sort of sieving process but clearly my expectations are too high. Compost isn't cheap and I reckon it’s about time some form of control is introduced so we know what we are buying in our bags of compost.