A fine day to throw up a polytunnel

A barrow full of tunnel

Saturday was an absolutely magic day down on the plot with almost wall to wall blue skies, barely a whisper of breeze and a mild suggestion of heat in the air. Not quite T-shirt time, but getting there. We took the chance to mosey on down and finally get to grips with the polytunnel we bought back in July last year. I pessimistically assumed that either some of the vital bits of it would have since disappeared or that we would be thwarted by an instruction sheet from hell.
Not a bit of it; everything was present and correct and we got the thing up in not much more than about half an hour.

Instruction sheet in "makes perfect sense" shocker

She's up

We've been very tardy with sowing (of which more later) and so we don't have any plants to go in here at the moment, but it'll hopefully allow us to grow a few things we wouldn't otherwise have been able to, and extend the growing season too. We'll probably try and get some courgettes away in here, plus tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and maybe some aubergines.

Also, hurrah for Niall and Helen, friends who came and picked up the rest of our unwanted ex-fence. Things are looking a bit tidier.

On something of a roll, we also planted a patch of onion sets and put out ten or so broad bean plants that we germinated at home. The these were hardened off for a week or so, so hopefully will be able to stand up to whatever frosts we still have in store.

Broad beans. Godspeed, lads.

Sunday brought no further allotmenteering, but we sowed black cherry and moneymaker tomatoes, a couple of kinds of courgettes as well as a whole bunch of radishes, not to mention the two types of beetroot we'd set off previously. I reckon we're quite far behind with sowing, but it's really hard to feel like it's the right time to be sowing anything much when the snow's still teeming down. Hopefully things will catch up with themselves.

There is in any case a bit of a limit on what we can sow indoors at the moment, not least as we're quickly running out of table and window space.

We also went to a couple of garden centres to stock up on compost and other essentials. So, a pretty successful weekend, and it's great to feel like we're actually doing some gardening again. It's interesting to read other blogs and see where people are up to. Here's hoping that spring finally takes hold and we can see things really start to take off.