Alan & Andy On The Plots

The weather today was so mild for this time of year, we were blessed with some sun and we actually ditched the coats and ended up working in our tee shirts. The bed Andy is raking is the one that had the main crop potatoes in. The potatoes were very small and mot really what I was expecting. There are so many small spuds in that bed the we will suffer from some volunteers next year from that bed. 

Andy and I took different sides of the bed and dug and raked the soil over a number of times in order to extract as many mini and micro spuds. I dressed the bed with Natural Grower and then moved onto prepping the bed two down ready for onions.

I had anticipated the need for two and a half beds but at the end of the day we used all but two rows 14 of the 210 holes in the two bed planting membrane. 

Electric A really attractive addition to the early summer salad bowl with beautiful red skin and flesh. The family cook will want to use this beautiful onion in a wide range of dishes. Just the job for a cheese and onion flan. Quite a large onion set and only 34 onion sets in the bag, I was a little disappointed but they were bought by weight and not quantity. 

Radar If you experience severe winters, try ultra-hardy Radar as it puts up with the worst of the weather much better than many older varieties. This outstanding performer has a mild and crisp flavour. There were 76 onion sets .

Snowball White skinned, as its name suggests, Snowball has a lovely, mild flavour and the bulbs keep well. A great choice for baking whole with the Sunday roast! There were 86 onion sets. 

Hoops and Nets installed to keep the foxes out of the bed and the birds from thinking the top of the onions are worms or something else they may like to eat. No water on the site now as it's always turned off a couple of weeks before bonfire night. So good thing that I have full water butts on the greenhouses. 

The stall holder clips hold the netting nicely in place and paving blocks have been used along the ends.

 

The bed in the background on the left next to the netted bed, was cleared of weeds by Andy and the netting transferred onto the bed on the right which has the onions in. 

The tomatoes plants had taken a hit from the frost a couple of days ago and so all the green tomatoes were harvested and brought home to go into the Space Saver Greenhouse. Job for another day is to remove the wigwams and put the Winter weed membrane over the two narrow plots.

It was nice working with my son-in-law today, we work well together and he did all the sowing saving me from having to keep getting up and down on the kneeling stool. We enjoyed a break half way through the morning with a cup of coffee each and a few Jaffer cakes.