I've been busy professionally the last few weeks, including a trip to the States over a weekend! However, I have started to prepare to build a shed, which will bring the development of this plot to a close. So far I have created a 6 ft by 6ft frame with geo-textile in the bottom. It's about 9 inches deep ad I will pack it with ballast to make the hard-standing on which to put the shed. I've been lucky to find that a local supplier (Wood Direct) has a shed built for another customer who then decided he needed something bigger, so I have got a good price. I'll get the ballast and the shed delivered this weekend and hopefully get it constructed on Saturday and Sunday, although I have a deadline to met on Sunday. However, I share Douglas Adams's view on deadlines, so who knows.
The parsnips are this year's success story for me, although my brother-in-law, a plot holder in Porthcawl, reckons that they've been a disaster down there. I'm pulling them at over 2ft long and mostly unforked. The secret seems to be to sow them three at a time in toilet roll inners using a very weak compost, wait until roots are showing at the bottom of the tube and single them down. Then plant out the whole assemblage.
At home I'm chitting some broad beans. Once the shoot is showing I will sow them into toilet roll tubes, as above but the compost doesn't need to be weak. I'll plant them out, protected from the wood pigeons when they have 4 true leaves.
The courettes are pretty much over but, as ever, several made it to marrow-hood and I have 2Kg in chunks sitting in a bowl covered in salt to make my favourite Marrow & Ginger Chutney.
