|  Catching
up with the vegetable garden: I use the dibber
(right) to plant the leeks that we grew
from seed two or three months ago. They should have been planted
out earlier, in which case we might have been harvesting the first
of them by now but they're not beyond saving. I dig up a clump and
separate the roots then put them to soak in a bucket of water.
As the plants and roots are so long I snip both back by a quarter
or so, to make them more manageable to plant. They go in the bed
where I've just lifted the last of the Kestrel second early potatoes.
It was almost 100% weed free; potatoes are traditionally held to
be a good crop for cleaning ground.
This garden ruler, made of an offcut of skirting board and marked
in 3 inch increments on one side, 4 inches on the other, is useful
for spacing the leeks which I'm putting in at 6 inches apart. This
is a closer than would normally be recommended but we get leeks
which are plenty big enough for our purposes from our deeply cultivated
raised beds.
I make holes six or eight inches deep, drop the plants in and,
when I've got to the end of the row, I pour in water to fill the
hole around the plant.
I'm not at all sure that leeks are a good choice of a crop to follow
potatoes so I dig in a sprinkling of blood, fish and bonemeal to
make up for what the potatoes have taken from the soil. The bed
is brim full of soil, so it's not practical to put on garden compost
at the moment.
Sunflower Red
After the finer lines of yesterday, I drew the sunflower
with a parallel pen, which happened to have a red in cartridge in
it. 
Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk |
