The lightest of spit spat sploshings..

Well, the clouds covered the sky, a chill was in the air and then that long awaited moment... RAIN!!

Oh how I have missed you rain, the waterbutt is dry, the ground is desert like, the resevoirs are emptying, the vegetables need a good guzzling. No don't do that! Too late, you've stopped. In the twenty four seconds it has taken me to write all this so far the rain has started and then stopped. I saved this post as a draft originally in case the rain came back, but the clouds have parted and the sun is out. How bizzare!

We are definately getting rain this weekend according to the met office, but how much of it we shall see...

Besides, in the vegetable garden...

Well yesterday we went for a trip to the only garden centre in our town. It is one of those places that is very good, but is a bit out of the way so you rarely go. There always seems to be a more convenient place to stop off at when we visit the major towns such as Stratford, Evesham and Redditch. To say it is well hidden is an under statement, Amy has lived in the town for just under 7 years and she didn't even know it existed!
However, we did managed to get some bargains though....

I bought an onion set on special offer, which will hopefully lead to a speed up in the making of a raised bed. We also got a few plants that we wanted to grow but only wanted one of etc. So we bought an aubergeine/egg plant, another strawberry plant, a chilli pepper plant, a cucumber plant, some leeks and a grow bag. The leeks were a real bargain, 6p each and they were very healthy too! I had successfully grown leeks on the allotment when I had it and really didn't think I had time/space to grow them here but hey presto...

This is our leek bed. It is at the end of what is now our seggregated vegetable garden. The soil here is full of stones and is far from perfect, but I thought it was worth a go. They say that leeks need lots of sun but a bit a bit of shelter too. The sun shines on to this spot for most of the day despite it being underneath a damson tree. I grew the leeks on the allotment under a Bramley apple tree so I can see no reason why there would be a problem, fingers crossed. So I dibbed out the holes about 20cm deep, popped the leeks in and watered them twice. The water drains away from the surface really quickly. I have planted 8 as that is all there was room for, but I did buy a block of 9 so I now have a spare leek plant.. where shall I put it?

After my exams (27th May onwards) we are going to be making a herb garden round at Amy's mums house which is very exciting. It is a really nice courtyard garden with a lot of potential, so it will make a delightful herb garden.Whilst clearing some stuff out of her garden to make way, I took this rather nice pot to plant the youngest courgette plant in to. We swapped her a juvenile chill plant so there was some degree of giving and waste not want not as opposed to just receiving.

The vegetable garden is looking quite good now, with lots of different bags, buckets and pots with signs of life emerging from them. The ground in this segregated part of the garden is probably one of the downsides to keeping chickens. The chickens have not been in residence for just under a year and despite trying to turf over it nothing but weeds seems to be able to establish itself. (Fingers crossed for the leeks of course!!)

I like this picture because on the up-side how fantastic are some of the plants looking. The first lot of potatoes have been covered up for what might be the final time as the soil I added today almost reaches the top of the bag. Fresh home-grown potatoes in a few weeks then! I also like this picture because of the brick wall. This brick wall used to be part of the public toilets that served the town before there was development rehaul a few decades ago.

Finally here is our scarecrow, I mean scare rooster! He is looking after the plants for us when we have our backs turned!

Rumour has it that Amy might actually be on here later...

If not, have a very good evening anyway!

Martin

P.S I started this post at 4pm and despite the twenty four seconds of rain, there is still no rain at 7.10pm, the skys are clear and the sun is still out. Looks like I'm going to have to water the plants now!