First Rhubarb harvest of the Year, Tomatoes and Marrow planted

Home from a good morning digging, watering and weeding the Allotment. It's was a lovely sunny day again so we managed to get lots done.

The replacement tomatoes and the Marrow are  now in the poly-tunnel, with the three tomatoes down one side (Supersweet F1, Gardeners Delight, Lucinda F1) and the bush Marrow (Long Green Bush) on the other.

Also planted the first of the Thor F1 sweet peppers. Plenty more still to plant in both the greenhouse and poly-tunnel. We will get all the peppers planted by next weekend as the cold snap should be over by then.

Did a big de-weed and a dig over where the brassica cage will be this year. Moved a self seeded ox-eye daisy to a new spot next to one of the Hop plants (Redsells Eastwell Goldings), as it is a pretty plant and would be a shame to compost it. The ground is still rock hard and dry as a bone so it was a little hard going.

The beer hops are growing now, the Challenger and the Target hops we only let one Bine grow up the string as they are very productive. The Fuggles and Resells Eastwell Goldings we let all the bines grow.

Also spent some time on the raised Winter Squash bed. Levelled it off a bit better. Un-compacted the soil at the bottom of the right bed. Then laid a layer of old straw that we had used to protect a tree fern at home over winter. Then on top of that some soil that was recovered from a garden project at the house. That bed will need another trug of reclaimed soil on top still to make up the level. 

The left hand raised bed is 3 high as we will be adding compostable material to this for the time being.

 The 1st sowing of Aquadulce Claudia Broad Beans are doing well, with the garlics (Elephant, Lautrec Wight) next to them looking great as well. The Kale Borecole Vates Blue Curled has started to go to seed but we are still eating the leaves and flower stalks in meals and the flowers are good for the insects. Didn't bring any home this weekend as we didn't need any at the moment.

No sign yet of the second sowing of broad beans Bunyards Exhibition but they have only been in the ground a little while. Gave the whole lot a good watering before we left to help them with is dry weather we have been having.

We did harvest 1.45kg of Rhubarb today from the two rhubarb plants that we inherited with the allotment plot. Half of which we gave to my parents and the other half we have stewed with some ginger, cinnamon and sweetener. That's going to be super on top of my breakfast in the morning.