Failure and success, May 2024

So it's still not all planted.  Yet.  I've got a lot of trays on my patio in various stages of emergence, though I think I'm going to have to give up on the last 35ish pots of peas, as they are dated from April and still haven't sprouted.  I've had this problem with everything so far this year:  seeds go into little pots and a large proportion of them just don't sprout.  This is for indoor sowing and outdoor sowing, so I'm really not sure what's going on.  I don't have a single butternut squash or romanesco zucchini (indoors), and I'm still waiting on my corn too (outdoors).  Maybe it's my potting compost.

In slightly better news, I do have about half a dozen self-sprouted squash seeds growing in the chicken yard at the allotment--we moved the chickens back home earlier this month.  I generally give my chickens most of my kitchen scraps, which obviously included some squash seed (we still have two left on the living room windowsill, looking good!--and just finished the third to last one).  Hopefully they grow well, as my tray-sown seeds are also very patchy:  only about six I think, from around 24.  These are the big round Kuri squashes from last year:  tasty and good keepers.

Also at the allotment, I've got in the first small leeks, sown back in March.  I have a second sowing just coming up now.  I also got in the next batch of beets, and resowed the tray after I'd emptied it.  The first beets I planted out have really grown, but the peas look kind of puny and sad still.  I wonder if the soil is too rich for them--it's mainly well-composted horse manure that all the other plants seem to like.  My tomatoes look really sturdy, and the broad beans--though a bit short--are covered in flowers.

The husband spent about an hour at this weekend and the previous one making us a new little tool shed at the allotment, using a large wooden shipping container given to us by a fellow allotmenter.  The son and I wrestled it into position onto some old sleepers first (and I dropped one on my foot in the process--limped around for two weeks).  The next weekend the husband bought some wood preservative and painted it inside and out;  and this weekend he fashioned a door for it using a panel (from a deconstructed shed) we'd scavenged from an abandoned allotment a while ago.  It's not quite as tall as me, but is a good size for our shovel and fork, and holds the watering can and still has quite a lot of room.  However it's not quite tall enough/wide enough for our rusty old wheelbarrow.  But that's ok, I can't imagine anyone wanting to steal it--or our tools either:  they're all a bit rubbish.