So busy!

This past week the son and I have done a lot of work at the allotment;  the husband and daughter have made occasional appearances too.  Son and I have transplanted out kohlrabi into a newly sheet mulched bed with fine compost on the top layer (usually I don't have enough compost for the top of a sheet mulch, but there is a pile of it next to the stables on site).  We have also begun planting out the snap pea seedlings, limited by the number of plastic rings I put around them to help acclimatize new transplants--they stay around the plants for a week or two, depending on how fast they grow;  the onions might not lose theirs until harvest.

At home I got out 15 cabbage plants, interplanted with several dozen lettuce plants;  I covered these over with bird netting but something has still been nibbling them.  I'm pretty sure it's a bird, as they were being nibbled while in trays on the patio table too (now also netted).  A couple days later I adjusted the net so it is flush the ground (in all but one or two small gaps)--I'll see if this protects it.  I still have another 10 cabbages to plant out, but I may grow them on a little and try them at the allotment.

Then at the weekend we prepared another bed at the allotment for beet seeds;  it had been sheet mulched a couple months before but was already starting to regrow couch grass--it won't die!  Despite calling myself a no-dig gardener, we dug over this bed and raked out all the couch grass runners we could.  The husband and daughter sowed four good rows of beets (while I planted out a few more peas).  No doubt it'll be overrun with grass again by the time the beets are ready.

Later on that day I took the pots I'd emptied in the morning and refilled them to sow with cucumbers and courgettes--I'd already filled the previously emptied pots with sweetcorn and pickling cucumbers a few days before.  I also pricked out some leeks into trays (I've got three trays so far and not done yet) and the last few plum tomatoes into individual pots--these and the cherry tomatoes are all now in the cold frame next to my back door to harden off for next month.  What's more, I broadcast seeds onto a few larger pots for pricking out when they sprout later:  marigolds, spring onions, asparagus.  

So busy!  Spring is when all the hard work needs doing, as I reminded the son;  once it's done we won't do it until next spring.  For my part, I'm looking forward to a year of vegetables.