Catching Up

I've not posted in a while, and the simple explanation is that I haven't really done much. We came back from holiday 2 weeks ago, and its rained pretty much constantly. And the days when it hasn't I've had other things I had to do.

But there are a few things to write about, including today's fitting of the water butt.

Once back from holiday I hit the books again, and now have a list of what I plan to plant, which I'll write up shortly - along with my plans for the beds. I did go and by my first seeds on the back of this though. I've decided to go for Chantenay Red as my early crop of carrots, and Autumn King as my later crop. And White Lisbon spring onions to accompany them. These seemed to be the best conbination of taste and most-likely-to-grow according to a couple of my books.


Also before Easter I saw an old friend, Rachel, who has been gardening for a few years and threw me a pack of Mengetout, and Pumpkin - both of which were on my list-to-try. So that was good.

First though I wanted to get my soil sample off to the Royal Horticultural Society. Phil recommended this when I went to see her as they give you a breakdown of your soil along with what you have to do to it to plant various types of fruit and veg. Seeing as I have no idea if what soil is in the beds at present, and even if it is indicative of local soil conditions, this seemed like £30 well spent.


First I took the sheets off - however after the best part of 2 weeks solid rain the soil was pretty much mud. The instructions say that you shoud

1. scrape off 1" of top soil
2. dig a hole about 15cm wide and 15 cm deep
3. then take a slice down the side of the hole
4. repeat 10 times across the bed
5. mix all together to get an average
6. take out any stones
   
7. weigh 200g and send it to them (thankfully there is a special envelope)

I had a bit of difficulty with 5 and 6 as the soil - which was essntially just thick mud - wouldn't mix, and stones were hard to tell. I ended up pushing trowelfuls through a garden sieve, which did enough of the trick. I then dried it out a bit.


before once again putting it through the sieve and then taking the required 200g to send off.


If I ever have to do this again I'm going to dry out the trowelfuls before mixing. But that's hindsight, and part of the reason for capturing things here. It's only just gone (Tue 6th), but I'm not intending on planting until it's back - and before then I still need to de-stone and turn the beds as they are. I may even get started on that this afternoon.

But first today was the water butt...