Gardening Leave

"Gardening leave" is usually a euphemism for someone being suspended from their job. But Ed actually took a day of his precious holiday time to work on the allotment.

We dropped the kids at school at 9am, and then spent all day at the plot. At 3pm I collected the kids from school whilst Ed remained on the allotment for another hour. Then we swapped shifts and I stayed on digging for another couple of hours. All told I think we did about 12 man-hours today.

We weeded about half the area we had last year (we have a new bit - a scary jungle to be tackled later). We dug and manured the bare areas and planted leeks, carrots, curled borecole, calabrese, purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflowers, and French marigolds. Yes I know it's supposed to be tagetes for companion planting, but I couldn't find any. And the main reason I wanted them is that I resolved to have more flowers on the plot, just for pleasure, so French marigolds are as good as anything.

We weeded amongst the overwintered shallots and broad beans, so now we can see how well they're coming along. We weeded and tidied the herb bed and planted some bronze fennel and rosemary for height at the back.

We strimmed the green manure I planted in late autumn and Ed dug it it. Ed says he does not like green manure, simply because he does not like the "digging it in" part. If anyone wants to tell us that part is not necessary, we'd be pleased to hear from you. In any case, there is an enormous pile of the brown sort of manure and we made good use of it, so the green type seems unnecessary.

Fortunately the weather remained glorious all day. The forecast says heavy rain over the weekend, although Monday (a bank holiday here in the UK, and the reason for Ed's non-euphemistic gardening leave) is forecast to be fine. We'll see. When it's fair, we'll garden, and when it's pouring, we'll do something else. When you put it like that, the forecast is neither here nor there.