We've just returned from a weekend staying with our daughter in Bedfordshire. Our journey to her home takes us along the A1 and as we travel there at this time of year I love to see the ploughed fields ready for planting or sowing. In fact some of them were already showing signs of green and I wondered what was growing there. There's something about a newly dug over and manured bed which I love. There's a sense of freshness and newness of having got rid of the old and preparation for the new. To me there's the excitement and expectancy of what is to come. Later in the year when we visit again we will see what crops are growing.
At our allotment it's very much the same but on a much smaller scale. We have beds dug over, manured and waiting for the new season of growth. One particular bed is part of a new project for this year and is quite exciting. We are going to have an asparagus bed. This is something we have been thinking about for some time, but needed to find the right place to grow it. We have changed our minds several times about which bed to grow the asparagus, but it had to be right because it is a perennial vegetable so once planted could not be moved. Finally we decided it would be grown on Plot 8 in a bed which wasn't being used as part of our crop rotation. The bed has been well prepared, dug over and weeded several times to get as many of the perennial weed roots out as possible, manure has been incorporated into the soil. It is now ready and waiting to be planted up. And more excitement--the plants have finally arrived in the post. I think I know what we will be doing this weekend!
