The goats which belong to a man who lives nearby are becoming regular visitors, wandering about the lane. They are quite cute, especially the baby ones, but we have to keep the plot gate shut otherwise they just wander in and eat anything. Up to now they have just eaten the ivy around the gate and we're not too bothered about that. They smell awful though and we can usually smell them before we see them.
I finally got the rest of the onion sets in the ground and then covered them with netting frames to keep the birds from pulling them out. The earlier planted ones had been started off in module trays to get some growth going. This does away with the need to cover with netting.
I planted the broad beans (The Sutton) which were started off weeks ago in cardboard tubes in the greenhouse. They made a double row. We put support sticks around them with string which should stop them from flopping over as they get bigger.
As the soil is warming up now I decided to sow a row of carrot seeds directly in the ground. We don't have a lot of luck growing carrots. We have tried different ways but the carrot fly always seems to get at them. I think sowing too many is one mistake we have made as when the first carrots are pulled that's when the root fly dives in and gets at the remaining ones. This time I sowed the seed very thinly so there will be no need to thin out. I then covered the row with a fleece cloche and secured it well to the ground. Hopefully the root fly won't be able to get underneath. I will be sowing some more carrots in a deep container in another week or two. This sometimes helps as the root fly doesn't fly over a certain height.
In the asparagus bed we've spotted a couple of spears poking through the soil. We've also spotted Ziggy the cat sunning herself on top of the bed. So before any more asparagus appears and gets squashed I have covered the bed with prickly holly branches to try to keep her off.
We planted up another big tub of strawberries at the weekend and still had a good number left over, but our grandson's school gardening club were happy to take them off our hands.
The greenhouse is a busy place at the moment. It's a constant job, sowing seeds, potting on seedlings, watering and regularly checking to see how they are all doing. There are trays of seedlings all over the place and I wonder if I will run out of space. I always pot on a lot more seedlings than I will need, some will be spare just in case any die off. Others will be given away to allotment neighbours or donated to the plant stall at the Church Coffee morning later in May.
