Making the most of the spring sunshine

I have been making the most of the recent good weather and luckily had a few a few days away from work so have been able to spend a lot of time in the garden.

Yesterday I planted out a row each of peas and mange tout into the raised bed. My cunning trick to stop the slugs and snails was to scatter vermiculite around them. I'm sure they won't like crawling over that to get the goodies and it seems to have worked last night anyway.

I was also pleased to see that 6 of the minipop seeds have germinated in the greenhouse.

First thing this morning I continued with planting out...

... brassicas; evesham special, raab and all year round are now located in the raised bed, protected by cabbage collars for the root fly and a net for the butterfly... the last thing I want is them laying their eggs all over the plants.

... and onions; kamal and sweet spanish have now been planted in the bed with the shallots and leeks (that have yet to make an appearance). Talking of onions, the pickling kind; barletta and purplette have germinated in their separate bulb crate.

 I also did a fair bit of sowing today, undercover:

• Brussels Sprout (Red Delicious) x 5
• Brussels Sprout (Evesham Special) x 2
• Broccoli (Green Heading Calabrese) x 3
• Broccoli (Early Purple Sprouting) x 1
• Cauliflower (Autumn Giant) x 2
• Cabbage (Savoy) x 2
• French Beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears) x 8
• French Beans (Cherokee Trail of Tears) x 8 that I saved myself a couple of years ago
• Peas (Golden Sweet Yellow Mangetout) x 8

Outdoors I sowed:

• Chard (White Silver 2) x 1 row in the raised bed
• Lambs Lettuce in a trough
• Spring Onion (Ishikura) x 1 row in a bulb crate
• Spring Onion (White Lisbon) x 1 row in a bulb crate

and planted the first batch of main crop potatoes (Rooster) into potato bags.

Elsewhere, the pea shoots are coming along nicely:

... so I decided to sow another batch of those in the greenhouse, but the herbs could be doing better, so I direct sowed the following in various containers outdoors; rosemary, chives, sage, mint, thyme, parsley, basil, dill, chervil and coriander.

Heading lettuces are also growing well:

I was tempted to plant them out too because quite a few of the roots are already showing through the bottom of the pots. I managed to stop myself, but did sow 3 Romana Bougival seeds, which is a new variety for me.

I think I managed to cover all the vegetable groups so all in all a very productive couple of days.