Intimidated, me???

Another new week and more work done at the lottie.  A seasoned plot holder paid us a visit today and for the first time I felt a little bit intimidated with the amount of land we now have.  It's all been well planned over the winter but with no greenhouse and very little space at home for planting seeds, I'm starting to worry about sowing it all.  We did loads of ground preparation at the end of last season though and have started so much earlier this year as well.

Today was mostly about planting and transplanting.  I finally got round to working out how many rows of peas I'm planting.  7 rows!!!  Which I guess is a lot when I think that each row has 184 peas.  So I measured out the space I'm going to need for the peas and planted the onion sets that the father in law bought us.  I decided that there was nothing to lose by transplanting the onions planted unknowingly in the wrong place last Autumn.  I'm going to try direct sowing for the first time this year as well.  We get through so many onions in this house that I'd rather have too many than not enough.  Tomorrow I think I might replant 1 of the rows as the instructions on the sets said plant them 12cm apart both ways.  My notes, which I read too late, say there should be 30cm between rows.

Mr Lottie dug in 3 of the huge fence holder spikes today ready for the platform for the chicken coop.  Hopefully the base will be finished this week and after that the rest should be plain sailing.  I can't wait until we get our hens.  It's a perfect reason to go down daily.  After Mr Lottie left, I set about working on the bottom half of plot D3.

D3 was our first plot and we soon worked out that the bottom half was terrible soil.  Very little topsoil and plenty of established docks, thistles and brambles.  We also worked out that this plot runs up and down instead of across and we're right next to the grass cart road.  For the last 2 years we've discovered that this is a problem for several reasons.  We have the longest border and the docks, nettles, couch grass and thistles thrive there.  The cart road used to be covered in red stone chippings and over the years these have worked their way at least a foot into our plot.  It is so stony that it was practically impossible to get the fork or spade in the ground any more than a couple of inches.

Last year I concentrated on getting rid of as many of the docks as possible. At the end of last season I finally conceded and carefully sprayed glysophate on the very worst ones.  I guess this year, I'll be doing the same with the thistles (I concede, pull/dig 1out and they really do go into a mad panic and throw 5 new plants up) and the brambles.  

After the relative success of planting nasturtiums and strawberries down the top half of the problem border I set about a new plan for the very, very evil bottom half.  There's so much gravel that it would take years to clear, so little topsoil that growing any veg in that whole half was going to take years of work and a whole pile of cash that we just don't have.  Add the white rot that we discovered there last year and I decided the best plan of action was to turn the bottom half of D3 into a permanent fruit and flower garden.  So it made sense to plant the rhubarb and shrubs along the gravel filled border.

Measuring the space I had left for the flower bed and working the dreaded border were the final jobs for today.  It measures 4.5 metres * 4 metres not including the border but there's a bit of ground spare above the strawberry bed if I need it. It took me over an hour to dig over the dreaded border, still finding thistles and dormant dock roots waiting to spring to life.  The border is now home to lavender that I sowed last year.  I'm hoping it doesn't take too long to establish itself.  Anything to make life a bit easier, including planting lavender, a smell I detest!!!