Rain, rain go away!

Am I the only one wishing the weather would get better! When it's nice it's great but I keep having to run for cover when we get a sudden downpour. Last year at this time we were still in the process of creating the plot from the wasteland that we inherited, we are much further on in the season compared with then but it always feels like I'm chasing my own tail trying to get on with sowing seeds and digging new beds on plot 2. Don't get me wrong, I am loving it (mostly!) and the tantrums I had every time we tried to dig out a 20 foot long weed root are now much, much less (much to D's relief!).

I've had a few MARATHON session up at the plot, last Monday I spent 7 hours digging and sorting things out and it was great. Man's best friend was with me and loved it too (I think), he tends to warn anyone who gets too close to the plot that it is his domain but if they did get too close he'd only lick them to death! He spent most of his time on the parcel shelf of the open boot in the car lapping up the spring sunshine

Tuesday and Wednesday saw me up at the plot after work for a couple of hours each time, I spent an hour or so putting up the 2 rows of bean canes ready for our bumper crops of runner, French and Borlotti beans. I'm not going to grow as many runners this year, we had SO many last year that I couldn't give them away quick enough and there is only so much runner bean chutney you can make (mind you it's bloomin lovely stuff).

On plot 2 I managed to get in the rest of the onion sets in, we now have 2 beds containing a mixture of Stuttgarter (120 sets) Red Karmen (54 sets) and Sturon (64 sets) giving us a grand total of 238 onions in total, a couple of weeks ago Monty Don said on 'Gardener's World' that onions were expected to be in short supply this year pushing the price up so make sure you plant loads, I think I've gone mad but we do use a lot of onion at home.

I've got loads of jobs to get on with, I'm about to build a portable brassica cage from wooden battens and netting which will cover an entire bed, it should make it a lot easier to weed the beds as it will be easy to lift on and off as opposed to the set up we have now where we stake netting into the ground all around the bed. The pricking out and sowing season is threatening to taking over most of our house at the moment, our window sills are completely covered in young plants, I could do with early retirement to cope with this growing your own malarkey!!!