Observation

The famous Victorian head gardeners like Paxton of Chatsworth and Barnes of Bicton often wrote about how important it was to observe what happens in a garden.  This will help you to plant and grow with some chance of success.

On the old allotment I always plant the pea seedlings and then surround them with chicken wire.  The wire is there primarily to enable the peas to climb not particularly to protect them.  However, it obviously does protect them from pigeons because the unprotected pea seedlings I planted at the new allotment were devastated.

I had some chicken wire to put around them so why I didn't put it up, I really don't know.  I honestly thought that they would be safe.  So the observation is: there are some very destructive pigeons on the new allotment's site.  Peas and brassicas will have to be netted.  I have nets and chicken wire so there is no excuse.

Only by watching and seeing what happens will I learn what this allotment is like.

I am not surprised to find some of the bind weed growing on the new allotment. I am in two minds about whether to dig down to find where it is coming from or just hoe it out for the moment.  I will hoe it out.  I will probably have to dig it out later in the year but I have planted the potatoes now and I don't want to disturb them.

I took all the herbaceous perennials out of the new allotment, where they were heeled in, and planted them in my daughter's garden.  There are plants coming up in her garden that I have no idea how they got there.

The sweet peas on the old allotment have been attacked by flea beetle and are looking very sorry for themselves.  I have watered them with dilute comfrey liquid and can only hope that they recover.  If they don't then I have a large bed that will need to be filled with something.

Watered everything with dilute comfrey liquid and hoed and raked between the rows where I could see them.  The alliums seem to have clicked in and started to grow with some vengeance, as too have the brassicas.  No sign of the parsnips yet and only one line of carrots showing.

The winter cauliflowers are starting to head up now.  The curds are very small because of the cold weather and pigeons eating the leaves.  They will do for a couple of dinners though.

I took the bins off the rhubarb and there were quite a few leaves with long petioles ready for picking.  I bought home 4kg or 9lb of rhubarb petioles.  Rhubarb crumble - luverly jubberly.