2nd post in one day, it must be raining.....

Well I was down the allotment bright and early this morning and despite being overcast it was quite pleasant when the sun broke through on occasion.  I was surprised to see again the allotment was empty bar maybe 2 or 3 of us and there must be 200 odd plots id say now but hey ho.

 

I started off by digging trenches for my 2 rows of first early spuds (Rocket) about 5" deep, it's a bit early judging by the way the weather has been lately but as long as I earth them up in good time on frost alerts I should get away with it.  I then laid down a thin covering of grass clippings and a sprinkle of chicken manure pellets in the bottom of the trench, there is some concern chicken manure pellets cause scab on your growing potatoes but I never had any trouble with that personally and it might be because I add them at planting not as a food later on.  Now the potatoes go in with chits facing up 30cm apart and then firmly push down so they are stable when earthing up, next I cover the potatoes with a good 3" of soil and spread some blood fish and bone on top as extra food.

 

Onto other things, shown below are 5 transplanted self seed Chard I moved a week or so back.

 

As a little experiment I am going to cover the smallest 3 of these Chard on the right with a cloche that has both vents open either end for airflow so there is less chance of mildew forming etc.  The other 2 larger specimens on the right I will leave uncovered and then after 2 weeks I will photograph them again and compare size changes and any diseases gained.

 

 

Conventional wisdom would say the 2 larger plants wouldn't put on nearly as much growth as the sheltered warmer ones but the larger plants have a head start of root ball size and surface area for the leaves as well to consider.

 

 

P.S.

Just a thought here on something I read a year or so back that is pertinent to the frost issue, plants that are damaged by frost apparently aren't actually damaged when the frost hits them (bear with me now I know that sounds kooky) the real damage occurs when they slowly thaw out and you can even help the plants out by giving them a quick soaking with room temperature water.