A lot can happen in a week in the Spring. We've had sweltering sunshine, tremendous thunder and lightning (sadly, I managed to sleep through it), torrential rain and now back to a little chill in the wind.
We've started harvesting our rhubarb and this is our 2nd harvest of purple sprouting broccoli. It is delicious but we definitely need to look after the plants more this year - the straighter stalks are more productive than the ones which fell over, so staking is going to be required. Especially as Marsh Lane is such a windy site.
I chopped all those chives to add onion-y flavour to the celery soup I decided to make (I had to buy the celery, but for 49p I think it was worth it). And the soup is so delicious and will provide me with at least two days of lunch - though I must admit I had to add a pinch of MSG and some mustard powder to enhance the flavour.
The seedlings, sown one week ago, have loved the heat in the greenhouse - at the front you can see our next batch of broad beans which have sprouted so are nearly ready to go out. Then there are our trays of marigolds (Durango Bee and Honeycomb). Some of these will be planted on our plots but the rest will be sold at the HAHA plant sale in June - we're holding it on the Town Hall steps in the centre of town, so we hope to get even more passersby than we saw last year.
The cauliflower (Minicole) have germinated - they look like cress at the moment. I hope they survive - we've never grown cauliflower before. The mangetout (Shiraz and Golden Sweet, in the drainpipe have just popped through the compost. They're now at their most vulnerable to mice who love the tasty new shoots. I have lots of twigs to protect them from (mostly) pheasants once they're planted out.