Finally some rain!

Well the allotment got a decent shower of rain this past Tuesday, which was much needed, my water butt didn't benefit though due to my predecessor putting no guttering up to catch the rain, a bit of a waste of time really if it's not filling up. So another job to complete, and soon too if we're looking at a low amount of rain fall in the next few months.

I arrived to the site on Thursday to plant some things I had bought from Keston Garden Centre and found this wonderful sight.

Potatoes! At last I can see where the rows are that I planted, it was a bit of a guessing game before hand when it came to watering. It's a good sign though, and I'll soon be enjoying some delicious early potatoes. 

I decided to clear a bit by my shed and in moving a few more paving slabs I found some great mini-beasts.

A big fat spotty slug, which I read online eats most things dead and alive, so my young seedlings are not safe from it! Also some very odd, red woodlice. A bit of googling later and I can identify it as Androniscus dentiger or the rosy woodlouse. Apparently it's quite common in the UK but in all my years of mini-beast hunting and gardening I have never seen it before, so it was quite a find for me. I do enjoy feeling a like an intrepid explorer!

The area that I cleared I decided to edge with some more slate tiles and then plant up with some dog rose, which should cover my shed in a few years, and provide the bee hives with a bounty of flowers to visit. 

I planted a bleeding heart in my allium bed, to add some height and colour to the corner, it will be a nice plant to walk past when I come to visit and others also will get to appreciate it too.

The flowers look like bleeding hearts, thus the name, I didn't sacrifice a pigeon and plant it in the bed. Though I'm sure *Unproven-Tom-Fact-Alert* some people in the olden days did that in some kind of ritual to bring on fertility and health to their gardens.

My bean and pea bed is now full as I set up my pea and bean canes and planted some seedlings into it. I decided to throw out the classic wide-drill, zigzag approach to pea planting and went for a more haphazard method, covered by 4 wigwams with some twine strewn between to provide a climbing frame to the peas. 

As you can see it's a bit of a eye catching lay out, as in you may loose an eye if you fell on to it. I put some runner beans in the other end, transplanting a broad bean which was growing on it's lonesome, out of the 6 I had sewn it was the only one in that drill that had grown, I'm not too upset really as I don't particularly enjoy broad beans.

Finally the only crop I am able to harvest is still rhubarb, 

which is getting quite prolific.

So lots of stewed rhubarb is heading my way, I think I've seen a rhubarb cake recipe in a book somewhere too. A friend even suggested serving it unsweetened with mackerel which may be quite tasty, a bit like lemon and cod. 

Anyway, that's all for now.