We have been intermittently busy over the past couple of weeks. The Builder has dug over the beds in the kitchen garden ready for the potatoes and has manured them. I'll start putting the potatoes in when we come back after our Easter holiday. Then, if it should be frosty, we are around to rescue them! I have also put into seed trays in the greenhouse the rest of last years magic bean mix, plus a tray of soya beans, and some rattlesnake beans and kidney beans (these last are duplicated in the magic bean mix, but I am hoping to do better with the winter beans this year - memo to self: DON'T PUT THEM OUT UNTIL WELL INTO MAY!!!!!!!!!!!). I've also put in a second lot of salad blue potatoes into a stray plastic rubbish bin, a supermarket bought sweet potato into a pot in the hope it will produce leaf stalks I can take cuttings from, and some radishes into a salad box. The carrots and lettuces are coming along nicely. The Veronica seedlings all died for some reason. I'll start again when we get back. Oh - and I bought a couple of cucumber seedlings. One got broken on the way back from the garden centre :-( but the other is doing ok. I might buy another couple while we are in Cornwall. And I need some melon and watermelon seeds. Or seedlings! Fortunately, we are planning to visit one or two gardens while we are gone.

The Builder has also put together a second propagating tent for me so the established seedlings can be moved as needs be. I fear the greenhouse is going to run out of space in its role as a potting shed!!

We are slowly digging on, up on the allotment. I've got four rows each in of Imperial Longpod broad beans and Early Onward peas and will put four more in this week before we head off. I decided last weekend that I probably didn't have enough peas and beans for all the space I'd allocated for peas and broad beans, so sent for another 500g of each - late planting ones so we should have fresh peas and broad beans for ages - and plenty for the freezer. The Builder has brushcuttered the wilderness in the middle of the allotment so we can see what we are doing. We are planning six beds down the bottom, with a small orchard up near the greenhouses. What extra fruit trees shall we put in? I am *considering* hedging the orchard bit with hazel trees. I am given to understand they can be coppiced into a hedge. If you know what you are doing. Which I don't - though The Builder may. But I'm sure we can make it up if necessary!!

I've weeded most of the flower garden. I need to finish the bit where the very first compost heap was, which is now covered in creeping buttercup. But that can probably wait for a week or three. I do need to get the flower seeds under way. I can see a very busy weekend planting seeds when we get back!!