Ripping out the old and planting the new.

The potato strip and corn bed were both empty. I re-dug them both over to a forks depth, removing any stones and the odd white weed and tuber. Breaking it up was really easy mainly due to the amount of compost and mulch I had been using when growing the potatoes and sweet corn. But also because potatoes are a good crop to naturally improve your soil too "so I read". When I had completed the digging I threw four bags of sharp sand over the top and then another four big sacks of composted manure over the top of the sand. This was all raked up and down the strip until it was well broken up.

With all the tomato plants cut out I got to work on those two raised beds. Each one was dug over. I only had one bag of the manure left so I threw that and half a bag of compost into one of the beds, I have a late row of peas growing in that one so was careful not to disturb them. The other one didn't look like I needed to put anything in so I just dug it over.

That done, the front of my plot looked a bit empty but it was nice to see it all tidy again. There’s something charming about a prepared area.

I had offered to look after our boys and some kids of friends of our on Saturday morning. We hit the park for an hour and then went down to Chalkwell beach. The kids had a great time and I bagged up several bin liners of seaweed to use for mulching.

The kids were picked up after lunch and I went over to a garden centre in Eastwood to have a look about. They had onion sets which are supposed to be more reliable than seeds and are earlier to harvest apparently. So I picked up the following;

50 Senshyu Yellow
A Japanese over-wintering variety, reliably producing a heavy crop of semi-globe-shaped, straw-coloured bulbs of excellent quality, which should be ready to harvest in early July. The young growth can also be used as Spring Onions

50 Radar
A very popular over-wintered onion which gives superb pale to mid brown skinned onions from mid July. The round bulbs have firm flesh with a delicious mild taste and will keep well until autumn. Green bulbs can be pulled from the garden from late May.

50 Red Electric
An Early harvesting red with excellent flavour. Produces a symmetrical, globed shaped bulb. Can be planted autumn or spring

50 Shallot Jermor
The very best for flavour, Jermor is a true French long type, bred in the southern Rhone valley. The copper skinned bulbs have a crisp, pink flesh, tinged white.

I also picked up a couple of salad plugs; I can’t remember the names right now so will update the blog when I have made a note of them.

We bought a load of Garlic in Provence on a holiday visit to a market in July and my parents brought some back with them from Spain. When we got home from the garden centre my eldest Max and I carefully peeled maybe a dozen of these into single cloves and bagged up the biggest cloves for planting out. I'm not sure of the names but they sure are big cloves. I had around eighty cloves in total and a load of spare bulbs to give away.

I popped over the the plot in the afternoon but had little time so I dumped the seaweed behind the shed and put the onions, shallots and Garlic into the shed for safe keeping.

I planted out the Salads into the Raised bed that had nothing added to it, handed out the spare Garlic bulbs to a few people who were up the site and went home.