​A bit of a tidy up

Monday 18thFebruary
The grass from a neighbour's first cut of the year was waiting for collection on my way to the plot and was added to the compost bin.

Knowing that my potatoes were chitting nicely at home I wanted to be sure the soil was warm enough for an early planting of the first earlies. I found some landscape fabric in the shed and rolled it out in the brassica tunnel ready for when I move it to its new position. Then I added the tunnel cloche!
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I also covered the patch where want to sow my parsnips using some landscape fabric and some pop-up cloches lent to me by a neighbour.

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That done I turned my attention to this year's bed for peas. The green manure has grown well and them been cut back by the frost to some extent. With my 'no-dig' policy I need narrow beds I can work without treading on them so I cut a thin pathway using a spade as an edging iron before shovelling the soil out onto either side. (I later regretted this when I wanted to rake off the top growth to put it on the compost heap before mulching.)

With rain threatening,I moved into the shed, banging in nails into the ridge beam to hang some of my bags of netting that currently are cluttering up my greenhouse, dropping onto the floor and making ideal nest sites for the mice! I will need to plan carefully where I do this as I soon found the hanging bags blocked access to the far end of the shed!

When it was time to go home I checked my cauliflowers to find one small one had already been covered with fungal growth so I pulled it and shredded it into the compost heap. I was concerned that the three remaining heads might blow before I returned so I pulled the largest which was only about 5 inches across but big enough to make a meal for two.

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