It’s been a difficult time to find much to do again because of the weather, but my first sowings of carrots really needed thinning and the fleece replacing with mesh so I got on with that. The removed carrots were really quite small, but I washed them anyhow and we added them to a salad for dinner. There’ll be another thinning needed yet, and hopefully we’ll get some nice-sized baby carrots from that.
I also took the fleece off the sweetcorn and squashes. The slugs were having a party under there and I even had to replace one of the butternut squashes that was eaten beyond recovery. Hopefully they can cope with the unpleasant weather and perhaps the birds will take care of the slugs.
Most of the lettuce I over-wintered in the polytunnel did fairly well, but the Webbs Wonderful plants all rotted inside once they started to form a heart. The current ones are starting to do the same, so I’m going to guess that this variety just doesn’t do well in a polytunnel environment. That’s hardly the end of the world. There are plenty of others that seem to thrive and I can keep that variety just for outdoors over the summer.
Finally I made some barriers using the mesh cloches that I used last year to put around/over all my pea plants. The two dozen pea plants that I transplanted for shoots last weekend have been eaten down to the stems and the other pea plants that I removed the fleece from haven’t fared much better. The sugar snap peas particularly have been heavily trampled and the ground around them is littered with half-eaten leaves. I’m as sure as I can be that this is down to the partridges that are regular visitors to the plot. Hopefully the barriers will keep them out and let the plants recover a little.