A Frosty Morning

We’ve been blessed with glorious sunshine for the past few weeks now and April has lacked it’s famous showers, it looked like Summer had started early until those dreaded frosts arrived… Luckily for me I don’t have any vulnerable seedlings planted out yet and my potatoes are still safe under the soil. The broad beans and onions are extra hardy so it’s only the flowers which have bloomed early that have suffered and look a little sad and droopy at the moment. I’ll be waiting a week or so until I plant out my sweet peas to save them from any frosts, plus I don’t have an archway for them to grow up yet…

Before we left to set up shop this coming weekend at Powderham Castle I wanted to sow some carrots up the allotment, something I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of weeks now! I’ve been warming the soil up using one of our handy cloche hoop set-ups and good job I did too… There was a lovely layer of frost on top of the cloches and on the soil but the covered area was lovely and warm. A good little trick to help the seeds germinate quicker and to help protect little seedlings from Jack Frost! The variety of carrot I am growing is the same as last year and that is ‘Romance F1’. I sowed two 3 metre rows next to the onions, gave them a water and then covered them back up with the cloche. Hopefully I’ll be able to get another crop of carrots later in the year once these ones have been harvested, the more the merrier!

Another job that I wanted to do was to sow some more radish seed. I’ve been sowing them in succession every two weeks and so far I have two rows growing happily away in the radish tank. This time it was ‘French Breakfast’ and I decided to squeeze two rows of the seed into the tank to get the most out of the space. I absolutely love radishes and cannot wait to harvest these little beauties, you can never have too many radishes after all!