My parsnips seem to have done well this year. I lifted the first one today and below is a picture of it. I put a 12″ ruler next to it to give some scale.

I turned the compost heap this morning. I haven’t got room to dig out and then put back in again, so I dug to the bottom of one corner and then dug around to another corner filling in behind me. It worked quite well. This is the firt time I have turned my compost heap so it will be interesting to see how much of a differnce it will make to the final product when I dig it out next year.

I achieved lots today…

Weeded the top veg patch, and cleared the area where I had been stacking sticks to plant some more Butternut squash plants.

Planted some more tomato plants, some into large pots others straight into the ground.

Potted on the peppers into larger pots.

Space vacated by a row of potatoes was filled with some cabbage plants I have been growing from seed.

Planted three short rows of leeks today. This is much earlier than last year so hopefully we will get some decent sized leeks tis time.

Today I dug up my first potatoes. I dug one Rocket and one Arran Pilot plant. The Arran Pilot was the smallest of all the plants and produced just over a pound of potatoes. The Rocket was one of the large ones at the front and produced 2 3/4 lbs of large potatoes.

I noticed today that the runner beans have started to flower near the bottom. If they go anything like last year the onslaught of beans is about to start. It’s a good job that the kids like them, well two out of the three kids like them.

It has been raining all weekend so nothing has got done in the garden, but this morning we decided to finally get around to buying a waterbut. My dad built the platform for it last year and I tried to buy a large waterbut last year. It turned out that the 700l model we had planned to put on the platform had been discontinued by Blackwall. Almost a year later, Harcostar are now manufacturing it so I popped down to Scotsdale Garden Centre and bought one.

I got soaked to the skin setting it up and it only has a temporary filler setup at the moment. It is now collecting water and I have to resist going out and checking how full it is. I’ll get a picture of it later, once it has stopped raining.

Edit: 17th June - here is the picture of it in place…

Today we bought some grow bags into which we transplanted eight plants we have grown from seed. This is the first time we have used grow bags so it’s all a new learning experience.

I also transplanted the cherry tomato plants (sweet million) into larger pots as they will probably end up on the patio.

I bought some more lettuce plants today. (Did I mention that M. likes her lettuce?) I planted some more Lollo Rossa and a tray of Webbs Wonderfull.