Monsoon

It has been raining hard in London for nearly 24 hours, and I mean raining HARD. I haven't seen that much water coming out of the sky since the very wet winter we had. On top of that its windy and cold, I've put on the heating at home, brrr. So much for the 22 degrees we had last weekend, it feels like its right back to winter time.

I'm glad I didn't spend any time watering the allotment yesterday! It must be so waterlogged by now, thank goodness I had no plans to go today.

In the last few weeks the plot has started to look like it has some life in it again. Its such a nice time of year... watching buds opening on the trees and tiny seedlings emerging from the ground.

I was really worried about my potatoes, I saw no shoots at all until 2 days ago, I was well chuffed to see a couple coming out of the ground, phew! I didn't dare think that 3 full beds of potatoes would do nothing at all.

The onions and shallots are looking great with long green shoots, I'll leave the netting on them for another few weeks so they are strong enough to avoid being yanked unceremoniously out of the ground by the birds.

The spinach, salad and radishes are all looking good too, along with the kale and cabbage seedlings for later in the year.

I planted out some runner bean plants, this year I've chosen a white flowering variety called Emergo, and some peas that I had started at home. I sowed some french beans straight in to the ground, not sure they'll be happy after the ton of rain that's fallen on the ground but we'll see. I also planted out 6 cauliflower plants last weekend and covered them well with netting. And a strong courgette plant went in too, I've only gone for one plant this year, I can't cope with the amount of courgettes I had last year again!

Last to go in was a couple of very sad sweetcorn plants that I'd started at home. I didn't have much luck with them, I think I started them too early. I sowed another 4 rows though yesterday so fingers crossed they'll fair better.

I'm away for the next week but Seamus will be up at the lottie at some point as he has lots of young plants that someone bought him for his birthday and doesn't have enough space at home for all of them. There's one full bed free but we'll cram everything in somewhere!

We've pretty much eaten all the purple sprouting broccoli, this is the last of it, had it for dinner last night, delish!