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Saturday May 20th Very quick dash up in between showers and before rushing off to a housewarming on the other side of London. Went armed with the summer Minicole cabbages and intended to find the netting and some supports and plant them all in an hour. Wrong! Damage control was the first thing - last night´s wind had removed the fine Enviromesh off the red cabbages and luckily the pigeons hadn´t noticed. Replaced and repegged it. Also had to rescue a top panel of the salad frame, stick it back on and re-peg - ended up putting the heavy piece of perspex on top and adding a brick! Finally round to the cabbages, and after a couple of tries, found some intact netting and used the broom handles to make a cage. Very tall one, but don´t care - it keeps the pigeons off. I hope. Managed to plant 16 of the 30-odd seedlings before I ran out of time and had to dash off again. Would like to hope I can get up tomorrow but the weather looks very wet again. We´ve had 58% of the May average already, which, considering how wet it´s been, shows how much rain we should be having... Had a look at the flower area, and there´s now quite a lot of gladdies coming up again. And even better, the BBC cactus flower dahlia is back! Put a bottle cloche over it in case we get a cold snap. I think the extra soil I parked on that bed has helped no end with insulating it from the cold winter. Now the gladdies are appearing, I can work out where to plant the new dahlias. Must put in the carnations I bought at my work´s plant sale, too. Conservatory update: French beans germinating, Runners chitting, soya chitting and 48 potted up, sweetcorn chitting. Hope to use the wet conditions tomorrow to get the chitted seeds potted up if I´ve enough containers! Meanwhile the tomatoes are now in the cold frame for a few days before I open the lid up, and then they´ll harden off another few days to the start of June. Then I might dare put them out, esp as the spring cabbages need fishing out of the bed where they´re going! Cucurbits going mad: need to start to harden them off too but not yet enough room in the frames. Next week! Beetroot needs planting out, and I need to sow more lettuce. |