Having done a few odd jobs this morning like mend the Dyson, unpack the dishwasher, eat breakfast, ignore the ironing, look helplessly at the woodpile which needs chopping & moving, I decided to bite the bullet and tackle the veggie patch.

The dwarf beans were starting to look a bit leggy, and the courgettes were starting to gaze balefully out of the window, so it’s high time they got a bit of fresh air. Possibly. Unless we get more frost.

I cleared a big area of the “old” veggie patch a month or so ago (possibly longer, I can’t remember) so on that part there were only very small weeds. So, in summary, here’s what I ploughed through today…

• Weeded and dug over the area under the pea frame, planted peas & added sticks for them to grow up.
• De-strawberried the strip along the end of the pea frame (they’ve gone properly rampant – we could re-create sleeping beauty’s castle purely by putting it in the middle of the “new” veggie patch), dug it over again, then planted dwarf beans, added cloche and cunning cat-prevention barriers at each end.
• Planted the 5 broad bean plants at the other end of the pea frame in dug-over ground and put up trellis to protect them a bit.
• Lily pulled out the remaining parsnips & scraped the mud off. I dug over that strip (alongside the pea frame) and we’ve now planted carrots there. I need to dig out or buy some fleece for when they start to poke their noses up.
• In the other bed I’ve thinned out the rhubarb a bit and weeded around it.
• I’ve weeded round the blueberry bushes, which need frames/nets around them.
• I hoed over the pre-cleared area and here I’ve put the 3 courgette plants and 2 rows of lettuce/rocket. One of the courgette plants is under a bell cloche because it was trampled no less than 3 times by 2 different people. This may give it a chance to recover, who knows.
• I cleared the rest of the veggie patch between the pre-cleared area and almost where the strawberries are and here have planted broccoli, radish & beetroot.
• Plus liberal sprinklings of slug pellets around the tasty-looking plants.
• I would have planted parsley, but the packet says to soak the seeds overnight before planting them. So that’s what I’m doing.

There’s possibly space for more, but we’ll see how these do before getting carried away. I plan to re-pot some of the strawberry runners I dug out, the surviving tomato seedlings are to be transplanted and I want to buy some more. Any tomatoes that make it to maturity I’ll pot up and keep on the patio.

And the one things that is doing really well all by itself is the rhubarb. Tomorrow, unless I get sidetracked, I plan to indulge in making some rhubarb & ginger jam.

So that the plants get the right idea, I’ve asked Lily & Joel to call me Percy Thrower in their presence.