Hours at the plot so far....44 !
At last.....visitors all gone home so I was able to get down the plot and plant my pumpkins and some of the squashes that there wasn't room for in my kitchen garden. It has been too hot here today so I left it til 4pm before I went.
The next door plotholder was there so we had a bit of a natter about potatoes, strawberries, rhubarb leaves, slugs, pigeons.....! Just what I needed....allotment speak!

I had room for a spaghetti squash plant between the lavender bushes. Two Blue Ballet on one side of the rhubarb plot, and a Pumpkin on the other (forgotten its name). I still had one more pumpkin....so I stuck it in the bit of ground retained by the actual plotholders. They haven't put anything in it so I thought I'd help them out!!!!!!!

I read somewhere that rhubarb leaves will deter slugs so I surrounded the plants with rhubarb leaves and took a good bunch home to cook.

This morning I weeded the front flowerbed and made room for some bedding plants. As the ones I have raised myself are mostly used up I went to the garden centre and bought some. I got begonias, nicotiana, ageratum and some American marigolds. Tomorrow I will plant them out, along with the 5 lavender plants I bought this week at Isle of Wight Lavender. There is no lavender in this garden....a serious lack which I am remedying. I also have two tiny Lavender "Munstead" that I have grown from seed. If they go an as well as they have done so far I'll have a few plants to fill my longing.

I also moved all the tubs I planted round to the front of the house near the front door. They take away the bareness. It is a longish trek with the watering can, but I have a soil probe which enables me to only water when it is absolutely necessary. (Photo tomorrow....battery ran out!)

At the plot all the potatoes are now through the plastic on the last 5 rows (next door plotter calls them the "coffins"....he has a point!), so tomorrow I need to get down there and tidy up the plastic to coincide with where the plants are growing, and to weed the holes. Also the onions and the potatoes in earth rows need weeding and earthing up again. I managed to find a beautiful Dutch hoe (at IOW Lavender) so the earthing up will be a doddle now!

Yesterday I resurrected the "table top" strawberries. I overwatered the last years ones during the winter and killed most of them I just bought some new ones from Ken Muir...."Chelsea Pensioner"...and also got some Grow Pot Waterers. With them and my probe I should manage the watering better this year and hope for some good strawberries right through until the autumn.

Glad to be back in the saddle at last!