Vegetable Seedlings

An enormous day of planting out the vegetable seedlings.

We started in the last side of the C-shaped bed, interplanting some small 'Parmex' carrots between the Early Nantes we sowed a couple of weeks ago. We then filled the remaining space with about forty beetroot (some 'Boltardy', some others), and quickly recovered the bed, to minimize the risk from carrot root fly. We were careful to handle the carrots as little as possible, and avoid the foliage; on a breezy day and with the re-sealed beds, I think they'll evade attention.

The newly completed rectangular bed was next. At one end, we've put in lots of cauliflowers ('All The Year Round'): they're too dense, but I think many won't survive the transplantation. Then, nine Brussels Sprouts (looking healthier than the caulis), and a couple of dozen purple sprouting broccoli. These stay in until next January, so we've intercropped them and the Brussels with scarlet kale (of which the young leaves are tastiest) and some spinach. The last couple of metres of bed are empty, ready for the courgettes, pumpkins, and butternut squash—they're still inside, as they're a bit more tender.

Lastly, we planted up the Q-bed: 48 leeks ('Prizetaker') next to the onions, and another row of 'Ishikuro' spring onions between the leeks. Sixteen celeriac ('Monarch') in the corner, and then we moved the runner beans and peas to join the directly-sown plants. For while they're small, we've put a few more Early Nantes carrots between the blocks.

To round off, we moved some salad leaves into the miniature middle bed, and then sowed some more seeds: cineraria (Senecio cinerearia 'Silver Dust'—bedding foliage), petunias (a cheap F1 mix, if I recall), and lobelia ('Cambridge Blue') (for the new hanging baskets), and some poppies ('Flanders') and love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena 'Moody Blues') to eventually naturalize in the copse.

Back to work tomorrow, but a very productive Easter holiday, I think—and very exciting to have the vegetable beds planted up!