Wednesday 14th May 2008 - weather: hot hot hot!

Had to work for a couple of hours this morning, but as soon as I finished, I loaded my sweetcorn plants and blue lake french bean plants into the car and shot to the allotment. These plants have been hardening off in the garden now for about a week so I am perfectly happy to get them planted out. These plants were all destined for plot number 2 and I am almost doing the 3 sisters method of planting, mixing corn, beans and squashes, but I am not trying to grow bean up corns or anything, however the squash will meander amongst the beans and corns. The corns I planted today were Rainbow Inca, a multicoloured variety that my dear friend from the states sent me, and another trusted variety called Swift. As I have already said, the frenchies are a climber called blue lake. My crowd prefer the frenchies over the runners and I do find them more versatile, but I will be doing plenty of runners also. Each plant had a big handful of my own rotted compost in the bottom of the planting hole, and once they were in and watered, each plant was mulched with a handful of my compost. I am trying to do everything I can to conserve water as we don't have piped water on site so we can only use that which mother nature provides. By the time I left I had emptied 3 waterbutts, however, with the rain that is forecast, I expect them to be full again before I return on Monday to plant out yet more beans, tomatoes, minipop corn, squashes and sow seeds.