Tomato Plants

Thank goodness the sun came out Friday morning and Saturday so I was able to visit my allotment and catch up. I finished hoeing out the weeds, earthed up my potatoes, topped up the compost bins with lovely fresh manure (!) and started putting composted bark chip around my fruit trees to help suppress the weeds. I shall gradually add some more plants this end.  

 On the other side of the shed I planted Hollyhocks, Foxgloves, a Mallow and Pinks last year. It doesn't look too impressive at the moment but hopefully once the plants mature and flower it will look colourful.

 One of the Pinks is already flowering.

Then it was time to move over to the half plot that I took over at the end of the summer to start clearing & digging. There's a lot of work to do but I've already prepared some of the raised beds for planting and some of the ground has been covered in old carpet and sheeting to suppress the weeds so I'll just work at it gradually over the next few months.

At home I potted up my plum tomato seedlings which I started off on my kitchen window sill.

These are 'Roma VF' which are a Mediterranean heirloom variety. I'm also growing 'Super Marmande' which is a large beefsteak type of tomato and I also hope to grow some cherry tomatoes and maybe a few others. Last year we had tomato blight on the allotment and a lot of tomatoes were lost so hopefully this year will be more successful.

The difficulty now is finding where to keep all my seedlings as my porch is full of Dahlias and I don't have a greenhouse! I have a second shed at my allotment with a large glass window so I'm hoping to put a table in front of the window and move some of my young plants down there.

Seeing the forecast for the week ahead it looks as though we have a lot more rain to come. I know we need the rain but let's hope the sun comes out for a while to cheer us all up.