Good to see the sun on the allotment.

Good to see the sun on Thursday even if the air was still cold. Last week’s snow has now gone and we all hope we don’t see any more.

The ground is too cold for sowing or planting but the vegetable beds are well drained so the soil was workable today. The kale plants were taken up and since that bed is being used for potatoes this year in the crop rotation, it was well dug down to a spade’s depth and the bottom of the trench forked over with well-rotted manure added. 

The seed potatoes won’t go in for a couple of weeks yet – the traditional Edinburgh planting time is the Spring Holiday weekend and that will be early enough especially this year.
If the soil is not warm enough, plants or seeds will not grow . If the soil feels cold to your bare hand, it is too cold to plant anything or if you have a soil thermometer, you are looking for a temperature of 43 degrees F or 6 degrees C before you start putting plants in or sowing seeds.

Some vegetable can be started off at home in the warmth. We have sown broad beans and parsley and the onion and shallot sets have been put into pots so they will have a headstart.

The fruit buds on the cherries are just waiting to burst into bloom so we put back the netting on the fruit cage today to protect them from the birds, especially bull finches. The holes in the netting were repaired to prevent any birds getting trapped inside.
The weather was dry enough to allow us to apply a coat of preservative to the stakes for the autumn raspberries and they were hammered in.