Peering beneath the groundsheets we found the Rhubarb has survived and is looking rather healthy… with a bit of luck we’ll be over-run with it – we love it!  Perhaps we shouldn’t mention that, it’ll be our summer equivalent of the allotment-owners courgette glut!

We had a good old digging and weeding session (as always!), and planted some radishes (Scarlet Globe), lettuce (Tom Thumb), spinach, rocket and salad leaves – from the old seed stash though so whether they come to anything will be a miracle, especially as we forgot the bird scarers again.

We had breakfast – lots of raspberries, straight from the canes – delicious! Shop-bought berries really pale in comparison.

Potatoes are looking healthy, plenty of time to go before we dig them up though.

And we planted a row of beans (Cobra) – the seed packet was very scruffy and out of date, but you never know!

Then it started to rain, so we legged it!

We also harvested three sticks of rhubarb and a test onion! Oh, and some sage… it is going mad so need to find a good way to dry it or freeze it – any tips?

Hopping around us for much of the morning was the friendly robin, loving the fact that we were unearthing a lot of worms for him… greedy little thing!

Lots of weeding to be done, the dreaded dandelions are in full irritation mode.

Raspberries are looking great, buds on all of them and the herbs are going mad – woohoo!!

The rhubarb is coming up really well and the raspberry canes are going mad, so we’ll be ok for puddings this year!

Tonight we completed the weeding around all the crops, so it looks so much better now. Just the rest to dig over and a strip of grass that previous owners had as a path to get rid of – we may have to cover that over for a few weeks to help shift it.

Looks like we’ve got ants back in the compost bin… might try the cinnamon technique on them, it worked well in Lisa’s wormery so is worth a try.

Siobhan cleared the weeds around the raspberry canes, which we can see new growth on (can’t wait for some fresh raspberry cocktails this summer!), while Lisa rather haphazardly dug out some of the main plot which the grass is working it’s way into

Stopped for a brief cuppa too, from a very girly flask, but got spotted and ribbed by another allotmenteer!

Also coming through is one of the rhubarb plants, there’s some growth on the rose bush and the onions that overwintered may just be ok after all

I know it’s rather late for lettuce, but thought it was worth a go. The radishes should be fine

We’ve topped with black bags, weighed down with some of the pulled up weeds – with this and our darlek of a compost bin our plot is looking remarkably similar to a remake of Doctor Who starring Marjory from Fraggle Rock.

Anyway, the weeds are gone (for now) and we’ll get something planted next week… we haven’t quite decided what, but we have a tub full of seeds to choose from!

Groundsel (Senecio sylvaticus) is everywhere – we have some fine specimens, all grow naturally in rows straighter than anything we grow on purpose!  It seems to be easy to remove, so we don’t get so angry with these!

These pretty pinks ones are popping up all over the place too… not sure what they are, the leaves are almost nettle-like, but variegated with red blotched leaves.

And last, but certainly not least, thistles… nightmare – we just can’t get rid of them. Last year we spent so much time digging the roots out, but they seem to be back with a vengeance.

We think they’re milk thistles, but not 100% sure – we try to tackle them before they flower so we haven’t been able to do a good comparison. Very, very sharp and spiky though – we’ve both been injured by the blighters!

And rightly so. The bloody things are everywhere, loads of them, at every stage of growth – buds, flowers, seed-heads and blown away.

There was no spade to hand (we have no shed) so the ones we couldn’t pull out we dead-headed instead. At every turn a new clump that couldn’t possibly have been there before(?) appeared.

Quite how we’re going to keep them away is anyone’s guess…