Planting the vegetable patch.

Last weekend I gathered some help from friends and attempted to plant some of my seedlings out in the big wide world.

The beans and peas were still doing the best, the plants were pretty huge now and even after being exposed to the elements for a week or so they seemed to survive. The two girls helping me; Orla and Tamsen, have an allotment in Brighton so were able to give me some good pointers.

Amongst some of the junk that has accumulated in our shed over the last year I found some wire mesh which when attached to the fence looked to be the perfect support for my beans to climb up. After securing it in place we took individual bean shoots and planted them about 2 feet apart leaning against the structure. For the peas we built a series of A frames from bamboo canes to encourage the peas to grow.

The rest of the seedlings were still a little small to plant but I had been given some lettuce plants and some herbs. We planted the lettuce, again spaced at approximately 2ft intervals in a new section of the plot. I am worried about the slugs getting at them so may have to protect this area with egg shells that I have been collecting for the last few months.

The parsley and the chives that I planted into the garden at our first garden party have been doing really well, they looked almost dead when we first planted them but they have thrived in the ground. Today I added mint, rosemary and some more parsley. The bay leaf plant seems to have taken quite a battering since it has been exposed to the outside world but there are still some good leaves on it so hopefully it will survive.

The best part of the day was burying the sprouting potatoes that had been growing in our kitchen for quite some time. I was quite excited at the prospect of turning unused veg into new veg. We removed most of the sprouts from each potato leaving just 2 or 3 on each one. With these pointing upwards we placed them in deep trenches and covered them. Apparently as the shoots begin to show the soil needs to be built up around them to avoid rot.

All I can do now is water them (although with the amount of rain we've had recently I haven't had to do much watering recently!) and hope for the best.