Paper potters, seedlings and digging.

For Christmas I got a large version of the Paper Potter. I've had the original for years and it's brilliant, but sometimes I need a pot that's just a bit bigger. Now I have potters in 2 sizes, and this makes me happy. Armed with the large potter, a pile of newspaper, and some seedlings in need of potting on, I set to work. And the pots stuck on the potter, the wood was just a bit rough, unlike the original which was smooth and perfect straight out of the box. I dug out some furniture wax, and gave it a polish and that did the trick, the pots then slid off and stayed whole. I only made about a dozen, just enough for today, but they worked out well.

The gardener's delight tomatoes were ready to be split and potted on from the seed tray, so they went into paper pots. But the tigrella tomatoes aren't big enough to handle yet, they need another week or 2. The sprouts haven't germinated as well as I'd hoped but there were enough decent seedlings to pick 6 nice healthy looking ones to pot on.

The courgettes are in plastic pots, they need a much bigger pot! There are 3 long yellow, 4 long green and 3 round green, plants. I wasn't expecting them to do so well! I may still lose some to slugs and other things, but they're all looking well at the moment while they harden off outside.

They, and everything else, need to be much larger and more robust before they go into the allotment.The allotment site is quite exposed, a bit higher up than my house, and fairly windy. All this growing is happening at home for now, while we get the allotment ready and the plants bigger. Having said that, we have got 2 rows of potatoes, 2 rows of onions, a row of carrots and almost 2 rows of peas up there so far.
Rhubarb at the allotment isn't doing well, but the crowns in the garden here seem to be thriving, along with the other fruits. Pic below, rhubarb at the back, stick of a gooseberry hiding in the middle, tayberry at the front. Unlikely to see much, if any, fruit this year, but next year...

The other fruit bed at home has the black and red currant bushes and the raspberries - and that one is much greener! Should see some fruit from that this year, and even more next year.

It's getting there!