Another day out of the office

As March draws to a close I'm being forced to use up the last of the current years leave - shame :-)
The plan for today was fairly simple, drop my son off at school, go down to my mother-in-laws, take a look at her allotment and discuss which areas I could use for my veg, then off down the garden center to get the compost for the raised bed in the greenhouse and the growbags for this years tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers.
It was then a case of deciding which job to do next. Prior to the greenhouse being where it is and it being a veg patch the area to the rear I had used as a dumping ground for all my grass sods and other rooty rubbish. I hadn't bothered to clear this when it was a veg patch and had only cleared some of it when I'd put down the footings for the greenhouse. This left the ground at the rear left hand corner a little high.

Now one of the jobs I needed to do was to install one of my unused water butts to save the water runoff from the greenhouse. Now I put all of my water butts on homemade wooden stands about 16" high - it makes filling watering cans easier if I don't want to dunk them. The stands sit on a paving slab laid on the ground. So to fit the butt I needed a stand, and to have room for the stand and butt I had some digging to do. I also have that raised bed in the green house to three quarters fill with soil before I add a mixed layer of soil and compost.
So four and a half builders barrows of sieved soil later, and an hour in the workshop the water butt is installed. Onto the next task, to finish the seed tray staging, or at least as much as I've spare timber for. That's another two hours gone - well I'm entitled to a lunch break arn't I?

Next on the list is the net frames to cover the peas. Back to my wood stack to see what I've still got left from the Ebay lot I brought last year. Then its time to start cutting, well until the table saw shuts down because it's getting too hot - I'm going to have to strip and clean it at some point, when I've got time.
I've still got and hour or so of daylight left so I think I'll get some onion sets in. They're going at the far end of the patch closest to the fence. I've not dug that area this year so hopefully I'll get a better crop this year. First I've got to move the anti-pigeon frame I constructed last year to keep the B****rs off the cabages, then extract the support I put up for the french beans, do a little weeding, apply rake, apply feet, apply rake lightly, form shallow drill with hoe along edge of board, place onions, lighty replace soil with fingers ensuring sets remain up right. Repeat with second row.
All in all a good day's gardening.