Foiled by the weather - Almost

It's certainly been a busy weekend, although when I got up this moring things were looking rather bleak in respect of completing the tasks I'd set myself this weekend. Saturday started with me killing time waiting for a phone call to arrange a pickup of the galvanised water tank that had been offered on freecycle (http://www.freecycle.org). I used the time to earth up the potatoe bins in the greenhouse as they're now growing out the top (see photo below right).
Then it was off to collect the tank and do a little shopping. I needed some nylon string to build the bean frame. A quick run round the cheapshops, market and Woolworths, yielded a suitable candidate, although not what I actually wanted. It also yielded another 4 packets of flower seeds (Cloeus, Lavender, Penstamens, and Sweetpeas) and two packs of Lilies, and a planter to put them in. Woolworths have all their seeds/bulbs/plants on buy 1 get 1 free at the moment.
Back home I set about the bean frame, as you can see frome the photo (left), and planting the runnerbeans out - they're all 12-16" tall so I couldn't keep them inside any longer. My mother-in-law has given me 10m of fleece so I can cover them if it looks like we'll get a frost.
After lunch I mixed up some more compost, I add 1 shovel of washed sharp sand to a barrow of peat free compost when sowing or potting on as it improves the drainage. This enabled me to get on with sowing the Frnechbeans, Lettuce, Chinease Cabbage, and Broccoli. Since I only sowed 16 french beans I sowed half the Sweet peas in the other half of the rootrainer tray.
My wife then joined me to prick out her Mesmeranthiums, Nicotiana, Cornflowers, and Lupins, as well as to sow the Lavender, Coleus, Penstamens, and Holyhocks. We also gave the kids a seed tray each in which to sow French Marigolds, from seed we collected last year.
All this activity in the greenhouse meant we ran out of space, so I was forced to adjourn to the workshop to try and put together a second set of staging. I haven't forgotten that I was going to put some plans together of how to make one - I just haven't had time to do it yet.
By this time the sun was fast disappering, and the temperature was dropping rapidly. Having not checked the weather forecast I feared a frost and duely got the fleece out :-(
So dawned Sunday morning, with my wife racing off to the cancelled car boot - yup it was raining saturating the fleece if nothing else. It also looked like my well laid plans would be well and truely sunk. With nothing else for it I proceeded to the workshop to complete the staging - digging through my store for suitable material.
Staging completed we reorganized the greenhouse, finding room for at least another 3 seed trays, before adjoruning for lunch. By this time the weather was showing signs of significant improvement.
Duely fed and with overcast skies but no rain I proceeded to the allotment determined to get the potatoes in.
If you remember I'm working part of my parents-in-law allotment. I've been given the bed in the left half of what used to be the fruit cage - which I shall fill with Brassicas of various descriptions, and the short bed on the otherside between the Asparagus and the path (see photo below right). The gent gamely digging away in the background is my father-in-law who's trying to catch up after spending the last 4 months building his garage and shed/workshop. He's currently digging the area where his Broard beans, Beetroot, French beans, and carrots will go.
Having managed to get down to the allotment on Friday evening I only had about 5 feet of the potatoe bed to dig, which I achieved in just over an hour. My father-in-law had managed about 7 feet of the bed he was working, but then that bed has been worked for the last 5 years and had potatoes in last year - the bit I was digging hadn't.
Digging completed I got out the rake and levelled it off, whilst my father-in-law got out, line and measure to set the rows out for me. At 7'6" wide the bed in only just large enough for 3 rows, and I managed to shoe horn my remaining stock of pototoes, which had got muddled up when I dropped the box I was carrying them in, into the 17' of usable bed. You'll note the scoflding plank depressions I use to avoid walking on the bed.
Potatoes planted I retired home to sort out a couple of those odd jobs that needed doing, amongst them digging up the rasperry runners from where they escape the bed into the grass patch - one day it may become a lawn- and moving some of them into spaces in the bed itself.
In the fading light of eveing I then set about sorting out the tank I'd collected. One of the taps had been bent down, enlarging its mounting hole and creasing the tank, and the galvanised header tank was also still attached. A few taps with the sledge hammer sorted the tap out, so I could remove it cleanly with the angle grinder, and 10 minutes of careful work, again with the angle grinder saw the removal of the header tank. 20 minutes of work with a large ball pein hammer and a suitable timber block has repaired the creased area of the tank, so now all I need to do is find two suitable blanking fillets, and the tank will hold water again.
So that's it for this week. In parting for this week I thought I'd show you what the veg patch currently looks like. Not much to see really, although there are definate signs of peas coming through in the pea cage. So until next time, Waes Hael.