Taking the plunge.

It's certainly been a strange 4 days. Thursday was loverly but after the heavy rain of Wednesday night I decided to leave the plot to dry out and do a few other jobs that needed doing, like pruning the apple tree and the shrubby bush thing next to it.
I also pricked out another load of germinated salsify and ditched the parsnips which point blankly refused to show any signs of doing anything. Having put another load of seed in their place and a second batch on Friday afternoon so far 1 have show any sign of germinating. Given that both packets I got from T&M last September and they have an expiry of Aug 2008 this is pretty appalling. I can only wait and hope.
Friday was better but not brilliant and I managed about 3 hours of digging. The soil was much drier than I expected so I made the decision to plant my spuds. Saturday dawned sunny but by the time I made it to the plot around half eleven it was beginning to cloud up. Any way I managed to get three rows planted by the time the rain forced me home for lunch at 1:30. The Estima went much further than I expected and I had enough for 2 30' rows. Having measured up the plot on Friday and laid it out on visio , not a right angled corner in sight, I knew I would only be able to get 4 rows in if I wanted to plant anything else. This meant that I could only put one row of Charlotte's in although I still have enough left for 3/4 of a row.
Lunch over and with no sign of the rain abating I sat down in front of the computer, made a few posts on various fora, and then checked our freecycle mail. Low and behold, a nice lady who I've corresponded with a couple of times, and who is local to me was offering Calabrise seedlings, she'd sown the whole packet, which were a little out of date, expecting a few to germinate but the whole lot had. Any way a quick exchange of emails, and I was off to fetch some, in exchange for a few of my excess Musselburgh leeks. In the way of things I came away with a few more seeds, had an interesting tour of her setup - envious of her polytunnel, and promised to return later with some Globe artichoke roots. I've also promised her some seed from my Blanche a Collet Vert Hors Terre (long name for White Carrot), assuming I get some.
Then it was into the greenhouse to prick them out - I've done 32 not sure what I'm going to do with the other 50 odd.
Today was a much better day again, digging in tee-shirt weather this afternoon. I turned over the section of the veg patch in the garden where the Maris Bard were going and planted them, stopped for lunch, then set off down the plot to get the row of International Kidney in that the rain scuppered me over yesterday. Why is it you always have 1 potato left over?
I then pushed on with digging the rest of the plot, until the squelch of the sod as I extracted it determined I should stop. Another 5 feet and that strip'll be completed and I'll have dug 8/19ths of the plot - considerably more if you take into account the area where the compost bins sit, 5 of the six raised beds and their surrounding paths. Tomorrow weather permitting I shall move onto the strip of my father-in-laws plot where I had the cabbages last year, and where my maincrop potatoes are going this year. Until I get a weeks fine weather my original plot is going to remain too wet to work and I don't really want to wait until the middle of May to get the maincrop spuds in.
The other job which is also now looming is to pot on all the onion seedlings, and also all the brassicas which I sowed two weeks ago. Anyone fancy pricking out 100 assorted brassicas?