So much achieved yesterday with a friend and six sunny hours down there. But despite the cracked dry earth, the peas are just starting.

To the allotment this evening, to tackle the long list of jobs to do. Firstly, though, the soil. Where we turned over the soil roughly, without raking it, for the potatoes, it has now baked dry, with cracks. It’s desperate for a good drenching of rain, and is drying out quite deeply now. I’m concerned that the potatoes haven’t shown any signs of life yet and the lack of rain must be contributing to this. But I’m not going to start watering them properly yet, with only conserved water at the site it’s too precious to waste on hundreds of potatoes.

Anyway, got quite abut of weeding done this evening, where the ground wasn’t so dry it was impossible to get a trowel in. Finally gave up on my over wintered brocolli to put some carrots in underneath the covered net. I also sowed some climbing borlotti beans, wigwam style. No signs of the peas, second lot of broad beans or beetroot, but they did get a good dose of water.

Harvested rhubarb-there’s a lot of rhubarb this year, apparently I divided the crowns successfully last autumn. I’m trying to pick it regularly to avoid the monster flowering stuff we got last year. And we’re nearly at the end of the leeks-just about to plant some for next year now.

Finally, there’s just the start of buds on the gooseberries. Which I’m not going to lose to the birds this year, I hope.