I managed to earth up my potatoes today, although I should have allowed a little more room when planting them to make it a bit easier.

The broad beans are coming along well, and the carrots and parsnips are probably large enough to thin out soon.  The two new rows are garden peas and broccoli under bottle cloches.

I’ve managed to pot on the tomatoes and peppers I’m going to grow, althugh I still have loads of spares to do something with!

The potatoes in the greenhouse are doing great and already have flowers starting, it will be interesting to see how many potatoes each plant actually produces in that space.

Finally my surviving sweetcorn and squashes are still indoors waiting for warmer weather, if they live that long, they’ve not been a great success so far!

Hopefully I can get my runner beans planted out soon as they’re outgrowing their container in the greenhouse so will have to take their chances soon!

I spent about an hour potting about 80 tiny tomato plants into larger pots, about 10x more than I need but I’ll grow as many as I can and try to find homes for the small plants once they’ve grown some more!

I spotted this little creature yesterday in the greenhouse, after a bit of googling it’s apparently a bee fly, relatively common but not something I’ve seen before!  Thankfully the scary looking proboscis is just for collecting nectar and not for stinging!

Some good signs of growth in the greenhouse:  tomatoes, sweetcorn, squashes and carrots are starting to come up, no sign of any peppers yet but hopefully soon.

I’ve also planted my potatoes and also a load of strawberry plants, the varieties are Elsanta and Sonata.

Also the rhubarb crowns I planted in January are starting to come up which is a relief!

That’s about all for now, things have come on more since I took these photos and I’ll hopefully do another update tomorrow.

So having cleared the weeds from the former garden veg plot and planted a new lawn last year, I thought now would be a good time to clear out the greenhouse and make some new beds for veg growing.   I’ve not tried any real vegetable growing before, except for a not-very-successful attampt at growing tomatoes last year.  Hopefully I’ll do better this time.  Here’s the bean trench on the left and the other veg bed on the right:

The plan is to put a row of potatoes in the main bed, which are busy chitting on the window sill right now, and I’m hoping will be ready to plant by around the weekend:

The plot always used to (about 10 years ago) produce good potato crops so I’m hoping they’ll do well.  We have Desiree potatoes on the left and (I think – I threw away the bag!) Arran Pilot on the right.

I’ve already got some sweet peas growing in pots in the greenhouse as well as a few test potatoes planted in the soil underneath.

I also have a bunch of other vegetables to go into the main outside bed, I’m thinking I may have to make an extra one if everything starts to grow! My next job today was to plant these:

into these:

Which turned out like this:

They’re all now occupying any sunny window sill I can find in the house until they germinate and are strong enough to survive out in the greenhouse.

The last job was to plant a row each of carrots and parsnips and set up my home made cloches to protect them from digging animals and give them a bit more warmth.

So hopefully growing this year I will have:

• Sweet peas
• Carrots
• Parsnips
• Potatoes (Desiree and Arran Pilot)
• Tomatoes (Gardener’s Delight, Precious and some mystery plants I inherited)
• Peppers (Californian wonder)
• Butternut squash
• French beans
• Broad beans
• Runner beans

I think that’s enough to be starting with for a complete novice!  Hopefully I’ll keep the blog updated with any failures and successes!

From when the rumours of this announcement first came out I thought it sounded like a terrible idea to close down the only music station that actually really cares about the music they play, so was interested to hear the BBC’s justification for this act.  The strategy review which is suggesting the changes states the key aim is  “putting quality first“.

I don’t see how 6 Music could do a better job of being a “quality” music station.  The suggestion that commercial rivals could fill the space left by 6 Music is massively unlikely, it’s the sort of service only the BBC can provide, and at a relatively low cost as a proportion of the total licence fee budget. David McCandless, author of the fantastic Information is Beautiful book has created a fascinating graphic for the Guardian showing the current breakdown of the BBC budget.

There’s a great deal of political discussion regarding the BBC and their fear of what a potentially incoming Conservative government might do to them, well summed up here, but personally all I want is that the only BBC Radio I have contact with be kept alive.

There’s a strong movement building up online, headed mainly by the love6music website, where you can sign the petition, and find details on how to contact the BBC to lodge your objections.  There’s a chance this can all help, with the BBC Trust chairman Sir Michael Lyons saying if there was a big enough public response about the cuts then he would ask management to rethink its strategy.

So please, do the following:

• Go to love6music.com to keep up with news
• Sign the petition to save BBC 6 Music
• Watch Dan Bull’s open letter to the BBC
• Watch the video of 6 Music’s Adam Buxton challenging Mark Thompson to a fight live on Channel 4 News

Please do sign the petition though, the BBC have to listen if enough people speak up!

In case anyone’s wondering about how the mini-triathlon went back in June last year, we came 24th out of 58 competitors, so slightly better than I hoped for!

On Thursday I decided to try and find my ideal 12 mile route by heading out towards Frensham Little Pond. The weather was much cooler and slightly drizzly, so I tested out my new soft shell jacket, which worked exactly as it should. It looks like there’s some great routes around there, but mine went slightly wrong…
The plan was to find the pond, then just follow the path around it to see how far that was, then adjust the route to get it to the magic 12 miles. However, in a way that only people who possess my unique sense of direction could; I managed to get lost. While following the circumference of a pond. A fairly small pond at that. It was getting towards lunchtime and I had no food with me, so I decided to just head for some main road noise I heard. I didn’t realise quite how far I’d travelled, so after a 5 mile ride along a main road I arrived in Tilford, where I bought a snack from the tiny village shop, and made my way home along the normal route.
Anyway, it was a good ride, 14.4 miles in total, although a chunk of that was on the road. Next time I’ll try and stick to off road.