I drove down to the plot for the first time this year, parking up by Pat’s plot. I was then able to take home buckets of weeds and various bits of rubbish.

The main aim was to plant the onion sets, but I did all kinds of other jobs too, including cutting back the nettles that I could reach from around the pond, and doing a little weeding. The earth isn’t dry enough yet to do a proper weed as you can’t shake the mud off the roots yet. I harvested a few parsnips to see how they’re keeping in the earth. Two of them were big and needed a big fight to get them out. Two were small and one was madly forked.

I prepped the onion beds – 2 and 8 – with superphosphate and spread the last of the bag around the garlic.

As usual, a few of the sets were mouldy, so they went on the compost. There’s a small gap left at the end of Bed 2, which could probably have a zinnia or some chard.