Planting out

Planting out turnip seedlings

Today I planted out a lot of the paper pots - cabbage 'greyhound' and cauliflower 'All Year Round' into bed eleven (and two spare cauliflowers in gaps in the kale bed). Bed five is turning into a collection of small numbers of different plants - there is some surviving land cress and two lamb's lettuces from the autumn planting, and six broad beans (one now showing leaves) planted as replacements for the dead ones in bed one. In the spaces left by these, I've now planted eight turnips, six beetroots, and five spinach plants.

All this planting was done using the transplanter I made, which worked better than I expected. I thought that the soil might not be lifted out of the hole, but it came up in neat little plugs leaving cylindrical holes of the right size. Unfortunately the plastic was too brittle to take the load, and after making about thirty holes it broke up. I'll call it a successful prototype, and think about making a more robust one out of metal. It would also be better if the handle was in line with the axis of the barrel. Hmmm.