Last year we'd planted some sunflowers in pots on our patio which did quite well, despite blowing over every time the wind got up.  With space on my hands now, I spent a morning digging a massive bed at the top of the plot, and let the Mantis rip.  Conditions were ideal, not too wet, and not too dry, and the Mantis performed well, but by no stretch of the imagination could the results be called a fine tilth. To give the seeds a fighting chance I cheated again and planted them in peat pots that I wedged in between the clods.  Kate was still drinking bottled water by the gallon, so we continued to have a ready supply of cloches / seed protectors, which accounts for the green plastic you can see everywhere.

In the root beds the onions were doing well, reaching a good ten inches tall. Carrots didn't fare the same, either I had a dodgy batch or my skills at thinly sowing (to avoid having to thin out at a later stage which attracts carrot fly) were poor.  Still, the leeks and parsnips were starting to establish.

The potatoes were making good headway in one bed, but were looking distinctly poorly in the more soggy one, taking on a slightly yellow tone.  Both had received three barrow loads of horse manure so I was reasonably sure it wasn't a mineral deficit, nothing to do but wait and see and hope it wasn't eelworm.

The courgettes, pumpkins and sweetcorn didn't seem to have minded being planted out early and were starting to establish.  To make watering more efficient in the summer months, I suck plastic pots next to them so that the water would go straight to the roots where it's needed.