Busy Saturday

A brilliant day at DigIn today.  A bit chilly at first, but when the sun came out, lovely & warm!
Three new people came to give DigIn a try today, it was lovely to meet them all. We had a busy day with 11 of us in total.
We spent the morning watering the seedlings in the polytunnel, planting a few broad bean plants and peas in one of the sunray beds and continued digging in the overwintering phacelia.  This has been in the ground since about last October and is a green manure.  It should improve the soil structure where it has been growing and provide nutrients to the soil now it has been dug in.  If left, it has a lovely purple flower that bees love, so we're going to sow some more and maybe leave some of it to flower for the bees and other beneficial pollinating insects.

First cut is the hardest!

The orchard grass got its first cut of the year on Wednesday.  The grass was very long and still a bit wet, but it has to be done sometime, and Wednesday was the day.  Strength mustered, oil topped up & fuel added to the mower and lots of determination saw the job done, but it took all and a bit more of the 2 hour session we had.  So many trips to empty the grass collector!  Still, we do have all of the cuttings on the compost heap now, so that should provide a good bit of moisture & nitrogen to the compost to enrich the beds later in the season.

Tidy!

 

Pond Creatures

The pond is showing us that spring is definitely here!  Lots of tadpoles have now emerged from their frogspawn stage and there seem to be snails everywhere.  Here's a close-up of one of the snails & some tadpoles enjoying a bit of warm sun.  Thanks to Sal for the pic.