Edging makes a garden

I got some new edging last week. One of my neighbours was throwing it out. We're using the same builders and sharing a skip, but the builders (who have seen my garden and have probably identified me as the sort of person not averse to a bit of free second-hand stuff - it's possibly best we don't ask what they formed that opinion from) asked if I didn't want to keep it as there was nothing wrong with it.
So, after a small amount of humming and hawing followed by the discovery that I had accidentally dug my herb beds and rear beds to almost precisely the dimensions of the edging, I now have lovely new edging.
Everyone happy. Less in landfill, more money stays in my pocket and the edging finds an appreciative new home. The only thing is, my neighbour doesn't know I've got his lovely edging. I'm not sure what the socially correct thing to do is: tell him we took a shine to it and kept it, keep quiet, fess up if he notices or deny everything. Or of course the other option of sticking a photo of it on the Internet and telling the whole world the story (well, I say the whole world, me, the other half and a couple of folks who found it before the rush started, but still, in theory the whole world).
Oh, and in case you were wondering about the title, here's the before picture, albeit from a slightly different angle. I really didn't think it would make such an impressive difference or I'd never have hummed and hawed in the first place.

First radishes of the season

I got my first radishes of the season already.

This photo makes them look huge. That's due to a deceptively close-up shot though. The bigger one was only about a centimetre across. Still, the point is I managed to get my first harvest in the first half of April, albeit not of enough food to replace the calories for even half a sit-up, but let's not dwell on the negative.

I have now replanted the gaps in my radish seedlings and also planted a new line where I lost the seedlings from my remaining kohl rabi seeds to slugs. Given the poor quality of last year's kohl rabi crop (generally small and/or tough and woody), I'm choosing not to buy any more kohl rabi seeds this year and am allocating the space to radishes instead. My kohl rabi will have to come from the supermarket.

Digging a herb garden

I dug a new herb garden today. Well, I say I dug it, my husband dug it for me because my back and hip problems mean digging isn't practical for me. Even the planting I did was pushing my luck a bit. Anyhow, what we did was turn the grass over, then I stabbed it a fair bit with a small spade to break it up (a big spade would have done the job just as well, but isn't really compatible with my back problems). After that I added some composted manure, then marked out where I wanted to plant the herb seeds.

And planted some herbs I already had in pots (the chives were in with my mint, so there's a danger I may get rampant mint taking over the garden if I didn't manage to clean all its roots out.

Another potential issue with the herb garden is that the turned over soil contained quite a lot of grubs. I suspect them of eating roots, so I killed as many as I could see, but I suspect there were more. I definitely saw our local robin get one. I think he's rather fond of them.

Here are before and after shots of today's work:

Before

After

In other news, slugs and snails have been eating all my seedlings. Basically, if it's not covered by a cloche, it's being eaten by snails. I went on another slug and snail killing spree today, but I didn't find very many. Fortunately then I remembered my copper slug rings and beer traps.

I hope it works, it's bad enough when they decimate your radishes, but they nibbled every single leaf off my kohl rabi and they were heading that way with my broad beans, and I don't have enough of those seeds to keep replanting.

Only things under the cloches are unnibbled.

Seeds planted

It's been a big seed planting weekend. The weather was so warm I decided they could survive in the shed, having previously judged it far too cold for indoor planting. I now have a load of beans and also cucumbers, courgettes and squashes planted.

The shed decision is probably just as well, as I've already filled more of the dining table than I was hoping, with peas and sweetcorn and tomatoes and stevia.