I know it’s in the shed somewhere, and I’ve found all the brassica netting. I just cannot put my fingers on the bird netting for the strawberries. I can see that the birds are having a pop at the unripe redcurrants (which are with the strawbs) so if I want any, the shed needs to be sorted.

Watered everything last night, then realised it wasn’t actually needed. (Bit of a pre-senior moment) The garlic seems to be ok, despite the very radical haircut it had last weekend to remove the worst of the rusted leaves. I am watering at the bottom of the plants to try and keep it at a minimum.

Fed the potatoes inna bag with some growmore, fed the ones in the bed with BFB last weekend, so I won’t need to do either again till about mid-June, I reckon. Fingers crossed the fox won’t confuse BFB with possibilities of something tasty being buried in the bed.

Tasks for the weekend:
1) Sort shed
2) Finish the purple bed and plant up with things from the balcony
3) Set up the new U-shaped bed and start digging that
4) Plant the pear espalier
5) Sort out the strawberries – hoik out the remaining unruly runners, feed, mulch and cover with netting.
6) Set up culticave and populate with everything from the flat
7) Pay a visit to Alan’s place to have a nosy and pick up some tomatoes
8 ) Trellis the shed if there is time

Lionel’s strawberries are looking fantastic. He planted runners last year and fastidiously removed all the flowers and runners. The plants are massive now and covered in large flowers. I didn’t know to do this, and mostly neglected mine and let them flower and cast runners all over the place. My plants are now much much smaller than his, as are the flowers. Though I have easily treble the number of plants, so I won’t be stinted on fruit!

If I remember, I’m going to collect runners from plants at the end of this year and put in a new strawberry bed, but not let them flower/runner in 2015 and see if I can have the same results before binning my current plants. That will give me a couple of slightly odd years of underplanting my fruit with beets and dwarf beans, but should refresh the bed a little. That’s the plan anyway – watch next year as it flies out the window…