Bank holiday Celery...

Well we've had some lovely weather over the bank holiday weekend with plenty of (warm) sunshine about. The dutch hoe has been out in force creating a 'dust mulch' which helps prevent weeds and moisture from the soil evaporating. Bank holiday Monday was sunny too but there was a strong wind and if theres one thing that does damage- its wind.
We went down the allotments on Monday to plant my celery and first lot of caulis and ended up adding aubergines and French beans to the planted list. Im growing 'Morning star' celery this year and I've planted 13 plants in one of the raised beds:

Celery all boxed up ready to go down the plos...

This is how they started...

First lot of caulis ready to plant out...These are 'Memphis'

A bit short on cucs this year so I managed to pick up these two for a pound down on the local carboot...

One of the kelsae plants I've got to plant out. There must be about a dozen or so.

Trying grafted aubergine 'Scorpio' this year having had very limited success with seed raised plants. These have been planted in one of the raised beds in the tunnel.

I make 9" collars to wrap loosely around my celery once its planted out. This helps draw the sticks NOT blanch them- it is too early to be thinking about blanching them yet.

Got our DA meeting this Thursday where David Metcalfe will be talking to us about various aspects of growing in containers, with straw and exhibition veg. Hopefully we should get some new members along too.
Managed to get all my xanths planted on Saturday and tied up. Luckily I have a shelter which is surrounded by windbreak netting because after todays gales I think they would have been stripped! Haven't managed to get a photo of them yet so more on that later...
Some good news- the editor of Simply Veg magazine (NVS) has asked me to do a series of articles for the magazine. They will be entitled 'Growing Pains' and will document how a younger member of the NVS grows for exhibition and will hopefully help to encourage the younger generation to garden and join the NVS...