The Spiders from Mars

Another busy day in the garden. I think it's fair to say that I work harder in the garden than at the office.

We were blessed with another fine day, weather wise. I started by rotavating the horse manure and compost together in the raised bed, but what did I plant? Any idea what it is? Go on ... guess :-)

To me, they look like the Spiders from Mars (David Bowie).

My wife is very keen on this crop, and I am starting to like it also. We made up our first raised bed of it last year.

The rest of the day was spent preparing what I am now calling my "sweet pea" plot. It lies at the back of the raised beds in this photograph. I killed off the weeds, then added (more) horse manure and mixed it all in. This took all afternoon, but is cheap to do. We can get a whole trailer full of the stuff for £10 delivered. The petrol for our Mantis rotavator costs way less than £5 to do a whole days work, and the results are pretty impressive. Next step is to cover the earth in black weed suppressing sheets, and then to make planting holes in the sheet for the sweet peas. I'll train them up wigwam supports made of 2m high bamboo canes ... 10 wigwams in total, supporting about 300 sweet pea plants.

Should look and smell nice come late summer and autumn (better than the horse manure anyway). I'll probably sell a lot of the sweet pea flowers out the front garden.

Guessed the crop yet? :-)