Things are really taking off at the allotment. I was excited when we had our first frog spawn in the pond, but just look how much there is now:
This won’t all make it to frogs, our pond is too small. At first I was quite distressed to see tadpoles not maturing as the year went on, but then last year when I found the dragonfly on the whitecurrant I looked into the life-cycle of the dragonfly and felt better. Dragonfly larvae feed on tadpoles, then climb up reedy growth as they mature into dragonflies. So too much spawn should encourage the dragonflies to the pond.
The peach tree is also in blossom. It’s growing in the greenhouse, indeed we took on this derelict half plot because it had a peach tree in what was by then a collapsed greenhouse. We rebuilt the greenhouse using the original base, but unfortunately the peach tree hadn’t survived year round exposure to the cold temperatures in our neck of the woods. So I bought Paolo a replacement.
The peaches it produces are the sweetest juiciest white flesh peaches you could imagine. If left to ripen fully on the tree they have to be eaten as they are picked because even picking slightly bruises the flesh – this is no real hardship.
However, because it’s still cold we can’t open up the greenhouse to encourage in natural pollinators so Paolo and I are imitating bees with a paintbrush at the moment to encourage fruit production.
More immediately we picked out first rhubarb of the year. We inherited these crowns with the plot and there seems to be one crown which is a particularly early variety. This is our first picking and you can see how much further on this plant is compared to the other crowns just emerging:
