And 'sow' it begins...

Our weedy, untilled allotment has, in the week or so since we last visited, been transformed into a beautifully dug-over, weed-free plot. Not a miracle, just Peter from the allotment society and his rotovator. He did a brilliant job. He had to do it three times apparently. Our new aim for this year: improve the quality of our soil through adding as much organic matter as possible. We need to make another call to Phil the poo man.
So, into this newly rotovated soil, we planted the first of this year's crops. Potatoes. Three rows of Charlottes, and then a row each of Arran Pilot, Lady Christl and Vivaldi (the famous, 'slimming' potato - only half the calories of a normal potato! Amazing). We'll see which ones do best (and whether we get any less fat from eating them). We planted them in the corner of the plot that we never got around to touching last year.
We also planted a few rows of onions and half a row of beetroot. Don't worry, there will be more beetroot to follow. We just wanted to make sure we spread the beetroot love out throughout the summer and didn't end up with a glut. Although a glut of beetroot would be no bad thing, in my opinion.
We also planted some aubergines and leeks in modules. Our aubergines didn't do very well last year, as we left it too late before we planted them. We didn't want to repeat our mistake this year so they're already planted up and sitting in a nice warm spot on top of the washing machine,  ready to be planted out when it gets a bit warmer.
We got our potatoes and onions from the allotment trading hut. 40 or so potatoes and 50ish onions for about £4. It's good for the purse strings as well as the waistline.
We got most of our new seeds for this year from The Real Seed Company but we've also tried saving some seeds from last year's crops. We'll see how they do.
Here was the table on seed sorting day.

One thing we have learnt today: it is very difficult gardening with a hangover. We achieved probably 30% of what we would have on a normal day because we kept on having to have little sit downs.  Happy birthday to Andrew's brother Ben.