Croft progress

The sun this week has transformed our waterlogged, weedy croft into a place that is actually quite pleasant to be, and we’ve both been out digging, weeding and planting with renewed enthusiasm.

Our backs ache and our fingers hurt. I’ve managed to get several splinters from bending the hoops over the beds, and I know it’s only a matter of time before I get my first cleg bite (horsefly) or tick, but I don’t care. It feels like spring at last and the soil is warm.

Husband keeps reminding me to wear gloves to protect my hands. I do try, and I have some good ones, but working with tiny seedlings is a very tactile thing for me and I like to feel them properly so I generally don’t use gloves. I also like to feel the temperature and consistency of the soil that I’m planting into. It’s a living thing. Instead I spend what feels like hours scrubbing the soil from underneath my nails at the end of each day.

Lunch is a hurried affair whilst gardening. A couple of sandwiches and a cold drink, or some tea, then back to it so that we can make the most of this good weather.

The croft raised beds are now all weeded, top-dressed with fresh compost, drip-irrigation pipes laid, and are now mainly planted up with young seedlings. Our job over the next few days is to protect them with hoops and vegetable mesh as the birds will have a field day if we don’t.

We’ve got one main bed left to see to, which is the bed that we temporarily put the fruit bushes into last year, which is now a weed fest. That one will probably take a whole day on its own to sort out, so we’ve left it to last. At the moment it’s buzzing with bumblebees as the tiny nectar-rich flowers on the currants have just opened.

Once all that’s done we can start removing the weeds from the gravel paths ( husband has a flamethrower thing that he’s dying to try!) scythe the rushes down and tidy away the old pots, broken pallets and rubbish that have accumulated over winter across the croft. It’s got a way to go before it looks photo-worthy but the most important thing, the planting, has been the priority.

I seem to still have a whole potting table full of seedlings. I grew far too many kale, purple sprouting broccoli and tomato plants this year. I can always pop the spares down to the honesty box for people to take rather than have them wasted.

In a quiet hour yesterday I updated my gardening journal, and was quite surprised to realise how much we’ve sown this year. Only time will tell whether it all thrives but the list is more extensive than I’d imagined. And this was supposed to be our year of simplification! The trouble is I’m a sucker for a new plant..

Growing 2026

• Red and golden beetroot

• Red cabbage

• Hispi cabbage

• Collard greens

• Cavolo Nero kale and crofters perennial kale

• Potatoes

• Perpetual spinach

• Spring onions

• Shallots

• Babington leeks

• Radishes and black radishes

• Carrots

• Celery

• Broccoli

• Purple sprouting broccoli

• Asparagus

• Rhubarb

• Rocket

• Mixed salad leaves

• Tomatoes

• Courgettes

• Cucumbers

• Herbs - tarragon, mint, lemon verbena, parsley, coriander, sage, chamomile, dill, salad burnet, Vietnamese coriander