2nd April, 2012

Nice weather again with plenty of signs of spring.

The fruit trees are coming into blossom.  The picture shows the greengage in front with the plum tree behind.

The flowers are very pretty.

and there are lots of them.  I should remember this year to thin the fruit so that the branches don't break as they did last year.  The good thing is that the trees are still in good health it seems.













The blueberries are also flowering.

I removed some more of the Leylandii hedge to allow the redcurrants more space to grow into.

Next weekend will be the first meal of asparagus!

I have been harvesting more PSB

and leeks.

The seeds are sprouting in the greenhouse.  These are the radish and kohlrabi.

I also sowed some chillies, the seeds were taken from last year's harvest which I dry out and can use throughout the year.

The tomatoes and basil I sowed have germinated nicely on the windowsill but I'll leave them there until they show the true leaves.

I planted the onion sets (golden ball) and potted up some strawberry runners that had rooted and I had missed.  I can give these away to friends.

I replaced the sieve with a coarser mesh in my home made compost sieving contraption.  I don't need it to be so fine and I ended up returning much of it to the compost bin.  Maybe I don 't need to sieve it at all but it does improve the soil nicely.

12th March, 2012

Another busy weekend with my son's swimming club; it was the second weekend of the County Championships which meant sitting in a swimming pool and anxiously watching his times.  He came away with a gold and 3 bronzes.  Not too bad.  I did manage to enjoy the weather and take some photos.  This church is very distinctive of where I was. Anyone care to guess?

I did have some time on Sunday morning for a quick tour of the garden to take some pictures for this blog. The purple sprouting broccoli is ready!

The blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes have fresh green leaves breaking out.

The overwintered onions look puny at this time.

The broad beans have started to throw up new shoots from the base to compensate for the floppy main stem.

Next weekend I have Sunday free to start sowing and probably take more time over taking the photos to check that they are in focus!

27th February, 2012

In contrast to last week's blog photo of a snow covered garden, here is a complete contrast with the first signs of warm weather which is that the greenhouse vent has started to open.  Time to fill the staging with seed trays then.

I sowed some leeks (porvite) into two large pots, but decided to wait until March (another week) before starting anything else.

The purple sprouting broccoli is coming along nicely.

The redcurrants have nice fat buds on them.

The floppy broad beans are hopefully going to straighten up.  I need to sow them later (December?) so that they don't grow too much in the greenhouse.

There are plenty of small leeks which I shall use up to make leek and potato soup and a nice pie recipe I want to try.

The garlic is showing through with strong shoots.

I also started to remove more of the Leylandii hedge that borders the side bed.  Most of it is dead, not nice to look at and a pain to keep in shape, so it has to come out.  I aim to try and do this before the beds fill up with veg so that I won't be walking all over them.  The upside is that I can remove the couch grass that grows under the hedge and I will gain as much as half a metre of ground as that is how wide the hedge is.  So more lovely veg!

18th January, 2012

Nearly 2 months since my last post! I haven't been very busy in the garden so not much to report really. I've done the following on occasional weekend when I can becase it has been quite wet.
Cut down the asparagus and weeded the bed.
Collected the leaves for leaf mould.
Emptied compost bin contents and spread it over the bed to break down over winter.
Harvested the parsnips.

In the greenhouse the broad beans are growing rather too well. Here they are flopped over after a frosty night. But I think they will be OK.

Here is part of the side bed where I have lad a relatively thick layer of the compost.

The purple sprouting broccoli are safely protected under netting. The unprotected ones (I don't have enough netting) have been stripped bare.

The parsnips have grown good tap roots this year but haven't fattened up much. They taste fine though and were a lovely addition to the roasting pan for xmas dinner.