24th March, 2013

Another potential weekend lost due to more white stuff.  It's going to be a busy Easter holiday catching up with all the sowing, potting up and digging.  If it ever warms up!

The greenhouse shivers in anticipation of its shelves being filled with seed trays.

Meanwhile then, my blogs will be very short.

27th February, 2013

The cold weather persists and does not make me want to go outside much.  But time marches on so I decided I had to do some sowing and I sorted through the seed packets, bought some multi-purpose compost and got on with it.

Now there are seed trays in the greenhouse with broad beans, red and white onions.  I decided to try onions from seed this year.

 On the floor are two buckets of leeks.

There's a peach tree (self sown) and fig tree keeping them company.  I had a look at them to see if the cold weather had done them in but I'm glad to say that there are viable buds.

However, the cold and wet weather has destroyed my home made cold frame.  The plywood has rotted and won't support the window frames anymore.  I'm in two minds as to whether it's worth making a new one. 

I started the chitting process for the spuds in the unheated conservatory.  These are the pink fir apple.

And the kestrel which are already showing sprouts.

6th February, 2013

The first post of 2013.  The lack of postings is because I haven't done anything in the garden.  Simple as that, plus there's been a fair bit of the white stuff.

When the snow did clear away, I still haven't done much as the soil is too wet to work. I still have beds to dig and tidying up to do, so I can't slacken too much, it will be spring in no time.  I need to sow some onion seeds, leeks and broad beans.

It's also nice to receive a delivery of the seed potatoes.  It gives a real sense of the new season starting.  I've ordered more this year, maybe a mistake with the ever increasing threat of blight? There is the usual favourite variety of Kestrel and I'm trying out a nice salad potato, pink fir apple.

I am still harvesting beetroot and parsnips which is a nice bonus.

There are leeks too, but they aren't very big and there is some leaf miner damage.

I'm looking forward to next weekend when I can get stuck in to the sowing, digging and tidying up. Weather permitting.

6th November, 2012

I've not had many free weekends of late and the garden has had little but much needed attention.  However, I took some time off work for half term and had a thorough tidy up.

I've continued to dig the beds and apply all the compost I had, but I soon ran out.  I never have enough.

But I still have some work to do on the bottom bed that got choked with weeds.  I do have some nice leeks though.

The soil is slowly improving but still is largely clay lumps that don't break up easily.  I'm still digging up large stones too.

At least the onion sets I planted have sprouted.

I chopped down the asparagus ferns, weeded and covered with a good layer of used compost.  I have covered the bed with net cloches to keep the neighbours cats off which like to use it as their toilet.  Yuk.

As soon as the compost bins are emptied, they are filled again with weeds, shreddings and leaves.  I have lots of leaves to collect to make leaf mould which is very good for breaking up clay soil.  So it's worth the effort.

It doesn't take too long to collect a large pile.

The blackberry harvest this year was very good.  The plant has thrown up plenty of new shoots for next year.  I cut back all of this year's growth and shredded it and then tied in the new growth.

7th October, 2012

I was so looking forward to the sweetcorn, we had picked about 4 cobs and then this happened.

I can only assume that this was the work of badgers.  It has to be a fairly large and heavy animal to have done that. 

I'm delighted that we have badgers in the area but not so happy with their antics.