Planting out and picking at the plot

Met J at the allotment this afternoon in time to admire all his hard work and deliver the spare battery for the mower and some plants for adding to the bean and root beds. He'd already spent a couple of hours mowing the paths, putting up the bean wigwams and sowing the second batch of our Garden Organic Members' experiment lentils. These join the lentils we'd sown last month and our chickpeas in our legume beds and form part of our new-to-us crops for this year. We now need to get our Climbing beans sown at home ready to plant out once all risk of frost has passed. 

After several weeks hardening off at home we've now planted out the first of our beetroot seedlings and some extra broad beans to fill out the gaps in the rows of earlier plantings. There's a second batch of beetroot seedlings on the window-sills here that will go outside this week to harden off and we'll also direct sow a few later in the month to give us a staggered harvest. I managed a little bit of hoeing, picked a few cornflowers from our small cutting patch and cut a carrier bag full of spinach beet leaves - tidying up the over-wintered and transplanted plants as I went in the hope that we get at least one more picking before they bolt. We're hoping that the new sowings will be ready to plant out before these ones give up on us. The cornflowers were also self-sown from last year's plantings and J transplanted them earlier this year - I'm so glad he did as they are far ahead of anything we've sown this year and there's nothing like picking bunches of homegrown flowers for the house knowing they are completely pesticide free so haven't harmed the wildlife and also haven't been flown half way round the world just to make me smile. Final job of the day was to pick some rhubarb - a batch for us and a batch for some friends. And speaking of friends - it was nice to catch up with a few friendly faces whilst I was up there too.
Here's hoping we get a chance to do some more tomorrow...

Garden Organic Lentils under cover

Filling in gaps with Broad Beans grown in loo roll inners

HSL Beetroot - grown in pots and planted out in clusters

First mini-bunch of cornflowers from the cutting patch

Spinach beet harvested and plants tidied - lovely mown paths too

End of April garden watch.

Apparently it's National Gardening Week this week and this year is a celebration of growing your own produce so if you do and have photos the RHS want you to post pictures on social media using the #NationalGardeningWeek hashtag. We didn't know there was such a thing but let's face it, every week is gardening week in this house so I couldn't miss the opportunity to do a bit of an End-of-April round up of what's going on in our little patch.

J had a few extra days off this week so in addition to finally dropping a load of stuff off at our local charity shop (and acquiring a little table for the garden in the process), we've spent the last few days dead-heading and weeding, pricking out seedlings, potting on plantlets, shuffling spent bulb pots and watching to see if the dahlias would respond to being in the light. The achilleas, sweet peas, lettuce, rudbeckias and a few of the strawberries are all in new homes and the front grass paths have been mown. As the cowslips have taken over the back lawn that getting a couple of weeks reprieve and will be mown when they go over. The pots of scabious, strawberries, pansies, herbs and bulbs out the back have been weeded and the dead things have been emptied out ready for their pots to be re-used. The Babbington's Leeks that decided they'd rather be in the patio than in the pot have been cut ready for cooking with in the next couple of days. A couple of loads of washing have been dried on the line outside and J has spent some time in his shed working on a new bird table. And, in anticipation of a couple of wet days ahead a few of the prolific bluebells have been cut to fill a small jug in the living room. So how's your gardening week going?

After the weekend!

The achilleas germinated well

Now they have room to spread

First batch of sweet peas 

Dahlias emerging

Lettuces potted on

Peonies budding

Just the right height for a cuppa!