Springing into action

Well folks that's what happens when the sun appears - suddenly it's all go in the garden and lotty and I forget to write about it!

The last couple of weeks have seen us planting out spuds, broad beans and strawberries up the lotty.

T'other half took this photo once the spuds went in :)

Pruning gooseberries - a bit late but well they have two choices and they're spiky little devils! Clearing and preparing beds for beans, roots and brassicas.

A bit Heath Robinson but this should support the broadies as they grow

We've been potting on tomatoes, lettuces, brussels and overwintered herbs plus sowing basil, rocket, courgettes, peas, winter squash and pumpkins. We've taken stock of the winter losses - several thymes in the garden and at least one of the lotty rosemaries have succumbed to the prolonged wet and cold so I'll be hunting down replacements and looking for ways to protect them next year.

And yesterday I watched as the blue tits twitted in and out of the bird box, a peacock butterfly warmed its wings and a bumblebee buzzed around the hellebores and the first cowslips. MMM Sunshine :)

Mea Culpa

I'm sorry - the fact that it's 4th April and we've got snowy hail in the Midlands, again, is all my fault. This week I'm on gardening leave - and no I didn't do anything dreadful at work - I thought I'd extend the Easter holiday and knock the lotty in to shape. After all, its April isn't it? You know mid-Spring, that wonderful month of yellow daffodils and fluffy white lambs and yes okay I'll accept showers, but of the lightly warm, gently watering the land sort not of the sharp, biting, cruel icy variety.  They belong to February or at a push early March.

So after a lovely long weekend catching up with family my plans for today have been adjusted slightly. March was a lot darker and colder than expected which means that despite a heated propagator most of our poor little tomato seedlings have keeled over and given up the ghost. Cue a morning of pot shuffling and re-sowing - Salt Spring Sunrise, Roma, Garden Pearl and Moneymaker popped in fresh pots with fresh compost and a lot of hope.

Whilst I had the compost - Vital Earth peat free of course - and pots to hand I also made a start on sowing my birthday flowers. Now we have trays full of Sweet Peas "Perfume Delight"; Sunflowers -"Earthwalker" & "Valentine"; Candytuft and Scabiosa " Tall Crown" all jockeying for space in the conservatory and on windowsills.  In a few months these are destined to be filling jugs and pots all round the house with sweet smelling home grown posies.

Dreaming of home-grown flowers

After a quick check on the wonderful Higgledygarden website I also popped my Cerinthe seeds in a little pot of tepid water to soak - evidently they have quite a hard shell and germinate better with a bit of softening so that's tomorrow's gardening sorted :)

I think the squashes better wait for a few more weeks, don't you?

And the wind doth blow!

Will it ever end? The Equinox has passed and next weekend sees the start of British Summer Time but Nature seems determined to keep us in Winter's icy grip for just that bit longer.

Frozen daffodils and buried violets

Not as bad round here as in other places across the country but it is frustratingly cold and dark. With snow and ice on the ground and hanging in icicles from the gutters working the soil, sieving the compost heaps, planting the spuds and anything else vaguely "seasonal" is just having to wait.

There are tulips and herbs under here somewhere

But gardeners need to do something and so we did what we could and embarked on some plant pot shuffling, potting on, tidying up oh, and plenty of label washing too.

One day these will be lunch!

Moving autumn sown sweet peas up a pot size, pricking out the lettuces and potting on the Sweet Banana peppers was just about as close to gardening as we managed, still it satisfied the need for dirt under the fingernails, if not for fresh air. And let's face it the air is very fresh out there!

Long pots for the sweet peas in case they have to stay in them for a while.

Next job was shunting propagators around the house chasing the light  - the poor little tomatoes we sowed a few weeks ago are looking decidedly leggy and not particularly healthy - just looking at them makes me feel guilty. Still there's time yet I suppose and worse comes to the worse we will re-sow but it's not what any gardener wants to see at this time of the year and makes me twitchy and fearful for the state of the Autumn store cupboard.

But for now we'll stay our hands and no more sowing for a few weeks in the hope that April will bring with it warmer days and longer evenings.

Fingers crossed eh?

Moving forward

With the move into March we have finally had chance to start preparing ground at the lottie.

We now have beds cleared of weeds, covered in cardboard and layered with composted bark mix ready to set the spuds into in a few weeks time. Last year we tried this no dig method for the first time and found the spuds easy to harvest and clean to pick. We garden on light sand at the lotty which means that when we used the trenches we both grew up with we'd end up losing spuds deep into the ground and find volunteers popping up in the same place years later which completely mucked up our rotation and held the door open for all kinds of bugs and diseases. So the future is beds mulched with compost and spuds sheltered by grass clippings.

sleeping beds waiting for seed potatoes

Weirdly snow and freezing hail returned today so after preparing the bed for these beauties yesterday our gardening endeavours were confined to indoors.

More patience required - too cold to put these out yet

So we set to sowing tomatoes - 4 different sorts - the ever-reliable Moneymaker; sweet little Garden Pearl; Heritage Seed Library variety Salt Spring Sunrise and the little plum shaped cooking tomato Roma - and after blight wrecked the crops again last year we'll just be growing in the conservatory and hoping for more success.

Broad Bean risotto in waiting

Other new starters this weekend - Pea Early Onward; Crimson-flowered Broad Bean; Leek King Richard; Oregano and the delicious orange scented thyme.

Orange Thyme - Bees love it and so do I.

All we need now is for a bit of sun and some warmth and then we can start potting things on and filling the rest of the windowsills. Can't wait :)

Pondering on Plastic

Friday was Transition Stratford's monthly Film Friday and this month we watched the wonderful Clean Bin Project about a Canadian couple who challenged each other to live for a year without producing any waste. This funny but thoughtful film provoked much discussion and gave me plenty to think about as I plan this month's shopping list. The stand out comment for me came when Grant was questioning the validity of what they were doing but Jen pointed out that so many of the current environmental problems - The Big Things - Global Warming; Peak Oil; Air Pollution; even I suspect Famine and World Hunger - would be sorted or at least reduced if only we could cut down on over consumption and by extension waste.

Plastic- What do you do with yours?

Underlining this was a feature mid-film about the plastic island in the middle of the Pacific and the alarming rate at which Albatrosses which nest on Midway Island are bringing it ashore - plastic floating in the water looks like food to an albatross and other sea life you see - and even more alarmingly they are feeding it to their young and killing them. If you want to know more about this and see some heart wrenching photos of plastic-choked skeletons then head over to the Chris Jordan website. To be honest even if you don't want to see the photos you really should try to look at them, but be warned they aren't pretty. Chris helped produce the Journey to Midway film which sought to highlight the problems being caused by human waste in an area about as far away from human habitation as you can get and still be on the planet.

For those of us in the UK wanting to know more about reducing the waste we generate by changing the way we shop the team over at The Rubbish Diet Blog have plenty of ideas. If you are up to it they have issued the Rubbish Diet Challenge and our own Transition group will be re-issuing the Plastic Challenge later in the year.

The overriding message for this weekend is that if we use it we need to take more responsibility for it and that brings me back to the old environmentalist mantra - Reduce, Reuse, Repair & Recycle - and whilst Recycle gets all the headlines the most important of these by far has to be Reduce.

So it looks like there is no hiding place for me - time to look at that bin and revisit the shopping list. Will you do the same?

Dreaming of Summer

One of the great things about gardening is feeling the seasons pass, being able to watch the subtle changes in the plants and wildlife that share our plot and planning meals to come. It slows you down, calms your thoughts and just makes you feel, well, better. But sometimes, usually around this time of year your fingers get twitchy, your mind gets restless and no matter your good intentions, the light just can't return fast enough.

So what to do? Stalk the snowdrops?

Harass the hellebores?

Chivvy the chillis?

Or plot, plan, scheme and dream of Summer & Strawberries

Sunshine and Sunflowers

Let the Season begin!

This weekend has, against the odds, been a great one for gardening. Now you may think I am mad - it's been wet, cold, dark and downright impossible to get onto the plot but m'dears we have gardened.

Saturday saw us dusting down the heated propagator, sieving the compost and sowing the first of this year's seeds. Chillis and sweet peppers both need heat and a long growing season so now is the time for us to get them started. This year we're growing jalapeno chillis plus sweet peppers from the Heritage Seed Library - Sweet Banana & Soror Sarek and the Real Seeds Catalogue - Kaibi Round #2. Soror Sarek and Kaibi are old favourites and indeed old seed so we've sown quite a few in case they struggle to germinate - if they all come good then we'll just have extra plants to give away at the Transition & Allotment Society Plant Swaps in the spring. Sweet Banana, however is new to us so it'll be interesting to see what comes of it.

Brussels 2007

We also got an early start with our brassicas - Bedford Winter Harvest Brussels Sprouts for him, I loathe them with a passion it has to be said but the Other Half loves them so each year we give them a go - and Snowball Cauliflowers. Cauliflowers are one crop we fail miserably with year after year but as I love cauliflower cheese I'm determined to give them one more try this year. Keep your fingers crossed folks

Finally we're trying our luck with an early sowing of lettuce and basil - both of which should be ok but it may be a little too dark and cold just now. We're sorely missing home-grown greens at the moment and that's only going to get worse so let's hope these little seeds make it for salads in late March.

Oh and remember those seed spuds from the potato day? - They're now safely chitting in the attic. Let's hope it stops raining long enough for us to prepare their beds before March.