We made the most of the brief sun warming our backs. We mined the compost heap for the dark, sweet, crumbly stuff at the bottom. We spread it out on sheets of plastic, laid dampened newspaper to coax out any worms and centipedes (EEeek!)so that we could return them to the heap.
We left the compost for the better part of the day then rescued any creepy crawlies that had taken shelter under the newspaper before digging the compost into the raised beds.
The self-seeded foxgloves were lifted from the raised beds and transplanted to the shaded side of the garden.
We are going to make a concerted effort this year to transplant or pot on the bounty of volunteer plants we chance upon in the garden. We are also going to try our hand at propagating through division and cuttings, hey ho.
We moved the pea sticks and cucumber trellis on to the next bed for crop rotation. We cut out the dead raspberry canes at ground level and trimmed and tied in the new. We mulched the raspberries with a generous layer of compost.
Sunny side up. It's only at rare moments like this that the pudding reveals her sun-gilded and coppered tum.
Catnapzzzzzzzzzzzz...
Raised beds prepped, we sowed radish, beet, spinach and a row of carrots directly. We were chuffed to discover these beet and radish mixed seeds - perfect for our limited growing space which precludes us from indulging in too many varieties of any particular type of vegetable as we are then left with expensive surplus seed.
Solar batteries recharged, the kitteh resumed her role of supervisor.
We plan to dabble in more general gardening this year and are going to try and keep on top of seasonal jobs. We started to slowly rid the garden of a number of unwanted volunteers such as the invasive Norway Maple (Acer platanoides), blackberry bramble and buddleia.
Truth be told we have thought about growing our own buddleia, it is at the top of the Butterfly Conservation Org's list of plants beneficial to ♥les lepidopterans♥ but we are bordered by gardens where they grow rampant and unchecked by a seasonal chop and we feel under siege.
We thinned the patch snowdrops under the medlar tree and transplanted the thinnings further afield - our snowdrop carpet is now the grand size of a footmat, and threadbare at that.
This we discovered is a fiddly, gloves-off job. Put aside an hour. Take time to ease the bulbs out of the ground gently using a hand fork and to prise the clusters apart without ripping off too many roots.
The blanched leaves indicate how deep you need to rebury the bulbs. Don't firm the bulbs in by compacting the soil, you need to lightly trowel the earth over the bulbs and then water them in. Use a rose on your watering can or hose to ensure an even spray that will force out the air pockets and encourage the soil to settle around the roots of the bulbs.
We made sure we pinched off all the seed heads to ensure that the snowdrop bulbs would put all their energy into re-establishing their roots.
Having listened to inspirational What’cha Growin? Podcast Episode #4 Kelly Gilliam we sowed Zapotec Pink Pleated tomato seed. Gayla puts this tomato in her top five.
So the chilli seed we sowed before going on our trip did not thrive as we could not provide consistent heat and watering. So we decided to make a long-term investment in a heated propagator.
We chose a design where the lid fitted over the tray as we thought that this may be slightly more efficient in trapping and retaining heat than those systems where trays are placed on top of heated bases or blankets. Having said this the plastic lid is single-walled and very thin, we may adapt this in the future when we have a little more time to play.
Our initial attempt at salvaging the paper-potted chillies was disastrous as they were quickly overcome with fungus. We used plastic pots for our second attempt and hedged our success by topping our home mix of 1:1 garden compost and coir with a "sterile" layer of John Innes seed compost. We decided not to waste windowsill space on chillies that we could purchase readily on our grocery shop so sowed Fire Cracker and Peruvian Lemon Drop and an unnamed we got from a seed swap. Fingers crossed.
We are still using paper pots for our peas. The pots are easy enough to turn out while watching our shows on the tellybox and it's good to be able to sow the peas indoors of an evening and then plant them out as modules once they have germinated.
We sowed our 10x British Wonder from the Heritage Seed Library and then a further 20x Kelveden Wonder. We also sowed 10x old fashioned mix sweet peas whilst we were at it.
No comments:
Post a Comment