Hello Friends,
Well, you remember that 'chilly veg' I was moaning about last time? They are now officially sub-arctic veg. I have just been down to the greenhouse to cover them for the night. Not that they have actually been properly uncovered this last couple of days. I mean 'cover' as in putting a tablecloth & a sheet over the two lengths of bubblewrap & enormous piece of polythene that is currently covering them in the daytime. Oh, & I should add that the chillies & peppers are also under bottle cloches. Three tiny basil plants succumbed to the cold in the night, despite being wrapped like 'Pass the parcel'. Others look to be considering it. Boo to such cold April nights!
Is it Spring? I try not to make banal utterances about the weather, as we all know it can snow in April. I can remember building a snowman with my friend on Good Friday when I was a child. I've also stood on a Suffolk beach on May Day in freezing sleet (in my new sandals, naturally!) watching a man & his girlfriend fall over at the water's edge & fail to get up in time for the next icy wave. I was hugging my chips for warmth!
Yesterday we had a snow shower. Today has been the turn of sleet - 5 big showers of it, building up in piles along the garden wall, making the grass crunchy, barely melting before the next lot. So there are good signs of mid-Spring in the garden, but all have taken a bit of a battering today:
The hydrangea petiolaris is covered in buds, but the layer of hailstones has hardly thawed today.
Snowy....or rather haily bluebells and........
......our lovely clematis was looking distinctly soggy. It's usually such a herald of springtime. I hadn't realised how far it has escaped up the greengage tree.......no matter, it will help to cover up the dead bits.
The dark strip behind the wildlife pond has been like this most of the afternoon. No frogs popping up to sun themselves......though I have a horrible feeling this may have more to do with our naughty heron. More about him next time. I love herons - one of my favourite birds, actually, but this one's a bit of a crim.
Such dark photos, but all I could manage as we were underneath a bank of black cloud at the time. Albert Whiskers got caught in the first hailstorm. He wasn't impressed. Dried himself off on the sofa throw, watched some TV, lorded it up on the bedroom window for a while then started the Tummy Time Pester. As the Bigger Hairier Half of the Relationship is busy slapping eggshell onto dado rails, I caved in & applied a pouch of Chicken & Kidney Stink to bowl...........where most of it was left. With Albert Whiskers, anticipation of what he MIGHT get, is always much more exciting than what he actually gets. Tiring task eating 3 mouthfuls of meat......he's had to drag himself upstairs to recouperate on the bed. Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.
PLEASE can there be some warmer weather soon?
C x
Hello Friends,
It was one of those days today where I really needed to sort my head out, & as usual, the best place for that was outside, throwing myself into seasonal veg-growing jobs. I have recently discovered a task-planning method in which only 3 tasks can be added to the list at a time. I was keen to try this, as I am known for the epic nature of my job lists.......& then the equally epic sense of deflation when only 29 of the 50 tasks are actually completed, the list having been unrealistic & self-defeating in the first place. With the 3-tasks only method, you can add as many additional jobs as you like, but there must only be 3 outstanding ones on the list at a time so that it doesn't become overwhelming. So on today's list:
1) Plant cucumbers out.
2) Pot up baby pepper plants.
3) Sow climbing beans
Mission accomplished! Cucumber frame put together using canes & 2 strange lengths of white plastic plumber's pipe (not a clue where that came from - it's one of those strange things that just happen to 'live in the shed'). This cucumber variety is 'Carmen'.....which makes me think it should be grown on a rampart in Seville rather than a corner of the grey chilly East Midlands. To be fair, the greyness had lifted in time for me to pot up the peppers, which I will grow on before transplanting to their final pots. And then onto Task 3 - I punched holes in the base of my stash of wombled 'disposable' coffee cups & sowed my climbing beans:
These are now sitting in a wheelbarrow under a sheet of heavy-duty polythene. The nights are still way too cold here to risk putting tender veg out unprotected. These will be polythened until they germinate, then uncovered in the daytime, until it's finally time to get them planted out at the end of May.
That's the problem with this time of year. If we don't get our veggies started off, many of the more tropical stuff like chillies, aubergines, peppers, tomatoes, etc, won't have a sufficiently long season to produce good crops but the April temperatures are really unstable. This afternoon, my greenhouse was cheeringly warm, but tonight, frost is forecast, & it can nip the edges of soft exposed leaves
So it's currently all about protection for chilly veg here. I'm using bottle cloches on cold days, as they can easily be removed if the sun deigns to make an appearance........
......but at around 5pm (today with Albert Whiskers around my heels mithering for his dinner), I am still popping back out to the greenhouse to add an extra layer of protection.
And another thing about temperatures - my courgettes are being r-e-a-l-l-y slow this year. Again I think this is down to the cold nights. First signs of the soil surface breaking today, so I'll hopefully soon be adding nithering courgette plants to the rest of my chilly veg.
Oh.....& because I achieved all three tasks on my list, I was able to add another three, so I also pricked out some antirrhinums & rudbeckia, and sowed a small trough of wasabi rocket.
Until next time,
Cheers all,
C x
Afternoon Campers!
I am feeling sooooo behind with my seasonal gardening tasks, especially on the veggie front. I have to make serious inroads this week. Today's been a great start, as the sunshine, blossom & a virtuoso blackbird lured me outside by 9 a.m and I've finished my new strawberry tower.
Well, in all honesty, 'tower' is stretching it a bit. It's more sort of Soviet-era municipal block, but it has hit both my targets a) It was easy....& b) It was free. I have grown strawberries for years in a plastic strawberry barrel which held two dozen plants................& the East Midlands collection of vine weevil larvae. Did you know that vine weevils don't even need one of each to breed? No wonder there's so many of the damn things. Every year's strawberry growing went something like this: Plant up barrel. Water & feed plants. Pick delicious but decidedly stingy crop of about 2 ramekins for each of us during fruiting season. Observe blackbird commando crawling under my carefully applied blackbird-proof netting to hoover remaining berries. Keep watering plants so as to pay froward the hopes of a better crop next year. Spot that plants are starting to look rather limp & tubercular. Investigate. Discover that the Evil Weevil has visited & the entire barrel is alive with its horrible little grubs....which is the only thing it's alive with, seeing as how any last vestiges of actual strawberry plants are now dead!
OK, enough of this sorry process. Last year, I pegged down as many strawberry runners as possible so as to save some plants from Weevilly Armageddon. They almost all rooted & I transferred them to the greenhouse for overwintering while I pondered what container to use - preferably one that doesn't emit such welcoming vibes to horrid weevils. I had thought to purchase 4 large coloured plastic pots in in different sizes to stack & plant as a tower, but I didn't really want to buy yet more plastic, or indeed part with any cashola, so I decided to use some big plastic troughs which I usually use for salads.
I put crocks in the base of each trough & filled with a mixture of our home-made garden compost & bagged stuff, adding a good handful of chicken manure pellets to each one, and built up the troughs into a stable structure. A good dousing with the hose & they were ready to plant up.
I've managed to fit 45 plants in here & will have netting at the ready against naughty beaks when the time comes. If properly fed & watered, these plants & compost should be good for 3 years, so I will research use of anti-vine weevil nematodes to make sure we're in with a chance. Our tame robin will be gutted as he loves weevil larvae, but he'll have to put up with peanut nibs same as everyone else!
Still thinking about moving forward on the veggies, I cut the last of our over-wintered rocket today. I always sow a crop in the greenhouse in the autumn, re-using a growbag.
I've been cutting this rocket for several weeks & it's been a welcome addition to salads. I like the variety 'Wildfire', as it's easy & a nice spicy one, with quite large, lush leaves. The leaves are much smaller now, as it's time to bolt & set seed, so this is the last of it & a new growbag will be taking its place ready for this year's cucumbers.
No help in the garden from Albert Whiskers today. After yesterday's run-in with a staffie, he is nursing his sore paws, keeping his head down & staying out of trouble indoors. I think having such a narrow escape was a big shock for him. Doubtless he'll be back to lording it on our front wall, but at the moment he's showing little interest in venturing outside.
Hope some of you have managed to enjoy this lovely sunshine today,
Till next time,
C x
