On the table in my greenhouse are lots and lots of newly sprouting seeds. Top left - onions. Top middle - mixed salad lettuce. Top right - peas! (you can just see the chitting potatoes next to the peas). And on the bottom row, left to right, French Marigolds, cabbage Primo, spinach, tomatoes.

My mini greenhouse is in my big greenhouse - kind of hothousing the seedlings therein. The top tray of pots is full of squash, middle shelf has corn, peppers, melon, herbs and stuff, bottom shelf is all flowers and chamomile. I zip it up at night and open it in the morning.

The bank at the bottom of the garden is covered with these little grape hyacinths.

Golden daffy

White daffies

Gorgeous daffy

Spring has sprung! An emerging broad bean seed! These things lurk in the soil, until you've just about given up on them, then, suddenly, a day or two of warmish weather and up they pop! These were planted way back at the beginning of Feb.

Planting update

Did a bit of seed sowing last weekend, and forgot to blog it. On Saturday 12th, I spent a happy couple of hours in my potting shed and sowed a few flats of leafy veg - a tray of 8 different kinds of salad stuff( iceberg, green salad bowl lettuce, red romaine lettuce, michihhli chinese cabbage, merveille de quatre saisons lettuce, mizuna greens, oak leaf lettuce and a mesclun leaf mix), as well as a block of red Russian kale, a block of Black Italian Nero di Toscana kale, a box of spinach, and a split tub of half savoy king cabbage, and half mini savoy cabbage.

On the Sunday, it was a fruit day, so I headed up to the lottie and sowed early peas and crimson flowered broad beans in bed 5. Back home, I disappeared into the potting shed again, and sowed the following: 15 pots of various types of squash - 6 pots of mystery summer squash, 5 pots of mystery winter squash, and a pot each of turks cap, spaghetti squash, Ukranian heirloom and butternut squash (all winter varieties). I put 2 seeds into each of 11 recycled apple juice carton pots of crimson flowered broad beans, 15 individual peat pots of Golden Bantam sweetcorn, a pot with a couple of luffa (loofa) gourd seeds, a pot of Richmond Green cucumbers, and stuffed 9 pea seeds into the top right hand square of my SqFt bed. :)

And I've got some more packets of seed to mail out to a number of people. I will get the in the post as soon as I can! Talk about sidetracked headless chicken. :)

Oh, and some point last week, I sowed bed one in the lottie with parsnips. Can't remember when - will look it up in the book that has vanished. This afternoon, I'm going to sow some early calabrese, lots of flowers and some mini cauliflowers. That's after we've been to the continental market in the town centre.

Phase one - the base. Last night, James and a couple of buddies laid the slabs for the base to sit on. Thing is, they did it in the dark... seems to be square enough though. lol

Note the brace on the left... there were two of them putting it together, but that meant that there was no one spare to hold the bits together whilst they ferried the next panel into the garden.

It's taking shape - and hopefully is now strong enough for the wind not to blow it into the next county before it's finished... damn but it's blowy today.

Bearing a somewhat startling resemblance to a big green skip...

Roofless, but you can see the finished shape. I can see a row of flowers (*gasp* did I really say flowers?) planted along the front under the windows.

The finished shed - isn't it fab? And it gets so hot in there. I felt like sunbathing last time I was in there. :)

How could I forget?

I meant to add - my fabulous new potting shed arrived today! I took lots of pictures of the two guys putting it together so I'll post those when I get the camera back off James who has claimed it to do truck avatars of the Disco.

Lottie

Well, James didn't go back to work until Thursday, so I was able to take advantage of him being here, and I got to disappear up to the lottie for a couple of hours on Monday. I had a good grub around in the new lottie and found the most delicious soil under a light blanket of chickweed and red dead nettle. I know that last year old George had spuds and sweetcorn growing in the back half of my half plot, so I'll know not to put those in there this year. Will put a few pots in the front plot though. Can't waste all that lovely soil.

Need to sit down and rewrite my rotation. Have to update what I've got in the home plot, as well as the original lottie plot. Hmm, so that's three areas I need to name. Home plot, lottie 1 and lottie 2, I think.

Will sketch plans of plots and post them, as soon as I finish doing the five hundred other things I need to do. :)

What a wonderful day - and free spuds anyone?

I'm a happy bunny now. Spent a pleasant hour or two pottering in the greenhouse. Sick man even managed to watch the kids for me for 20 minutes whilst I finished up. On my windowsill I now have two seed trays full of little peat pots (the kind that come in strips, 2 by 5, and each little pot is about 1.5" square). I can't quite get 5 of these double strips into one seed tray, so the gap has three 2" diameter round pots wedged in it.

And I sowed: heh heh - ready?

Tomatoes - Gardener's Delight, Great White Beefsteak, Maya, Snow White, Red Fig, Golden Roma and Balconi Red. 5 of each. I also planted 1 each of Lescana, Black Krim, Ballade and 2 of Vjerino Paradijz Sjeme. Yes, honestly, that's a tomato variety! I have no idea what any of the last 4 varieties look or taste like, but it'll be an interesting experiment. It's amazing what you can find when you go mooching around in a fridge full of seeds...

Peppers - Cubanelle, Californian Wonder, Corno di Torro (all sweet), Tobasco and Donetsk Ukranian (both chilis)

Melon - Gold Mine Cantaloupe, Sweet Crimson Watermelon, Golden Midget Watermelon, Kolchonitsa Ukranian Melob

Eggplant - Caspar, Cucumber - Armenian Yard Long

Peas - Telephone, Laxton's Progress No.9, Green Arrow, Alaskan, Twinkle, Balmoral (these were sown in 2" round pots and left in the greenhouse - peas don't like it too hot)

And a test tray of Primo cabbage. Yes, it's a fruit day, but that's why I've done them. :)

Tomorrow I'm going to chuck a few broad beans in apple juice pots - ran out of time today.

But for now, I'm going to put my offspring to bed, run myself a bath and have a nice long soak whilst I read my new magazines - Kitchen Garden (which came with two packs of seeds, Hot and Spicy Peppers and Mixed Lettuce Leaves) and the all new first ever edition of Grown Your Own (anyone seen Saving Grace? lol) and that came with two packets of seed too, little round Carrot Paris Market and Broccoli Romanesco! Cool.

Oh - and the free potatoes. Grow Your Own mag came with a backing sheet on which there are a few free offers. The best of which is an offer for 5 free tubers of the super new salad potato Anya. It's a cross between Pink Fir Apple and Charlotte, two of the tastiest salad spuds around. I've already bought some from Thompson & Morgan. But if you want to try some, you just have to pay 83p P&P. Bargain, eh? The phone number is 01473 695225 and you need to quote 'Grow Your Own offer'. :)

Off into the Greenhouse

Can't wait for my potting shed. But for now, I shall go potter in my greenhouse and plant lots of stuff.

Why am I blogging about it before I've done it?

Well, truth is, I've lost the list of stuff I was going to plant, so I've had to come look at my blog page to see what it was I was going to dibber into peat pots. :)

::::slinks sheepishly off:::

It all starts tomorrow!

I've a couple of bits of good news (which makes pleasant blogging after last night's attack of the ickies)

First - I've found my Gardening by the Moon book! Yay, yippee, yahoo and all that jazz. :)

Second - tomorrow is a fruit day. Which means I'm going to spend the day in my greenhouse sowing lots and lots of seeds. Because it's March. And virtually every kind of seed known to woman (with the exception of spring cabbage and squash) can be planted in March. So, tomorrow I'm going to plant in peat pots:

Tomatoes - Snow White, Red Fig, Lescana, Gardener's Delight, Balconi Red, Golden Roma
Aubergine - Caspar
Cucumber - Armenian Yard Long
Peppers - Corno di Toro, Tabasco, Donetsk Ukranian, Cubanelle, Californian wonder
Peas - Laxton's progress, Twinkle, Green Arrow, Alaska
Melons - Gold Mine cantaloupe, Crimson Sweet watermelon, Kolchoznitsa Ukranian melon
And some broad beans in 'reclaimed pots' ie saved cardboard apple juice cartons.

Third - My potatoes finally arrived from T&M a few days ago, so they're in the outhouse on top of the tumble drier, chitting nicely. I don't think the first earlies will be ready for planting on 7th as per my original plan, but I'm going to aim for 16th. James brought me home 5 huge plastic bags (some of his work stuff arrived in them), so I'll be able to start warming some of the home-garden beds.

Fourth - we went to Lidl yesterday and I bought a three tier mini-greenhouse thing. So I can put all my tomato seedlings in there when they've germinated - makes life much easier than last year when I was forever ferrying them in and out of the greenhouse on sunny days. This year, I can just unzip the cover and let them get some fresh air.

And fifth and finally, but by no means last - I've got another allotment plot! :) Well, ok, so it's a half plot but I know the little old chap who had it before me and he tilled it for years and years and years. The soil is the most beautiful soil I've ever known. It's gorgeous. And now, it's all mine, MINE, MINE, MINE. ha ha ha ha ha ha

Uh, sorry.

But at least I know now so I can start weeding it a little. And I'm sure I saw some leeks on there... wonder if they're on my half or the other half? And I think I've got the side with the shed on it. :)