29th January

Today’s job was to finally plant the bulbs I had left over from the autumn planting. I had bought quite a few and dug up quite a few, and many had split and multiplied. Basically I had too many, even after throwing out some mouldy ones. I acquired more bulbs at a Hilliers event last October when you could take your children with a pot and get free bulbs and compost for it. I should clarify that bulbs for children were free, adults paid for theirs. Our eldest did his little pot and I did my two large ones and we had bulbs left over from the packets I bought – some fancy tulips and some lovely deep purple crocuses. They have been in the shed ever since and I was wondering if they would still be alright to plant. Gardeners’ Question Time to the rescue. Today I was listening to the programme I taped on Sunday and one of the topical tips was to buy up any spring bulbs that garden centres were still selling off and plant them now as they should still grow for spring. What timing that piece of advice was. So I used soil and proprietary compost to fill two largish pots for outside and three small ones for inside. The ones for indoors have the fancy bulbs I had left over – one with 4 tulips, one with just crocuses and one with 1 tulip surrounded by crocuses. The outdoor ones were all the left over tulip bulbs that were dug up, with a few crocuses and 1 random daffodil.

Next journal post: 19th Feb, but check in the meantime for some photo editions!