22nd May

My wife was still ill today and the little fellow was still in need of attention although now more happy to wander around. This meant a day for gardening at home – when time permitted in between nursing and parenting duties. If I was not going to be paid to take this time off, I was going to make the time pay for me.

I cut back the dead stems and the leaves of the bulbs, which is a bit risky if done too early (less than 6 weeks after flowering) as the bulbs do need to draw nutrients into the bulbs from the leaves for next years’ flowers. Hopefully I left it long enough and I had also sprinkled granular fertiliser around the area a few weeks ago. I really need to move the petunias out of the conservatory though and get them into the ground outside. The longer they stay inside, the greater the risk of being damaged by passing feet especially as the garden is being used more now. I put some plant friendly wood preservative on that wooden box I salvaged and I pruned back the privet and the other branches that were invading the border from the rear. This gave me another chance to use the secateurs I received from the boys at Christmas – the ‘pliers’.

Later in the evening after the boys were in bed I potted up the sweet peppers into their final pots and I took the sweet peas that I bought from the garden centre out of their pot to plant out in the border. I discovered that some idiot had already potted them on in to a larger pot and so an internal tangle of roots had grown out to give a double layer of tangled roots. It wouldn’t be until Monday that I would remember that that idiot was me. I left them soaking in a small bucket of water to try to loosen up the soil. It was another night of being out until dark, 9.25pm.

More pics from the Eden Project: