18th April

18^th April

I have had a great Easter break with my family and thus no gardening. Thankfully I was far enough ahead with things that it has not been a problem. The allotment was fine without me now that the onions are in and the fence is up and all is rosy in the garden. The daffodils have all died off so they have been deadheaded, and the tulips are in full colour as are many of the bluebells (and ‘whitebells’). It looks good.

Today was an opportunity to crack on with more sowing. First was some coriander that was sown in a deep pot. Last year I lost the entire batch of coriander seedlings to slugs but with the greenhouse I can avoid the same fate this year. In the shed I found an old packet of Oriela yellow courgette seeds that are from 2 summers ago but are just still in date. There were 3 seeds so they were sown so that if they still germinate I’ll have some plants cropping a little earlier than the main set I’ll be growing. On the same line of thinking, I sowed 1 cucumber seed. The remaining leek seeds were sown in a small tray – basically a recycled food container. I sowed a small tray of lemon balm. I have a packet with a few hundred seeds but the plants are annuals so what will I do with hundreds of plants? I hear the car boot sale calling. A tray of Brigitte Brussels sprouts were sown, and a pot of thyme. I already have a thyme plant but it doesn’t look brilliant at the moment. In 2 larger containers I started off some summer leaves. One was for lollo rossa lettuce, the curly red leaf type that is a cut and come again variety, and the other was for ‘mixed salad leaves’. That is what the packet says but without being any more specific than that. With the greenhouse they can be germinating without too much concern and I can make successional sowings through the summer. On the flower side I sowed some laurentia seeds. They are merely a back up for my nicotianas of which not many have sprung up yet. I transplanted 3 ornamental grasses into pots for some friends of ours, and cut back the mint, stripping many of the roots away and re-potting with fresh compost ready for a vigorous growing season. We don’t use much, but it’s nice to have it! A quick weeding session followed. It’s so much easier to do little and often.

Finally I got round to washing the boys’ toys from the dirt and grime accumulated from too long laying in the edges of the garden. My wife had a Bob the Builder pop up bin and my excited 5 year old and I went round the garden collecting all the homeless items of play and putting them in. We also managed to squeeze into the play house and garage some of the scooters and sit on cars so that now the garden actually looks tidy. What with a late evening leaf clearance from the lawn, I think I’ve got as close to my dream ‘tidy garden’ as I have since this journaling began. All that is still required is to tidy the end of the garden as there are a few bowls and assorted items that could do with a little organising, but it’s pretty much there. Keeping it tidy is the next step.