What have you done in the garden today?

Had a busy weekend.

Made seed compost using leafmold, sterilised by putting it in a large biscuit tin, with holes in the lid and a glug of water in the bottom, then placing it over the camping stove to simmer for 10 minutes.

Tomatoes, Chillies and salad trays sown in the greenhouse.

I want round to take a look at the allotment, and was pleasantly surprised by the state it is in; not completely out of control (I sense the beginnings of victory in the battle against the weeds), and my overwintered cabbages have actually survived the winter this year.

Heaved out a couple of decent leeks whilst I was there

Planted more onions & some sweet peas. Opened another bag of compost which is just as nice as the first bag.

Planted peas, the last of the onions, radish & carrot.

Did some clearing up managed to find a blackbag of rubbish quite easily.
Moved a tree that was bought years ago & has survived in a pot for years & years. I hope Spar is going to take it to the school pond & plant it somewhere with 3 others. Am going to replace them with a potted cherry & a bay tree & maybe a nut tree as well.

Finally got out there properly yesterday. First salad crops sown and also some tomatoes, carrots and peppers started off in the propagator.

Mrs C

I went to visit my sister weekend before last, and looked at a book she had called 'The Half Hour Allotment'. Basically it was saying that you don't necessarily have to devote your entire waking hours to your allotment (or home veg and fruit plots), and with a bit of sensible planning you can achieve something fresh from the allotment every day of the year with just half an hour's work a day, and weekends off.

I love gardening but tend to be haphazard about the time I alot to it, and it can be especially difficult with the unpredictable nature of my job. So I've decided to give the general idea a try. All last week and today I have spent just half an hour each week day. I am amazed at how much I get done. Today I spent my half hour sowing some leeks, marking out the size and shape of my asparagus bed, and starting to clear off the top growth of grass. Last week I sowed broad beans, planted onion sets and got a vast amount of digging done.

Half an hour isn't an onerous amount of time even when days are busy, and even when the entire time is spent digging, is short enough that there is ample energy for other things.

Only just squeezed in today's half hour. All I did was continue with the digging, but as well as turning up the statutory three pieces of broken glass, found a small crop of potatoes in perfect condition that I must have missed last year. They'll do for dinner tonight!

I can commiserate with the broken glass - there must have been a glasshouse in our garden at some time, and I quite often turn up bits of glass when digging (Or just see it lying on the surface.) I used to collect it up in a flowerpot - I don't know why really, maybe one day I was hoping to say 'look, I've filled up a whole flowerpot with glass'!! But now I put in my my pocket to dispose of later, which isn't very helpful when you thrust a hand into the pocket for a hanky!!

Hmm. The former occupant of our house presumably thought that greenhouse glass would make good hardcore under a paved area - I have dug up some parts of it to make beds for fruit trees, and there are great stacks of it whch have to be eased out wearing stout gloves and safety glasses. There seems to have been an era of people who adopted an out of sight out of mind approach to rubbish and burried any old bulky junk at the bottom of the garden. Thank goodness we now have the tidy tip !

Today planted shallots, radish & carrot. Also managed to remove a rather large flag iris thing that was taking over a part of the garden

Yipee! Finished digging over the vegetable plots today (3 more pieces of glass). Still plenty of couch clearing to do, on the paths and round and about, but at least the veg plots are ready for use now. I can afford to be a bit slow as apart from onion sets, nothing goes directly into the ground. I start everything in seed trays, pots or modules until it is large enough to hold its own against the slugs and snails.

Going to experiment this year with mini raised beds within the main plot for the carrots. Last year the ones I sowed thinly in modules and planted out grew well, but all tangled in together, so I had some interesting carrot knots (a sort of organic version of Lindisfarne gospels). But if I sow them direct, I will never even see them. So this year I am going to cut the bottoms out of a couple of old troughs, sit them on top of the soil and fill with soil/compost, then sow the carrots into that. It will be a little easier to protect against the marauding molluscs.

Re potted the cherrytree, so fingers crossed.

Olive tree is also in a better pot, & the baytree is in a better place now.
Parsnips are chitting - maybe as they are last years seed.

Keep trying to pot on the broad beans but keep getting interupted. No sign of peas or sweetpeas yet. Will have to have an investigation soon

Broad beans potted on & moved to the garden from the greenhouse. Plenty of onions showing & also the garlic.
Emptied a pot of carrots & had some nice baby ones for lunch yesterday.

Thanks for reminding me Pol - I must move my broad beans out to the garden. It's actually getting too warm in the greenhousy/shed thing for them during the day.

Planted 3 buckets of pots & found 2 more bags to chit.
Pots in the big bin are almost up to the top now. 1 more covering & that is all. Pots in the old recycling bin just begining to show.

Well, last weekend...

I repotted my first pot of lillies, and found to my surprise, that instead of having three plants as I expected, I now have nearer to twelve in just that one pot. I may decide to set up a business next year if things continue especially as my other pot should have six in.

Oooh! I also planted my planty boxing day pressie from Pol and Worzel. That's now waiting to germinate. I think when they have grown a bit, I have the perfect pink pot to put them in.

Sowed a row of peas to replace the overwintering ones that didn't (Douche Provencale).

Tidied up the paths at the allotment. I'm quite pleased with my system of woodchip paths. They make Bedfordshire clay a lot less squidgy to walk on ! I had the local tree surgeon cut down one of my unwanted conifers, leaving me with the a pile of logs and delivering the shreddings to the allotment. The old shreddings they will replace, which have been on the paths for a couple of years, are now nicely rotted into a useful mulch for the currants and raspberries. Ash from the previous batch of logs goes around the garlic and overwintered cabbages. Nothing goes to waste

What have I done in the garden today? Shivered, mainly, and spent as little time out there as I could! It's bitter out there. Unfortunately the chickens managed to get out of the run as I was filling up their food this afternoon: I had let them out for a while this morning, but they have no weather sense and were standing in the snow looking puzzled. I got them back in, but now I'll be venturing out after dark to lock them in again!

Today, hooray, I actually felt well enough to do something constructive in the garden. So planted a row of carrots (probably regret it, as I didn't get around to my anti-slug idea, and just put them straight into the ground). And a few parsnips in pots, which I will plant out if they germinate. And found a use for the evilly spiney pyracantha that has been laying all over the garden from the megaprune several weeks ago. I've used some of the most painful looking branches to lay around my newly planted asparagus, in an attempt to stop the foxes digging it up. They've had four attempts so far. It will be a miracle if the plants ever grow.

Managed to get a few jobs done & planted more potatos. Dug up a rose bush as well as it was taking up too much space. At last some parsnips actually sprouted, so they are potted up.

Put some beans to start off, whoever put the yard long beans in the swap, is that how high they grow please?

I haven't been in the garden yet and it has just started to rain after being beautiful first thing.

polgara wrote:
Put some beans to start off, whoever put the yard long beans in the swap, is that how high they grow please?

I think the pods are supposed to be a yard long (probably optimistic but you get the idea) and the plants should climb to about 6 foot tall if allowed. They will probably need good weather or a polytunnel to do that, I think. Mine sulked a bit in the poor summer we had last year in Bedfordshire. They may be happier on the IOW !

Finally managed to prepare the trench for my runner beans (which aren't even planted yet). Reluctantly had to use bought in composted manure, as I really still haven't the energy to tackle my own compost heap. Just got it finished as the rain started.

Oh dear, that is rather large, will have to change the place where the pot will go. Look forward to that.

Not so much what I did in the garden today, as what I didn't do. For the first time in the last few weeks, I didn't have to replant anything that the foxes had dug up. I've replanted my new asparagus four times, the same onion set - well I've lost count, my newly planted out broad beans. It doesn't matter what I do, the little buggers come in and cause havoc. I did see a hole this morning in the mound of earth set aside for earthing up the potatoes - a useful red herring, as they left the potatoes alone.

Potted the yard long beans & put in the greenhouse for now.

Put some other beans to chit off, think they are the purple podded which also came with the seed swap.