During April I have been planting out my vegetable seedlings that I been raising in the greenhouse. I have had to water them so I have been going every other day,after work. The Brasicass seedlings were looking a bit limp but are perking up as they settle in. Hispi cabbage, Cauliflower, Curly Kale and Beetroot. Received wisdom says you should not transplant Beetroot because it disturbs the roots. I started Beets in cells and they came on well. Transplanting them to the lottie has had no real detrimental affect. There have been a few casualties but that is from my rough handling of the seedling. I then sowed beet seed along side the seedling in the hope of having a succession of beet. We will see.
I have sowed Peas this week, Petite poit and Greenshaft. I am sure these will thrive. The early Broad Beans are starting to flower. I have planted another couple of rows for succession. The Onion patch is starting the move. The Garlic is enjoying the dry weather. The Elephant Garlic I planted as a lost cause have really staged a comeback. I might get a crop this year! The Sturon and Shallots are coming on if a little slowly but they have only been in a month so I should just be patient.
May Day Bank Holiday in the UK [7th May - The first Monday of May] gave me an extra day for gardening. We have been promised rain for Monday so I had get busy on Saturday and Sunday if I was to benefit from the the forecasters projection. As it happens I only got to water the lottie on Saturday afternoon, plant the peas and have a beer whilst wondering where I was to find the extra time to prepare the rest of the potato patch. The ground is rock hard so the rain will be welcome. Sunday was spent at home on the fruit beds or more accurately the paths between the beds. I built the beds a week or two ago from 6x1 inches boards. The timber merchant calls them gravel boards. They are heavily impregnated with waterproofer. I made two beds 24" [600mm] by 16' [4m] and a third the same width but a bit longer. The fourth bed is straight down one side, parallel to the thin beds but the rest is irregular to fit into the end of the garden. There is a path at the end so that I can get round the back.
Bed 1 is to have Blueberry so in dug out all the soil down to 12" [300mm] and intend to fill the trench with ericasious peat [Lime free] because that's what Blueberries like. The soil filled out the adjacent border very nicely so that was a bonus.
Bed 2 is for Blackberries. I just double dug the bed adding a big bucket of manure into the base. The weeds were evicted and the the soil raked. We had a couple of Blackberry bushes from last year and a friend got me two from Norfolk this year. In they went in a nice neat row with a handful of BFB [Blood, Fish and Bone Fertilizer] .
Bed 3 is a for Raspberries. I treated this bed the same as bed 2. I did go to the trouble of lining the bed with weed control sheeting to keep the runners in the bed.
Bed 4 got he same treatment although I was running out of manure. I had a dozen Strawberries on hand for the short term, Two Gooseberries, Invicta and Windham's Industry [which are great names] and a Mulberry bush and yes I have enough room to go round it. Everyone the sees it sings the nursery rhyme, odd really. There is space left for more Strawberries as soon as I can blag a few from my lottie neighbours. All the beds where treated with a generous covering of bark chippings. The quango body have chaps trimming hedges and trees to prepare an area by the lottie for a return to nature. A return to nature by chopping and chipping trees - go figure?
My back garden is on a slope. Previous owners of the house had nice terraces cut into the slope to create level areas. The top one, where the fruits are, still has a gradient. Beds disguise the slope except for the path between beds 3 and 4. Having laid out the beds then fixed boards to create the outer edges of the path along the back and side walls it was just a matter of loosening up the soil, weeding it and raking it out. Easy when you say it quick. A couple of hours toil in the hot sun, there was no wind because this part of the garden is sheltered by high fences, and I was ready to fit the weed suppression membrane. The good lady took pity on me and made lunch and a tall cool drink. Once lunch was over it was an easy job to staple the membrane to the gravel boards of the beds. Then it was only a matter of tipping ten bags of bark chippings onto the membrane and raking in out into a nice path. That bit was quite therapeutic.
It did rain on Monday. Drizzle in the morning and a single heavy shower in the evening but the soil is so warm and dry it hardly penetrated. Just before tea the wife and I planted lettuce and salad leaves of various sorts and spring onions in her newly invented salad patch. It should be nice once things get going. Whilst we had a few minutes before tea we planted out some marigolds in the borders in the back garden and a drift of them in the front "garden". It would be a garden if it had more plants than soil.
So that was the three days. We managed to spend time together as a family. My girl managed to get shopping in with her mum and a "crazee" picnic with her friends on Monday. Her indoors and I managed to squeeze in a Saturday night out with friends at the pub, well actually several pubs -thanks Alan and Julie. H and I went for a walk on Monday. Nine miles round and about near home. It was a stiff walk in the heat and drying wind, except for the bit where it hammered down for the few minutes it took to walk across a field of long and now soaking wet grass. Thereafter it is soggy and cold - well damp and cooler.
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