WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY - 2021

Ooh, love your teapot and sugar bowl. Very pretty.

 

Pricked out the antirrhinum and Verbascum snowy spires seedlings into cell trays. Also sowed some more of the antirrhinum seeds, just incase some doesn't make it.

 

This afternoon in greenhouse repotting, cleaning up overwintered plants, potting up Achimenes tubercles that have begun to sprout.

 

I’ve been pottering in the garden today.

I thought it is time to put the rigid cloche on the trough beneath the kitchen window. I use this to grow early salad leaves, grow on any interesting seedlings I find, and a quartet of tumbling Tom tomatoes.
First job was to pot up all the plantlets that have been overwintering there - mainly lavender seedlings, but also a rooted lateral stem cutting of rosemary, and a geranium sanguinium.
Once they were safely out of the way, I removed the top 10cm or so of compost, into trugs. Some was used to plant up a few pots with gladioli bulbs. About half of each pack planted, the rest will go straight into the ground in a few weeks, after the latest flurry of frosts has passed. Each pot had little cutting-stems of creeping Moroccan thyme, so hopefully I’ll have some extra plants by mid-summer.
The trugs of compost were taken over to the fruit trees. I cleared the weeds around the base of the trunks, and mulched with the compost.
Two sacks of homemade compost were used to refill the trough, and the potted up plants healed into the compost. The cloche was built, and then placed onto the trough, weighted and tied down, to sit fast through any winds. That should heat up the soil (we have -2c forecast for tonight), and I should be able to sow lettuce soon.
I’ve also put the overwintered chilli plants on the patio table, which has been used as a bird-feeding station through the winter. I hoped that the birds would come and clean off the aphids that are flourishing on the lush growth. However, they seemed rather reluctant to come forward...

maybe they weren’t as hungry as I thought!!

 

Slow progress but I spent am and pm really, and I mean this .., really sorting out my greenhouse. Moved lots of over wintering plants, cuttings and Autumn sown seedlings into one of the big coldframes. I have so much room now to continue seed sowing as half the greenhouse still has it's bubble wrap section in place and rolls of fleece are to hand if and when the temps drop.Washed lots and lots of pots .I was brutal, anything half dead looking, didn't have a label and definitely didn't come from my parent's garden was binned.

Busy day tomorrow...

 

Just finishing my work day now so nothing was done out there. And besides it's only 23f. Sunny but cold.
I did received this lovely link to National Geographic's video of Epinopsis blooming. Stunning enough to share

Beautiful Cacti Bloom Before Your Eyes

 

Awww no worries @ARMANDII , you'll be safe.

 

Not much today just potted the rose and placed it in the front garden for now


Got plans to be out in the garden tomorrow replanting a border , got a few alliums in the way but I'll see if I can work around them.

 

Stunning Lori.

 

My OH is from Cambridgeshire so I'm growing them just for him. Though my Kentish blood won't allow me to say anywhere does strawberries as well as the good old Garden of England.

Tomorrow OH has promised to help me set up the strawberry bed. Very excited, I've been going on about it all week.

Also planning on doing some small repairs to the mini-greenhouse to get that ready for accepting plants maybe mid April if it warms up...

Someone's coming tomorrow to buy 6 tomato plants.

Today I've done a bit more potting-up and moving along stuff in seed trays. Limited room under the grow lights so everything gets started off then moved into my living room when possible under the window. Or on the kitchen windowsill. Honestly my house might as well be a nursery at this rate.

Today planted out my last 4 seeds of lettuce and cabbage. 16 of each, over 4 weeks. First time with this successional sown lark but I think I might've been better off doing once a fortnight than once a week. Still, last year I grew cabbages of all the same age and just picked them over an 8 week period and they were fine.

Also sown up all my herbs and some marigolds. I've got Thai Basil, Sweet Genovese Basil, Mint, Giant Flat-Leaf Parsley, Coriander. Some of the basil sown last weekend is already coming up. I'm pretty much planning all our patio pots to be herbs this year. Mint will go in the Victorian strawberry planter as I think it'll enjoy springing itself out of all of the holes and hopefully grow nice and vigorous.

Hopefully can get all the seed trays potted up and moved along in mid to late April so I can sow my warmer weather courgettes, cucumbers, mini pumpkins and tomatillos in them ready to go out late May.

 

Oh and very pleased with this pic of my overwintered chillis! I started overwintering with 5 plants. The two Apaches produced the most chillis even up until Christmas but then began to really crisp up so I gave up on them. Will replace with the Serranos.

The Thai Dragon (left) was definitely our best in terms of good crop and flavourful. Powerful enough for use in cooking (we like hot food). I cut it way down because it started getting leaf drop on the bottom and it's looking much healthier with new leaves coming in.

The Jalapeno (middle) produced only two fruits last year. It's looking ok, with some new growth but also some oedema on the leaves.

And the Carolina Reaper (right) produced literally ONE fruit last year and looked terrible the entire time and has now completely taken off. I counted 19 buds on it yesterday.