WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY - 2021

Ended up planting salad onions indoors for later transplant. Still debating whether to pot up my tomatoes and simply deal with trolleying them indoors every night. I was hoping mid-April it might be warm enough for the greenhouse but looks like maybe early May instead.

Jalapeños are really starting to fruit now. I've got 3 more grafted plants coming in May. Looking forward to all the jala poppers and chutneys I can make!

 

All that I've done is water the pots and containers can't do much until the bin has been emptied tomorrow but the weather is going to get cold again.

 

My goodness, it was beautiful out there this afternoon. Brilliant sunshine and 68f. Very unusual for us.

So after I worked this morning, I went out and planted all of my kelsae onions. Then ripped out some more of the creeping myrtle. She is a bit too aggressive.

I had to remove one of the lids for a home made cold frame because the hinge rusted up. Several applications of WD40 over the past week didn't loosen it up so I replaced the hinge and put it back on. So those are now opened up and all the allium and chives can breath.

Turned over the rain barrels and put back the troughs running from the greenhouse gutters. Our little heat wave is expected to end this weekend and then we are back in the fridge. But for the most part, it will be the chill section, not deep freeze. Temps are predicted to only go down to the low 30's at night so that is what triggered me hooking up the rain barrels. It has already been drier than normal so free water is going to be collected!

A big old raccoon used the back fence for a causeway yesterday so I brought out the electric fence charger and it is now collecting solar power. That will discourage those rascals.

 

The last few days I’ve not done very much, as we had sub-zero temps and regular snow flurries. On Monday morning we woke up to 3” of snow!! It melted fairly quickly, but also kept falling, so all I did was pick the double daffs that were snapping under the weight of the snow, so we could at least enjoy them indoors, and put out food for the birds.
Yesterday it was warmer, and the wind had died down, so I did some initial tidying and weeding. (I’m reluctant to do too much too early, because of all the little beasties hiding in the leaf litter and dead stems). I cleared the stone chippings at the bottom of the drive/top of the soak-away. Special attention around the little plantlets of creeping (Morrocan?) thyme that I planted last autumn, that seem to have taken. I weeded the edges of the drive, removing seedlings on the drive-bed side, and planting them where appropriate. It was hard to weed around the creeping thyme that was going over the edge of the drive curb-stones, but any casualties were used to establish new “colonies”, and replant the site where the original 9cm plant was placed, many years ago - and now bare!!

After 2 hours of that, and two trugs full of weeds, soil, and debris, I could barely move, so it was time to go in and cook some tea!

 

Potted on the rest of the lupins and some of the tree saplings that I'm growing.

 

Found this cheeky chappie poking his head above the compost - he is a Lobelia White Cascade seedling - a promise of things to come. I'm so excited

 

Deadheaded some Geraniums/Pelargoniums and took some cuttings and plonked straight into soil to get mixed colours. I have a lovely shocking salmon coloured one. Not really anything to do except on seeds sowed directly.

 

Ha! I'd post photos of yesterday's bonfire, but I was too busy trying to extinguish the old wine press that caught fire, to be taking photos! Very dodgy to be having a fire at all, as we've had no rain for over a month, and the ground is bone dry, but I always have a hose handy and make sure that the wind is blowing away from the neighbouring field. And I no longer let the heap get enormous, which is an error I made initially. Even so......quite scary !

 

All I did was plant one row of Potatoes and covered this up with Black plastic.

Oh I did cook dinner, does this count as I was looking out on the garden in the warm.

 

Nothing to do at the moment really, all is (hopefully)
running to plan. Seedlings are all happy and putting on good growth.

This resulted in being able to spend most of our day doing other things away from home instead today.


Just have to close up the big and small coldframes and fleece up what is necessary in the greenhouse now.

 

Nothing today it's been raining.