April, seedlings and seeds.

Looks like it is going to be a great bit of weather for a few days at last. The last nice spell saw me doing hours of weeding and getting most of the back garden beds ready for the year ahead.
My house windowsills are full to busting. My sweet peas and nasturtiums have come on a treat although I tentatively potted on the nasturtiums today and they have all fallen down so fingers crossed, I know they don't really like their roots disturbed too much. If they fail I still have time to start again though. Tomatoes are coming on ok, I am growing a few different varieties and will probably just keep two of each in the end.

A tangle of sweet peas

nasturtium all lying down.

The other windows are full of trays covered in plastic bags, which I can't wait to see green shoots emerging from.

So this is what I am growing at the moment:

Tomato - Gardener's Delight
Tomato - Moneymaker, both tried and tested before and very succesful plants.
Tomato - Tigrella
Tomato - Marmale
Tomato - Golden Sunrise
Zinnias
Cosmos Purity
Cosmos mixed
Sweet peas.  Alan Titchmarsh, Purple Pimpernell, Chelsea Centenery, Winston Churchill
Nasturtiums, Mixed climbing and Moonlight
Turks Turban Squash
Sunflower Valentine, Vanilla Ice, Claret
Lime Basil
Padron Chilli

And a few more besides. Lots of these were courtesy of a lovely blogger who sent me some left over seeds.

I've planted my lilies in pots as Monty Don said to in Gardener's World last night and I always do what Monty says, put some crocosmia lucifer corms in the ground and now I am going to have a cup of tea.

Nice day and weed free beds (sort of)

My daffodils and narcissus see to be behind everywhere else in the country.

Tulips coming up nicely.

This is a great time of year for lots of exciting things and over the next month or so lots will be happening to report on. Not just in the garden. I am in the middle of getting quotes to convert my garage which is very exciting stuff too.

Happy Easter everyone.

In Need of my Spring Fix

The weather seems to have subtly changed here in East Lancashire. It is still cold, but finally all the snow is melted and there have been no frosts for a few days now. When this happens I find my mind turning towards Spring time and all that joy to come. I love seeing the first snowdrops, which are nodding their white heads in my garden now.

My small narcissus are  growing nicely too although my daffodils are yet to appear.

At this point I would usually be reaching for the compost and seed packets, desperate to get growing things, but I am forcing myself to wait this year as I am always too early. I have decided that the first week of March will be my first planting, desperate though I am. For someone who isn't interested in gardening this itching to start planting must seem like a strange desire, but anyone who has grown plants from seeds knows that this is one of the most exciting times of the gardening year.

I have given into my planting fix by buying an azalea which is going to go in a pot. One afternoon I was sitting in my arbour with a cuppa looking at the garden from a different angle and I realised I was misssing a trick. At one end of my deck is a lovely azalea that has rich purple flowers when they come and on the other side of the deck was nothing. I thought a pair would look nice at opposite ends. I am not usually one for symmetry but this appealed to my gardening eye. The other factor was that it is in a very pretty pot that I got for free from freecycle and I had another one exactly the same with nothing in it currently so they really will be symmetrical. Just to mix it up I got one with pink flowers though instead. It is currently residing in my greenhouse awaiting potting up - this afternoons job so photos will follow.


Has anyone else given in to the planting temptation?

Gardening Books

I absolutely adore books and have literally hundreds. But I have a large bookshelf devoted entirely to gardening books. I can't get enough of them. People sometimes say to me 'but why do you have so many? most of them must tell you the same thing' and in some cases this is true, but lots of them contain wisdom that you find nowhere else.
I know that nothing really beats hands on experience in the garden but on a cold winter's evening, browsing through a lovely book, reading about all the things that are possibilities come spring, looking at some photos of a beautiful border or flower and, well, it brings a little bit of Spring or Summer into my house.
However, I think that only a very small handful of 3 or 4 books were actually bought new, the joy of gardening books is that other people seem to throw them out! Most of mine have come from charity shops and I have yet to go into a charity shop that hasn't got a single book on the subject. Mostly they are priced around £1.50 to £2 and this is really a bargain when you consider the a gardening magazine will set you back about £4 and won't contain nearly as much information or photographs as most of these books.

These are my two latest acquisitions:

The price of each was £1.50 and at over 200 pages each that's a lot of book for your money.

So you know what I'll be doing this evening!

Snowed in again here. SO pretty but SO annoying.

Spring Time

Oh yes, we've made it to the official first day of Spring, and rather than the weekend of promised snow the papers have been over-emphasising, I have woken up to the most beautiful weather for a long, long time here in Lancashire. Sunny and bright, but there is a Spring change in the air too. I know we are expecting a cold spell next week, but nothing can dampen the spirits on a beautiful Spring day such as this

To begin with this photo will only make sense as being amusing to anyone who knows Victoria Wood:

A new shop has opened up near me, one wonders at their using this name.

(Sorry to those who don't get it, but Acorn Antiques was a fictitious shop used in a spoof soap opera in the 1980's, you'll understand why it so amused me if you remember it)

So I have been out gardening (of course), getting on top of any potential weeds before they get on top of me for starters.

But first let me show you my new toy:

A cold frame. I have wanted one of these for ages and was delighted to find one being sold off at a garden centre for a song (OK, not literally).

Protected from any frosts are my new project of a herb bowl which so far has in it sage, oregano, thyme and lemon balm. On the left are some campanula, hollyhocks and delphiniums.

On the subject of my electric propogator all I can say is WOW. These things really work. I have had trouble germinating seeds in the past because I keep a relatively cool house and sometimes they have taken weeks to germinate. Well these surpassed all expectations and had all germinated within a week. In fact they are well on their way.

The sweet peas are huge after just 2 weeks:

Way too big actually, the trick will be in slowing things down (yes, you don't need to say it, I know I was too early, I just couldn't help myself).

Other things are not quite so far on fortunately, but happy enough.

I have put up a trellis and hanging basket for use later in the season. The plan at the moment is to plant a pot of morning glory for the trellis and I haven't decided what will go in the hanging basket yet.

The photo highlights that I really need to get the jet wash to deal with the moss on the brickwork. I will borrow my brother's when I next see him.

My pot of iris are looking lovely.

Here is today's view of the garden:

The new bed is a bit bare, but you just wait. But the grass is in such a state!

Finally a photo of my self inflicted wound, done during the night - who knows what I was dreaming about but it wasn't fluffy bunnies:

OW!

I just couldn't help it.

It is February and the temptation to start planting some seeds is very great. I've been holding off and holding off but today I succumbed. I wasn't going to but then my father told me that he had planted a few and that was enough to break my will.

I didn't plant many (compared with the hundreds of seeds I will be planting this year) but I have been itching to use my new electric propagator (Christmas present) so I chose some of the seeds that suggest January-March as the sowing time. I will have an awful lot of seeds to sow come March so decided it would be good to get a few under way to lighten the load (see how I justify it).

Sitting on my bedroom windowsill.

It's a dinky little thing and costs a tiny amount to run as its actual heat is so tiny, it barely even gets warm to the touch, the seven little chambers are a good size to get a decent batch of seeds in.

I have sown geums, chrysanthemums, echinacea,  a couple of free varieties of sweet peas, digitalis and one other thing which I have forgotten already. Once they have germinated and grown a bit I hope to transplant them freeing up the propagator for the next batch in a few weeks.

Maybe I am too early, who knows, who cares. It brought me a bit of Wintry pleasure for a Saturday afternoon and that is worth plenty.