Seasonal No-man's Land

Seems it's that time of yet again; time to go through the seed catalogues trying to work out what new veg will be part of this years adventure.  It is a wonderful time of year not quite spring but the worst of winter seems to be behind us. Everywhere is starting to show little shoots of green, even the unknown tree is showing a little bud.  Spring really is my favourite time of year it always seems so optimistic and colour returns.

Talking of colour check out this!

(c) Real Seed Catalogue

It may look like a freaky watermelon but it is in fact a 'Red Flesh' Mild Tricolour radish! The Real Seed Catalogue has them for sale here.  This is one of the best things about growing your own, growing the weird and the wonderful.  There is no way in the world that these would be for sale in a supermarket or if they would they would be about £1.45 for 4 tiny radishes.   Now I get to grow them myself! 

This post is own excitement not an advert for the Real Seed Catalogue.

Overdue Update

Sorry for the delay things in April/ early May got very hectic and the garden suffered a little, very little progress was made so there was little to blog about.   I will update everything with photos tomorrow hopefully!!

Around the start of April I started with the first batch of seedlings which later suffered at the hand of the late frosts, nearly everything either died or ended up as a bug snack.  Now we're in the position of starting everything again as the weather warms up.  Hopefully it's not too late but we have bought fully grown courgette and cucumber plants as a precaution.  The tomatoes were far more fortunate and have really come into their own recently.  I placed some little gem lettuces and spinach into the cold store which are doing really well and should be ready for harvesting soon.  Also maris peer and king Edward potatoes were planted, the maris peers are are main potatoes for the year the King Edwards are a Ranger challenge which I will up date you all on later!  Both are doing oka nd seem to have survived the cold snap.

Later on the strawberries were moved out of a container into the fruit patch of the garden joining the gooseberry and blackcurrant bush.  My Grandpa gave me some fruit netting which I will be protecting with with soon, I  remember him growing tonnes of strawberries when I was around 6-8 and it's really lovely knowing that I have his nets to use now.  The hope is that by putting them directly into the ground we will be able to grow the runners as well.  Last year there simply wasn't the room to grow the runners so we lost some plants.  The spare container will be used for bedding plants near to our only door.

I'm sure there is a heap of things I've forgotten over the past few weeks which  will be rolled into the following posts.  Same with photos!

First dig of spring

After uming and arring about re-starting the gardening I came home from work and started to dig.  (Al and I did start but quickly gave up because it was too cold/wet/hard work, but today it was too glorious not to).   One of the benefits of having a back garden as you mini-allotment is that I can work on it any time I wish to.

The garden itself has spent several years being ignored or used as a alternative for the local dump, this has meant that any work Al and I have done has taken almost twice as long; a bag is needed for the weeds, another for the excess soil and another for the rubble.    Given the time of year it feels as if we're up against the clock to sort the patch out before it gets too warm.   Last year was a bit of a rush but we did managed a small plot with successful  early potatoes, beetroot, courgette and parsnip we also unsuccessfully grew carrots and peas.   This year we're being adventurous and have decided to really go to town and grow as much as we can fit in!  Yes, we're the type of gardeners who throw the seeds in a hope that something happens because of this I count myself as a highly methodical gardener.

So to start the gardening off I've spent my time digging space for our home made cold frame, which will hopefully be used for growing melons, although I have to confess I have no idea how big or small melon vines grow so it might not be used to grow melons in.  By digging the space I also managed to create two huge bags of spare soil that needs to be dumped.   As an ironic birthday present, in January, I bought Al a gooseberry bush,  I say ironic because I hate gooseberries and his birthday is in August.  It has been living on our door stop ever since  and today it finally ended up in the garden.