Had a think about this no dig gardening and searched around on the net last night. Some good sites out there, but because of the fact that the area I was considering for this, is a sloping bank, more consideration and thought is required.

Got a nice surprise this morning in the post. T&M replaced a packet of seeds which I had a problem with. Great customer service there, I sent off an E, had a automated response within 10 minutes telling me someone would contact me as soon as possible and that's what happened. It's nice to see some company's out there offer a high level of customer service, no matter how small the problem. Also this is a copy of the only gardening mag I buy, Garden News, its a weekly one. More free seeds again this week, they're going to have to stop these free seeds, I'm running out of space, just can't help myself. Gotta stop sowing. :-).

Watered my seed trays this morning as the weather was dampish and have had enough of digging for the time being. I normally put a cork in one tray and stand the seed trays in there for about 15 minutes or so.

With the potted up seedlings I just stick a cork in each tray as its too fiddly transferring one pot at a time to another tray. I just add a small quantity of water to each tray and its usually soaked up that day. If there's still water in the tray that evening, I remove the cork and let the excess water drain away rather than letting the pots sit in water day after day.

Continued with my digging today and as I dug the afternoon away 3 works kept popping into my mind, 'no dig gardening'. Certainly going to check it out.

Plenty signs of life in the garden.

Beds are done

Finished off digging over the last 2 beds, so a bit of fertilizer next week, a bit of luck after that and I'll just have to wait and see what happens. The beds are 9'x6' approx so I'm not going to be exactly feeding the extended family for the year as I have just discovered cabbage need 2'x2', cauliflowers need 2'x2' brussel sprouts 2'x2' and so on but it should be a good introduction for me. Also got the rest of the grass cut, just a light topping, its hard to beat the smell of newly mown grass.

This is tomorrows project, weather permitting. Going to try to turn this into more veg ground. I can feel the pain already.

A beautiful morning

A beautiful morning this morning and I decided to do a litte work in the heated greenhouse. Generally just organised things a bit better as I have alot of seedlings which will need to be pricked out over the next week or two.
Things are going to be pretty tight in there and also will have maybe another 20 tray to sow come the middle of March.

Pricked out some marigolds this morning, the ones on the left, fuschia next to them.

This is my one and only fuschia which is about 10years old. Based on advice given to me by one of my forum buddies, I started it into growth about 5 weeks ago by putting it into the heated greenhouse. This is how it looks today. Took some cuttings from the new growth about 2 weeks ago, put them in the propagator at 20 degrees and they were ready for potting on this morning.

Also did a bit of seed sowing, 2 trays and a couple of pots of sweet pea

SOW DATE 25/2/09
FLOWER VARIETY
ANTIRRHINUM TOM THUMB MIXED
DELPHINIUM DELIGHT MIXED
SWEET PEA EARLY FRAGRANCE MIXED .

Turned off the heater in the greenhouse this morning as the days seem to be fine now, but will turn it on each evening for a while yet.

Ok, the weather seems fine again after the shower we had at lunch time, so I'm off out now to cut more grass and dig over those 2 other raised beds.

Other jobs I did today

Just in case anybody gets the wrong idea, I'm on holidays for a week, I have loads of jobs to get done, so every day I'll be doing something in the garden. Unfortunately back next Monday morning, but then I suppose the way things are, those of us that have jobs are lucky, no doubt about it.

Tidied up the cold green house, cleaned up the geraniums and others, gave them a liquid feed and put a bit of order into the place.

Also checked how the chitting process was coming along, seems to be ok, don't really know as I have never grown spuds before, things seem to be growing out of them so I assume that's fine.

Planted 20 sweet pea plants which I grew from seed last October. Going to grow cordons this year as last year they just ran riot, and the quantities of flower were good but the quality not so good, so this year I'm going to try quality instead of quantity. The bed for these I dug about a month ago, put well rotten manure at the bottom of the trench and added compost to the soil. Hopefully they will do fine .

Also did a bit of tidying up around the garden, some grass cutting, border tidying etc. Place looks nice and neat now, but there's a distinct lack of colour, plenty of green as in the above, other than that some daf's .

Allotment work today

This is my mini allotment area, here I intend to grow the usual veggies and some fruit. This is one of the 3 raised beds I made late last year and I gave it a bit of a dig over today, simply to get rid of stones and get a better tilt. The soil itself is clay, and I haven't time this year to remedy that, neither have I had time to adjust PH and nutrient values, just going to go with the flow this year and hope for the best. I'm going to use another area to grow spuds and in line with what Derek Brooks says, I'm going to use a 4 year rotation. The only thing I'm going to do this year is to add some fertilizer a month or so before sowing or planting.



I also planted some strawberry plants today, 18 in all. These I grew from seed around this time last year and kept them in 3'' pots at the bottom of the garden since last summer. Again the soil is clay and I have dug in some compost to try and remedy this. All I need now are some nice tasty strawberries. They are either Sarian or Florian or maybe a bit of both, don't know, had a bit of an identity crisis last year.



These are some cyclamen grown from seed last year, very slow progress, hopefully I'll be using come October. Had them in 2'' pots and again left them at the bottom of the garden since late last summer. Today I potted them on into 3'' pots, so hopefully the bit of new compost will give them a bit of a boost.

Seed sowing 2009

Started my seed sowing with some strawberries on January 1st. These have done very well and are currently in 3'' pots in the heated greenhouse. Any seeds that require 15 degrees or less to germinate are sown on the bench and others that require 18 degrees plus are sown in the propogator. Germination thus far has been very good this year and hopefully all my little seedlings will go on to be strong longlived beauties.



SOW DATE 12/2/09
FLOWER VARIETY
CHRYSANTHEMUM EARLY DWARF CHARMFASHION MIXED F1
CINERARIA SILVER DUST
DIANTHUS PLUMARIUS SONATA
GAILLARDIA T&M RESELECTED HYBRIDS
GAILLARDIA GOBLIN
LOBELIA TRAILING SAPHIRE
LOBELIA UPRIGHT CRYSTAL PALACE
MARIGOLD DURANGO TANGERINE F1
OSTEOSPERMUM TETRA SUNSHINE GIANTS
OSTEOSPERMUM PASSION MIXED
PANSY WITTROCKIANA PETITE MIXED F1
PETUNIA CONFETTI MIXED F2
PETUNIA SALMON VELVET FI
PETUNIA PURPLE VELVET F1
RUDBECKIA CHERRY BRANDY
RUDBECKIA BECKY MIXED
RUDBECKIA RUSTIC DWARF MIXED
RUDBECKIA HIRTA TOTO
TAGETTS STARFIRE
THUNBERGIA SUPERSTAR ORANGE
THUNBERGIA ALTA BLUSHING SUSIE
VERBENA COMPACT MIXED
VERONICA MIXED COLOURS
VIOLA ENDURO MIXED F1



SOW DATE 12/2/09
VEG VARIETY
BRUSSEL SPROUT MAXIMUS F1
CABBAGE TARVOY F1
CABBAGE RED JEWEL F1

Will be sowing more varieties of flowers and veg mid March, will let u know how the current batch are doing as well as other varieties sown.

Greenhouse staging

Again on another trip to the shops saw these drinks stands heading for the dump. Thought to myself definately have a use for them. They are light weight but very strong, easily cleaned and will outlast me. It amazes me the amount of stuff that is produced, used once and then dumped. Well maybe the recession will stop alot of this carry on, shameful waste.

The heated bench

Hasn't been commissioned yet but hopefull next season will be the time. Just using the top as a work bench at the moment and the bottom being used as a place to put the propogator.

My seed trays

These are what I use for seed trays. Was in a shop one day at a deli counter and spotted a load of these ready to be dumped. I heated a 6 inch nail with a blowtorch and put in the drainage holes. All the seeds I sow in these trays are covered with glass which was waste and I cut to size. I find by covering with glass 2 things happen, 1. germination is much quicker and 2. the compost doesn't dry out as quick in the propogator. Normally I dry off the glass first thing each morning and around teatime each evening

My equiptment part 2

My little greenhouse in its tempory home

My pride and joy is my little 6x6 greenhouse, at the moment it is bubble wrapped as I'm sowing seeds. I have a heater, a propogator, a heating bench which I made myself, have the cables and thermostat but haven't used it as I moved house a couple of weeks ago and will be moving again in the near future, so next season hopefully it will be up and running. I also have flouresent lights which seem to be working well and all the other bits and bobs that one needs. I always try to find something that I can recycle or make myself rather than just going out and buying it. It's not about the money, for me it's about saying 'well done kid' you made something that is as good or better than a shop bought article or ' glad i didn't throw that out, knew it would come in handy some day :-) .

My equiptment

Right so, courtesty of my daughter I have a shed full of the usual stuff, a wheel barrow, fork, spade etc etc, also on her garden I put up a green house which I got free from a relation , but needed to do some work on, ie had to make a door as it was missing. I use it as a cold frame, but you could say it ended up as a dumping ground last summer, have made a promise to myself that this year, neat and tidy is the only way to go.

From the start

So to start from the beginning, have only been interested in gardening form the past 18 months, was asked by my daughter to look after her garden which is about 1/4 acre mostly sloping. Currently have no garden myself due to selling own house and waiting for builder to finish new house, and as everybody knows things in the building industry are very slow at the moment and that includes finishing off developments. I'm hoping for june, but we'll have to wait and see. My new garden will be a normal semi d garden whatever that size is, so that will be a new project. Back to my daughters garden, well that certainly has been moving forward well and last summer looked great, even if i do say so myself. Not alot has happened over the past couple of months due to work commitments, bad weather and laziness as well as having to move to tempory accomadation. Hopefully by the end of this year we will have most of the work completed and will be a case of annual planting as well as ongoing maintainance rather than project after project.

Hi,

Just setting up this eve, so going to take some time to get things right.