Haven't been doing much around my daughters garden for the past month or so, too busy getting things organised for my new house and I suppose that will be the way it will be for the next couple of months anyway. Last saturday I rescued this green house from ending up in the builders skip. It will take pride of place in my new garden, did I mention my new house is in 0.8 of an acre, so plenty of room for anything I want to do. Would hope to start on the gardening side of things in sept as I'm sure my better half has plenty of plans for me to do work, work that is, not gardening.

Did some veg and flower seed sowing today in the cold greenhouse, more of a test for myself to find out what can be grown in trays and pots and then transplanted out as opposed to just sowing outside simply because my soil really needs allot of work which is going to take some years to accomplish. Hopefully will do some outdoor sowing next week end . Some of the seeds are trial seeds, something which I volunteered for and was hoping they would send flower seeds, but as my luck would have , I got all veg seeds, ah well nothing like been thrown in at the deep end.

SOW DATE 29/3/09 IN COLD GREENHOUSE

HERB COMFREY



SOW DATE 13/4/09 IN COLD GREENHOUSE

VEG VARIETY
BRUSSEL SPROUTS TRAFALGAR F1
CABBAGE SURPISE F1
CABBAGE TUNDRA FI
CABBAGE AUTUMN QUEEN F1
CALEBRESE BELSTAR F1
CLIMBING BEAN 4773 TRIAL
CORIANDER 4784 TRIAL
KALE 4792 TRIAL
LEEK OARSMAN F1
ONION HI KEEPER F1
PEA TWINKLE
PEA OASIS
PEA BALMORAL
PEA JAGUAR SECOND EARLY
SALAD LEAVES 4790 TRIAL
SWEETCORN 4703 TRIAL

Did all the usual maintenance work over the weekend, grass cutting, weeding and cleaning. My early potatoes have pushed some leaves through the soil so I hope that's a good sign. The second early's are chitting well and will be planted out at the end of this month. All the flowers in the cold greenhouse are really filling out so hopefully they'll be in bloom in a months time for planting out. Generally the garden is really coming to life now, some nice colours and plently of leaf growth which promises some colourful flower's in the next couple of weeks all going well.

Spent Sunday moving some of my seedlings to the cold greenhouse. Some might say a little early but need the space in the heated one as I have many more seedlings to prick out this week. Only moved the strongest seedlings so hopefully they'll acclimatise to cooler conditions without any bothers. I know I seem to be a major advertiser for the soft drink companies, but I must say these tray are so handy, just bung a cork into the hole at the centre of the tray, fill with a little water every other day or so, weather dependent, and no problems with compost drying out. If the water hasn't been soaked up after a day, remove the cork and drain off the water and the compost is moist for another couple of days, again weather dependent. And to think these trays were heading to a landfill site.

Also decided to put up shading this weekend as some of the days we are getting at the moment are almost summer like. Great to see such good weather and hopefully we will see much more of it over the coming months.

I know I've been saying I've been trying to get round to starting off my veg seeds, well this eve filled some trays with compost and put them in the propagator to get the temp up to around 15 degree's, so tomorrow evening will be starting in earnest.

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 .

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.