In the Garden

The garden has been taking off in the last week or so. Spring temperatures may have ruined the snow base and ended winter skiing, but they have given the garden the boost its needed. Add a little rain and my spring broccoli bolted.

The back area is a touch messy and higgly piggly but is coming together slowly.

In the square beds by the back door there are direct sewn parsnips and carrots, beetroot seedlings and brassicas – and a random spinach plant that has wintered over rather nicely. The ‘gap’ in the one bed is being filled with manure and will have direct sewn beets in it.

The garlic has come up well, the winter cauliflowers are still going and haven’t bolted yet (unlike the aforementioned broccoli). This summers carrots are germinating under the cardboard and there are tiny little onion seedlings in the bed as well. In another bed peas grow up behind the wind break – which will protect my peppers later in the season and there are onions directed sewn in the bed.

Two of the back beds are empty, one completely as I’ve laid a weed mat to stop the tree roots encroaching under the beds and stealing the nutrients, the other is waiting to be emptied and the same done. The winter cauliflower bed will get the same treatment as soon as the crop is harvested. these beds will then hold beans, zucchinis, cucumbers and other bits. It is my intention to make a decent butterfly mesh to protect the brassicas as I lost so much last year.

I need to magically create a strawberry bed this weekend to get planted out, not to mention working out where the squash is going to go. We are considering adding another bed to the back garden, as in the front it would have a lovely sunny position and therefore good production. There is also another fruit tree in the works – to go where the swing currently is – and the everlasting ‘tidy up’ intentions that abound here.

I love spring, its busy and hectic and weedy. Oh my the weeds, how is it possible they grow so much faster than everything else? But it the start of outside time, enjoying our little plot.