Well, welcome back to the garden. It's been a while since I last posted but to be honest there hasn't been too much happening other than clearance work and blocking a lot of the trees I felled last year.
Plans for the new season are underway with the principal aim being the construction of a new and permanent veg garden. This will be sited at the far end of the garden below the Fruit Bed. The area allotted is approximately 625 square yards, and will consist of a central bed (with an as yet undecided feature such as a sundial in the centre), surrounded by a further 8 beds, the four corner beds being "L" shaped. The plan is to enclose the veg garden on 3 sides with a Rosa rugosa hedge, with the fourth side being open to an area to be planted up with more fruit trees - mainly plum, gage and damson.
To this end, the cotoneaster hedge has been cut right down, a large Ash tree has ben felled and the beech hedge has been cut down using secateurs, loppers and chainsaw - and a tractor with a front loader bucket as a platform (I can hear H&S screaming already!!)
The next step is to await the digger to come in and dig out all the stumps and scrape all the rubbish away - but in the meantime, there are a lot of bulbs appearing in this area and these will be dug up and transplanted elsewhere as soon as the ground thaws out - could be a while as it is frozen to at least 4 inches currently - if not deeper.
All this means that for this season, the growing of veg will be restricted to possibly the west facing border. This was home to the cordon sweet peas last year, and I have already weeded it and given it one pass with the Mantis.
The sweet peas for this season were sown today - 21 seeds of 6 varieties -all from Unwins Seeds. This year the varieties are Gwendoline, Alan Titchmarsh, Jilly, Vera Lynn, Orchid and Tranquility. This is double last years number of plants but also double the varieties.
Last year we had snowdrops on January 10th - and given how mild it was before Christmas, I fully expected them to be as early this year - but although they are poking their heads through the ground, we have no flowers on display as yet.
The greenhouse is pretty full with plants awaiting Spring and there are even some planted in the beds as there was no room left on the staging.
The last two sticks of the Brussel Sprouts were cut today - these have been some of the best Sprouts I have grown ( it seems to be a crop I struggle with for some reason) and Richard says they taste really nice which at the end of the day, is what it's all about.
Apologies for the lack of photos but apparently my web album is full so I am looking at alternatives - hopefully be sorted by next week.
Thanks for stopping by.
