Easter weekend - what a glorious few days we had - and perfect for spending lots of time in the garden.
Good
Friday is traditionally a day to spend on the allotment and plant
potatoes. So what did I do? Spend the day on the allotment and planted
potatoes. But I also planted the shallots growing in modules. And there
was so much else to do.
First
port of call was the local independent garden centre to pick up some
compost, pots and trays. They also had a good selection of young veg
plants, but I resisted all but a couple of greenhouse cucumbers. I
bought them there last year and they were so good I had to do it again.
I
also had some potato planting to do at home trying out the new 'Mayan
Gold' and 'Mimi' ( a new baby new potato cultivar from T&M) as well
as planting 'Anya'. As I don't have room in the raised beds for lots of
potatoes I've planted them in plastic sacks using my good old garden
compost, which are sitting at the back of the greenhouse.
I
finally got round to doing something I'd meant to do for years - thanks
to the gentle pushing of my girlfriend Clare - put down gravel around
the raised beds. So after nearly three hours and a tonne of gravel
later the raised beds look glorious set off by golden gravel.
There
was also plenty of sowing to do - and there are now rows of carrots,
lettuce, rocket, spring onions, radish, salad leaves, beetroot and red
spinach in the raised bed. To keep them cosy and to keep the local cat
population off them I covered them with a sheet of polythene. The
rocket cultivar is 'Skyrocket' and it has already lived up to its name
- the seedlings shot up three days after sowing!
The previous sowing of lettuce and spicy salad leaves were again thinned out and weeded.
It's
all systems go in the greenhouse and we now have pots and trays of
seeds germinating, including brassicas of all sorts, sweet corn, peas,
dwarf beans and runner beans.
The
seedlings in the coldframe are growing away well, and I'll soon be able
to plant out the trial lettuces, and the broad beans, carrots and
beetroot in the Rootrainers. They've been joined by more pots of
tomato, pepper and aubergine seedlings - we've got 66 plants in total,
I hope that's enough!
But
it wasn't all physical, practical gardening. I cracked on with writing
my pruning book, and Easter Sunday was spent in the BBC Radio
Cambridgeshire studios broadcasting the first-ever dedicated gardening
programme on the station. Perhaps I should get a life!