Tidying

We spent all yesterday clearing and tidying the garage and workshop, which now look immeasurably better. The garage is now lined up for conversion into habitable space over the next few months, and we've got rid of a lot of clutter, and better organized it for working, too.

Today was more fun, as we've potted up a load of courgette and tomato plants, sown runner and French beans, potted up and moved outside the broad beans, and planted several pots of gladioli. We're about to set off for Ludlow for the weekend, and a couple of days of rest.

Strimming the Orchard

The orchard's been starting to look rather overgrown, after a number of months without cutting the grass, so I was pleased to be able to spend this morning going over it with the brushcutter. Pleasingly, I was able to do this on my own, as it's now almost all grass (and a few short brambles, thistles, and the like), and Liz was able to get on with other work: painting the support tubes for the apple walk. They're now a very striking cream (a second coat will follow in due course), and stand out from much further. Only the Grandpa Buxton apple appears to have broken bud; but many are swelling. By the same token, a number of the grafted fruit trees look as though they will break bud, but not quite.

Liz also managed to get the construction wood (3x3 posts, 3x1 planks, and the like) cleared from the site of the pond, so I can get to the old shed panels. I need to chainsaw these into sections, for making compost bins.

We've had to chilli-oil the trees on the hillside, again, as one of the Scots pines has been attacked by deer.

After several years languishing in pots, we've finally been able to plant out our amelanchier, lilac (both in the corner where a pine was, near the top of the drive), and weeping willow (on the SE boundary). Hopefully they'll be happier in the ground, and the amelanchier, in particular, should be a nice feature on that border of the garden.

Direct Sowing

Having spent yesterday sawing, splitting, and stacking a load of firewood, today we sowed a few things in the vegetable garden. In the spaces around the potatoes we squeezed a few rows of scozonera, which we've never grown (or eaten, indeed), and a few of radishes. In the herb garden, we've planted a couple of sections of asparagus peas, which we grew last year, and which did well. We even had a few in the depths of winter, it was so mild. The sweet pea beds have also been sown with a mix of wildflowers: some collected, some bought. The three sections aren't differentiated this year: we've just mixed the seeds up. The sweet peas are all in the greenhouse, still, getting taller and twining round their sticks, waiting to be allowed out.

First Planting

We've had a busy few days, with friends visiting on Good Friday (much baking), and then getting the vegetable garden ready for the new season of crops. It's never been empty, with leeks, beetroot, celeriac, kale, cabbages, sprouts, and purple sprouting all still in, to say nothing of the green manure (mustard) that I only chopped in a few weeks ago.

However, we've finally had to lift these, to make space for new things. That's meant that we've been able to spread the last of the mulch, and the beds are all looking lovely as a result. Liz planted out a stretch of spinach, which will come out before we need the room for a later crop, and I prepared the trenches for the potatoes. Today, with a fosterling's help, we planted the 300 onion sets (150 Piroska Red, 150 Stuttgarter), and the potatoes: twenty each of Lady Christl, Red Duke of York, British Queen, International Kidney, and Lady Balfour (two first earlies; two second earlies; and a maincrop).

We've repeated the system we found worked well last year; 4 (early) or 3 (maincrop) chitted tubers planted at the bottom of a trench, 18" (earlies) or 30" (maincrops) apart. As they come up, we'll backfill the trenches, slowly. The main crop are up the wood-shelter side of the C-bed, with the second earlies along the top. The first earlies are in the bottom bed. The onions are all the way up the right side of the C-bed, leaving a small gap between them and the second earlies (probably a catch crop). The space at the fruit-garden end of the bottom bed will have the courgettes in; there's also space for a catch crop in between, I reckon.

It's later than last year, for planting, but the weather's now turning a bit warmer (and we didn't have a chance earlier!), so hopefully they'll grow quickly.

With the last of the time, we tried making our own potting compost: a 50:50 mix of compost and leaf mould, which we sieved together. There's some potting up we'll need to do later this week, which it'll be used on.

Good Friday

A few photos taken this evening. Some are just for our records, of gaps in the bulb planting that we can fill in the autumn.

Acer coming into leaf (© Ian 2014)

A record for planting in the autumn: gaps in the bulbs in the sweet pea beds (© Ian 2014)

The Quince/Heuchera Bed (© Ian 2014)

The Front Copse Bed (© Ian 2014)

Front Copse Bed (© Ian 2014)

Looking Up The Copse (© Ian 2014)

White Lion Daffodil (© Ian 2014)

Gaps for bulbs in the copse bed (© Ian 2014)

Cherry blossom ( Ian 2014)

Pulsatilla in long bed (© Ian 2014)

Primroses (© Ian 2014)

More double daffodils (© Ian 2014)

The long border: gaps for spring bulbs (© Ian 2014)

A Full Greenhouse

We didn't do anything much in the garden over the weekend other than walk round it, as Philip, Rachel and baby Luke were visiting. It must be said that walking round it was rather nice, as it's an opportunity to ignore the weedy patches, and the not-doing-anything-yet herbaceous perennials, and enjoy the daffodils in full glory, the swelling buds on trees, and the daily lengthening of rhubarb stems.

After they'd set off home, though, we sowed a number of seeds (marigolds, stipa, pennisetum, lupins, verbena, cucomelon, I think), and I pottered briefly in the greenhouse. This is our first spring with a greenhouse, and the young plants we've overwintered in it are much further on than those in open ground. The extra warmth and protection are fantastic. It's full, inevitably. Many of the plants in it are going to be forced out soon: they're hardy plants, that didn't need the greenhouse (even un-heated, it's got no lower than -1°C, and mostly been frost free), but have clearly benefitted. However, with a steady train of seedlings germinating inside, they older plants will need to make way for new plants, and eventually even these will get planted out, to be replaced with tender veg. We've got germinated tomatoes, chillis, sweet peppers, and aubergines, which will all occupy the glasshouse for the summer.

For now, though, it's almost all perennials, and about a hundred sweet peas.

Greenhouse full of young plants, grown on over the winter, and ready to plant out soon (© Ian 2014)

 There are a lot of small lavenders (on the right), which were intended for the edges of the herb garden. We've been doing a bit of a think about this: further work is probably off the cards until the autumn, as anything we do will be trampled by wall insulation this summer. The lavender will have to be planted out in a temporary location. On the far bench are some of the sweet peas, the tulbaghia and agapanthus from Tatton Park, a couple of dozen deschampsia from seed last year, and in the back left the cut-off rootstocks from grafting. These have come into leaf, and look like they've rooted, which is marvellous news. They'll go into a nursery bed for future grafting. On the top shelves on the right are a load of vegetable seedlings: brassicas, beetroot, spinach, chard. There are also some perennials: six herbaceous potentillas, for example. On the left are ungerminated seeds (which don't need so much light), and other perennials: half a dozen astilbes, some geraniums, some clivia (technically not hardy, but they've done fine), and some hostas that are in pots waiting for a bog garden to be built. And, also, a tray of hosta seedlings from last year, which are just coming out for their first 'adult' year.

One-year-old hostas (© Ian 2014)

Weeding

In between bits and pieces (garage; lunch; barber), I've managed to spend a few hours in the garden. Mowing the lawn (third time this year) is consistently taking about 75 minutes, which is good: it used to take at least a couple of hours, which was too long to get round to as often as it needed. An hour or so, however, can be squeezed into an evening, if the weather cooperates.

A lot of the rest of the time was spent on my knees, weeding the quince bed and the copse bed. I made a frankly half-hearted attempt at the sweet-pea bed, and the septic tank/pond bed, but they defeated me. The quince bed's not been dealt with since autumn, and generated about three trugs of bittercress, dandelions, and invading grass, and (fortunately, and with great care), no decapitated spring bulbs. They're all looking much neater, and the quince bed will look better still in a couple of weeks, when we can put down the mulch we put aside for it.

Orchard Enlargement

We've already spent two days hard at work, clearing blackthorn from the back of the orchard and burning it, but the progress we made was largely invisible from the house, as we were working from the back (top) of the bank of blackthorn, effectively hollowing it out. Yesterday, though, we finished the job, and the whole cleared area became visible in one day. It's a space probably ten metres deep, and fifteen wide, and means that the established apple tree in the back left, and the chestnut we planted on that side in February, are both now 'in' the orchard, rather than feeling separate. The James Grieve apple, and the other established apple that were on the back edge of the orchard now have space behind them or the left of them (respectively). We haven't yet gone as far right as the other chestnut: this will create less additional space, but we'll try to do so in the autumn.

The big advantage is that this has cleared the space that one day will hold the plum arch, which will be the feature exit from the back of the orchard into the clearings and woodland above. We've marked our intended position for it with a pair of fence posts, which—now they're visible—will let us assess whether it's in the right place. Pleasingly, it's directly above the hole in the dry stone wall that I'm rebuilding (slowly), which in turn is directly opposite the old door in the dining room (long (decades) since replaced with a window).

We were also able to pop out this morning to plant the second mulberry, King James/Chelsea, which has been in a pot since autumn, waiting to go in the ground. The weather also held just long enough to plant three more hellebores in the copse bed, three primulas in the games lawn's septic tank bed, a sedum 'Thundercloud' in the long border, and a handful of thymes and sedums in the wall in the front garden.

Oh; a note to myself: we saw a rather attractive hydrangea, 'Zorro', which might one day have a place.