Spring is Sprung

[jacey]

21st March and I can almost believe that spring is - if not here - at least just around the corner. Instead of heavy coat weather it's light fleece weather out there even a thousand feet up on the edge of the Pennines. Thanks to BB's hard work in the garden over the last month  the daffs have been freed from the morass of weed-debris and bramble and are bending their heads and showing yellow, ready to flower. The undergrowth has been cleared from the trees round the edge of the garden. 150 hedging plants - mainly hawthorne with intermingled crab-apple, hazel, cherry plum, forsythia, field maple and guelder rose - have been planted and mulched. The raised beds (not used last year because we were away for three months from July to September) have been weeded turned and fed with new compost and paths between them have been beaten back, weed-screened and bark chipped.

Wow!

And all while I was sitting on my bum in the office. (In all fairness I was working.)  I could get to like this type of gardening.

The planting and weeding comes next. That's my job. (Though BB is planting the espalier apple trees due tomorrow.)

This year I'm planning a strawberry bed and some soft fruit (blackcurrants and possibly raspberries) in a permanent site and then (raised beds) onions, garlic, broccoli, curly kale, cabbage, cauliflower, sprouts, beans (runner, french and broad), carrots, parsnips and swede with some lettuce. I've got three different varieties of tomato seeds (probably to be grown in the house this year on sunny bedroom windowsils where the dog won't knock them over).

I'm hoping I can rescue the rhubarb that BB heaved out last week to plant the fence. He doesn't like rhubarb and tried his best to kill it, but I'm hoping I can tub-plant it. It's been in the garden over 30 years - or longer, I suspect, since it was probably planted by our predecessor's predecessor. Hopefully a little upheaval won't kill it off completely. It needed dividing anyway. We are in the rhubarb triangle, i.e. we have optimum conditions for the stuff, so we might as well make use of it.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Rhubarb is a fine and worthy plant. I wish yours all the best. And I bet your BB would like my rhubarb cake -- can send you the recipe if you wish.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Mmmm. Rhuarb cake sounds good. Yes, please send recipe. I made rhubarb jam last year and still have some rhubarb in the freezer for pies/puddings and/or more jam.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Rhubarb jam is the best flavour.
I'll email you the cake recipe.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Thanks, got it. Looks great!

[davegullen.livejournal.com]

I like this sort of gardening too - I moved out of my rented flat into my own house over winter, inheriting (from the previous owners, not literaly) a garden with two big greenhouses, a heatable conservatory, a big, a well-tended flower bed and veg patch, and bottom half of the garden filled with lumps of concrete, old paving slabs, couch grass, nettles, brambles, and a kind of wild geranium with sprawling runners and roots that go down about 18" and is bloody everywhere. War has been declared.

Spuds are in, planted a couple of gooseberry bushes and am hoping my raspberry and loganberry canes will arrive as promised. Did a whole load of seed planting this weekend and am really looking forwards to a year of gardening.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

That sounds brilliant - well, inheriting the greenhouses and veg patch, anyway, not sure about the rambling geranium. I didn't think geraniums (or should that be gerania) did that, so you might want a better identification on it in order to declare way properly.

We have an ongloing battle with an invasive broad leaved ivy that we think started on the other side of the (dry-stone) wall but our neighbours think started on our side. Regardless, it's well and truly entrenched in all the crevices of the wall now. The fence is now up and we can keep the dog out so hefty weedkiller is currently being deployed.

The espalier and fan-trined fruit trees (espalier apples and fan pear and plum) arrived today and are now well planted and their immediate planting area protected with mulch.

Next job it to rescue the strawberry plants that have overwintered in hanging baskets. I had five, but it was so cold in December that I think only one has survived, so I'll have to top up. Once I gan get a few plants established they'll propagate via the runners.

And I need to get BB to turn over some virgin ground for the raspberries.

We've been away from home so much that in 30 years we've done very little with the garden. Now it's a huge novelty and we're really enjoying doing something productive with it. Of course, gardening 1000 ft up on the edge of the Pennines will always be a challenge... None of yer soft, sissy, southern stuff, I'm afraid. I'd love to grow grapes and melons, but there's no way...

[davegullen.livejournal.com]

You should try digging some of this soft sissy London clay! However, I do appreciate the kinder climate.

I had a present of a grape vine, now in the greenhouse, it's a cutting from the Hampton Court vine, which is nice. Melons - good idea, I was wondering what do do with all this glasshouse space. I am propagating royal ferns, of which I have about 1,000 sporelings waiting to get big enough to split. Ferns and horsetails are a lifelong fascination, don't ask me why.

These wild geranaium are quite different to the cultivated ones, dredging up ancient memories of my botany degree I recall they are considered the 'proper' geranium for some reason. There are lots of types and these ones grow in rosettes like strawbs and also propagate via runners. I'll have to dig through my field guides.

I'm envious of your little orchard, it sounds lovely. I shall have to wait for another year.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Ooh, you're the first person to actually call it an orcard - but of course, that's exactly what it is now.
:-)
(Feels smug.)

Good luck with your grapes and melons. I suppose I might be able to grow melons under glass, but if they don't get enough sun the sugars don't develop, so they? And there's nothing worse than a watery melon.

I think the greenhouse might have to wait for another year. The fence and the fruit trees cost us a fall smortune and another 400 quid for a glass house for few tomato plants seems a bit daft right now. I have a few dog-safe windowsills (Upstairs) and some plum and salad-tomato seeds. I'd get one of those lightweight plastic mini greenhouses but the wind's a bit fierce round here - even in summer.

Yeah, digging clay. Ouch! Our topsoilk is quite nice - but it's thin and then we're into rocky, sandy stuff with big chunks of millstone grit embedded in it. It may be close to bedrock There's a reason why we have dry stone walls in this part of Yorkshire. Of course it may also be builder's rubble from 200 years ago.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Or even an ORCHARD, Duh!

[endlessrarities.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a busy and promising year ahead!