Spring is Sprung
Mar. 21st, 2011 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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.
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.
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2011 11:06 pm (UTC):-)
(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.
no subject
Date: Mar. 22nd, 2011 11:06 pm (UTC)