I love Spring in my garden

It's been an early spring this year and my garden is full of flowers and new growth.  It's my favourite time of year.  Here's my garden as I walked round it today.

Tansy

Aqualegia

A wonderful fern

Beautiful welcome to my greenhouse

Geraniums growing on from micro plugs soon to fill the garden

Oregano grown from seed and geranium cuttings.  It smells wonderful.

Tomatoes nearly ready to plant into final position

Apple blossom

My favourite woodland area

A hidden jewel

Wool discarded from my spinning given to the birds for nest making

Honesty forming its wonderful head pods.

Wisteria beginning to flower.  These flowers can reach 1meter!

Aqualegia

Close up Aqualegia

It's been a great day.  I mowed the lawn and edged it and enjoyed lunch in it too.  Work and play, but at all times enjoyment. Thats what gardens are for.

Been busy paving at the allotment

Last night I promised myself a day of rest after a fairly busy time so what did I end up doing?  Laying paving stones at the allotment and planting out the peas!

My tall peas supported by an excellent purpose built runner bean frame. 

I bought a bean frame for the peas.  It is a purpose built frame with hinges on the top and bulldog style clips to hold the netting on.  It was very easy to put together and if it holds up to the wind I will recommend it.  Around it I planted Turners Spring, Table top and purple podded peas which I sowed in 1/4 seed trays and then hardened off in the cold frame at home.

I then planted the first thing in the raised beds. some Hatif d'Annonay peas which form sturdy plants and need no support.

Hatif d'Annonay Peas.  Apparently these need no support. We shall see.

I then stopped for lunch in my shed which gave me some time to admire the view and enjoy all my hard work over the last year.

After lunch I then started on laying some more of the paving stones around my shed.

These will give good access to the shed and compost bins.

I just need to add another row at the front of the shed to enable us to sit out and to easily get by the shed doors when they are open and I'll be done.

All the plants are doing really well.

The rhubarb has gone mad!

The radishes will need thinning soon.

The potatoes are growing fast.

The leeks are getting really tall and beginning to thicken up 

and the spring cabbage is beginning to make heads after their disastrous start.

All in all a very pleasant day down the allotment even if I didn't get my day of rest.  Who needs rest anyway if there's interesting stuff to do instead!

Five hours well spent down the allotment.

Today I spent five hours at the allotment and got loads done.  Being a root day in the biodynamic cycle in went the onions and the carrots.

I managed to straighten the final edge and made the side bed about 30cm wider in places.  

I then planted out my Tree onions and the first lot of carrots and covered them in mesh to stop the carrot fly. I also popped in some home harvested radish seed as a cash crop between the tree onions and the potatoes.

The flax seed has germinated!!! I have never grown this before so it should be interesting to see how it grows.

I then planted my onions sets and onions sowed this year.  Just as well we like onions! They did well last year so fingers crossed for the same again this year.

My spring cabbages are making a good recovery from being eaten by slugs in the autumn and my leeks are about to be picked.

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I also harvested the first crop of rhubarb this year.  Rhubarb and custard it is then!

It's been a year since I got my allotment

Well it's been a year this week since I got my allotment and a lot has changed!

My allotment March 2013

There is still a bit of land to dig over the the last half of the old compost heap to spread over the plot but I shall do that in stages.  I hope to use the beds I have to their maximum use this year and fully finish all the digging ready for next year.  The worst of the weeds are covered in black plastic to kill them off over the summer as this worked really well last year.

Allotment March 2014 with raised beds, dug beds and a shed!

Over the weekend I got the last of the beds dug over ready for the new season after having had broccoli in it all summer and winter and an old raspberry plant that didn't produce decent fruit.

Today I have planted 10 very early salad potatoes.  We don't like potato too much but we absolutely adore new potatoes with a salad either just boiled or as potato salad ..... I can taste it now!  Roll on the long summer days and BBQ's.

I also weeded the spring cabbages (if you can call them that after the slugs had their full when newly planted) and leeks.

I have also managed to replace the add load of sticks I had found on the site holding the mesh up for two hoops making it a lot tidier.

I have also sown a square metre of flax seed to make linen with just as something to play about with as I love to spin and have made a jumper from raw Gotland wool so going that one step more and growing the flax seems a wonderful idea.

Roll on the end of March when I shall be sowing and planting with ernest.