The Flower Garden - March

Time for me to take some photos of how the garden is looking this month, so we can see, at the end of the year, which parts of the flowerbeds could be improved and how to get the best from each season.

There is a lot going on in all the flowerbeds at the moment, the front garden has most flowers, with a lovely show of daffodils and muscari.

There are lots more bulbs coming up and the aubretia is just getting going as well.

Elsewhere, it is mostly leaves emerging for the new season so far.

In the back, there are some lovely tulips now in flower and the alliums we planted last year are coming up but of course not yet flowering, and the primroses I planted in containers are starting to look very pretty too.

Apple Trees

As we arrived home at lunchtime on Friday, I said to Braveheart - I wonder when our apple trees will arrive? They are supposed to come between mid-Feb and March. I think I'll phone Thompson and Morgan and see when they are planning to dispatch them.

About an hour later, before I had got around to making my phone call, there was a knock at the door and a UPS guy delivered a HUGE tall box with three apple trees in.

So when we had finished putting the louvres and the last pane of glass in the greenhouse, we set about planting our new apple trees. First we faffed about for a while trying to remember where we had planned to put them. After a lot of measuring and placing of plant pots we settled on three locations which left a suitable space for a fourth tree in due course. We also had ready three large tree stakes, three tree ties, some bags of manure and a bag of bark chippings.

We marked out the edges of each hole as a 2 foot diameter around the tree and cut away the turf. Then we began digging. We measured the depth of the planting hole by placing the tree in the hole and checking that the earth would come up to its previous planting mark with some space for a layer of bark chippings. Once dug, we poured in a can of water and left it to soak away while Braveheart hammered in the stake.

Then we added some manure to the earth in the bottom of the hole, and some Root Grow, before placing the tree in the hole and filling it with earth to the correct depth.

Finally bark chips were added, and the tie was attached to tree and stake.

Our trees are a Bramley, a Braeburn and a Cox's Orange Pippin.

Meanwhile, indoors, the seeds I sowed last weekend are doing well. Tomatoes,

Broccoli and Sweet Pea seedlings are all growing well.

Greenhouse Progress

Since my last post on the greenhouse project, we have worked on the construction whenever we had spare time and it wasn't raining, which unfortunately wasn't as often as we would have liked.

We opened up the boxes with the greenhouse bits in and laid out all the pieces on the patio. We counted every single item and checked it off against the parts list!

The first step was to assemble the front, back and sides separately.

Then we put them together and added the roof section.

The greenhouse at this stage is very light, so we carried it carefully across the lawn to its final location, where we placed it into its base, and checked that everything was squared up and that it all fitted.

The foundation was completed with a path, gravel around the edges and we dug over the vegetable beds which will be inside.

Then we fastened everything down.

The final stage was to make up the door and window vents, and to put the glass on. This took a surprisingly long time, and we have so far completed the roof. This morning our new glass roof was covered in frost! It seems to have survived, though.