First Shoots

Guided by the plan I posted in January, I started sowing seeds indoors in February. Here are tomatoes on the left and peppers and chillies on the right, a few days ago:

Yesterday I potted up the tomatoes as they had all grown their first true leaves:

At the back are courgettes and spaghetti squashes, which grow so fast you can almost see them! At the front, Salvia Superba.

I've also sown Pumpkin and Butternut Squashes - the first pumpkin seedling was sighted before lunch today - and French Marigolds.

Outside we have started clearing up, and sowed onion and shallot sets in one of the raised beds and the first salad leaves under a mini polytunnel we got for Christmas. There is already a change to the plan, though, as the broccoli are clearly not going to be finished in time to plant the early potatoes, so after crisis discussions we have decided to try the earlies in big potato planters and see how that goes.

At the end of last year I cut all the lavender flowers from our lavender hedge and hung them in bunches in the shed to dry. This month I bought lots of organza bags from eBay and filled them with the dried flowers to make lavender bags. I've done 24 so far and still have three bunches to harvest, which will make another 12 or so bags. Here's some I prepared earlier:

What I'm reading: The Eyre Affair

Vegetable Garden - The Plan

Taking into account crop rotation, space constraints, the number of cauliflowers we can actually eat and so on, we have produced this plan for the vegetable crops in the first half of this year. Now I need to check what seeds we have already and get the ones we haven't got. I'm planning to sow some peppers and chillies next weekend, a bit earlier than usual, but this year I'm hoping to sow everything a little earlier to give a longer growing and fruiting season.

This plan doesn't include the herb and salad beds, which I usually sow in succession with whatever I feel like through the season. This year I have red and green leaves, rocket, spinach and mustard. I'm thinking of getting a big cloche for the salads in the first few months.

Butterflies

Last weekend Braveheart and I decided to walk to RHS Wisley and see the butterflies in their glasshouse. It was a bright winter's day, and a pleasant walk. There was a long queue at and inside the glasshouse, but there were lots of interesting plants to see, and a couple of butterflies escaped from the hothouse and fluttered past us!

Once we were in, we could see lots of huge exotic butterflies, perched on leaves, eating fruit or nectar and flying above our heads. They were amazing, completely unafraid of us. We took lots of pictures.

After we left the glasshouse, we went to see caterpillars and pupae hanging in cupboards, and some of the newly emerged butterflies waiting to be taken to the glasshouse and released.


It was a little corner of the tropics on an English winter day.

What I'm reading:
Last Train from Liguria

The Winter Garden

We've got three crops over-wintering this year. In the right hand bed are leeks, which we've done before and which are coming on well. As soon as we have finished the last of the carrots we will start eating these. Or maybe even before...
Two new crops for me are purple sprouting broccoli, at the back by the fence, due to flower in February, and cauliflowers, in the left hand bed, due February/March. I'm looking forward to being able to eat home grown broccoli and cauliflowers, so I hope they do alright.


While I was taking these photos I saw these little narcissus in flower. They are right by the house, so sheltered from the wind.

And here in the front you can see what the wind did to some of our fences! Luckily none of my plants or shrubs was damaged.

A Wild January Night

The wind has been blowing hard here since this morning. Three of our fences were down when we got home and we had to go out and put them back up in the dark. I held (and wound) the wind-up torch and Braveheart lifted up the panels and replaced them. One or two of them are nearly just a pile of sticks now but if they can last until the weekend we can send out a repair party.
On the way to and from work the roads were covered with branches and even, in a few places, a tree.

All this makes me very happy to have finished and be snuggling under my Babette Blanket, the perfect companion for this weather. I started this in 2007, I think, and made excellent progress for a few months. In November of last year I decided I would like to put together all the squares I had crocheted, and then I was determined to finish it.

Even though it's January, we have started thinking about this year's vegetable gardening. We bought shallot and onion sets at the weekend, so have  now got to work out where they should go to follow the crop rotation.

What I'm reading:
The Bones of Avalon

Worth the Wait

I started this cardigan, the Must Have Cardigan, in May 2009. I finished the back and started the sleeves by the end of that summer, and then we moved, and I didn't touch it for the whole of 2010. I restarted it this year in March and finished it at the weekend. I love it!

The buttons are from The Textile Garden, I bought them at the Ravelry Day in Coventry in 2009.

The Vegetable Garden - April

The vegetable garden is really taking shape now, and the wonderful weather we have had for the last week, and the longer evenings, have meant we can get out into the garden for longer and get a lot of weeding done.

On the right you can see the raspberry canes and the strawberry patch; and the second raised vegetable bed is now under construction. This will have peas, beans, pumpkins and squashes in it this year.

On the left at the back are the mounds where the first early potatoes have been planted. We're trying Arran Pilot this year. This bed is also destined to have sweet corn, broccoli and cauliflower in due course. In the raised bed, spring greens/cabbages, onions and garlic and some radishes. Carrots and parsnips will go in the middle.

The greenhouse is now in use, with tomatoes, peppers, chillis and basil on the staging, and on the left are seed trays in which I have just sown the squashes, pumpkins and courgettes, some more sweet peas and marigolds and salvias for summer bedding.

The new trees have leaves! which is very exciting.

Wandering into the front garden, there are already some new flowers in the last couple of weeks:

scarlet tulips, and the first bluebells (and can you spot the Heuchera pushing its way through the patchof bluebell leaves there).

The beautiful creamy blossoms of Viburnum;

and this lovely white-flowered cascade, in the shady bed where I have also just found my hostas coming through. They were smothered in weeds, but are actually doing quite well. A bit more weeding needed here, and I also have some Convallaria and some Hellebores to plant.