Arrival of Spring (Finally)

Well it looks like that Spring has finally arrived in South West corner of Cumbria. I went down the plot on Friday and the temperature in the Greenhouse was a balmy 23 C, goodbye Winter (I hope). While I was there on Friday I got the Raspberry, Blueberry and Redcurrant bushes potted up, I just need to get another one of each so they can cross pollinate.
                                                                                           

  

  I also built myself a little "cooker" for boiling a kettle on (I'm sick of warm/cool coffee out of a flask).

On a visit to the plot today I knocked up some temporary staging, the Strawberry and Herb plants on it will be getting planted out soon, once I've decided where. I sowed some Peas, Beans, and Sweetcorn in to some fibre pots today but since I've never used them before I'm a bit reserved about doing too many, I'm going to use this year as a experiment year with them and still sow in plastic pots as well. Today's temp was a bit cooler but I did have the door open in the Greenhouse.
The forecast is looking pretty good for the week so I think the theme this week is going to be sow,sow,sow in the plot "office" (below).



Thanks a lot for reading.

The snow was gone

These were taken last Friday (22nd mar), so when I went down to the plot on Monday morning I wasn't really expecting to get a lot done. But as you can see from the pictures below it ended up being the opposite. I was expecting the ground to be frozen or swamped but there was hardly any snow insight and no swamp in sight as  the melted snow had already drained away. (Top left/right) With the snow gone I managed to mark out the rows in the Brassica and Root beds and also gave them a turn over, they just need a bit of fine tuning and they will be ready for sowing once the temperature rises. I also filled some half barrels for growing some Carrots, hopefully, as I've not grown in barrels before. (Bottom left) The Gooseberry bush I was given is making a comeback (I nearly dug it up as I thought it was dead). (Bottom right) where I used to stand  my containers and large pots has now been turned in to a bed for Globe Artichokes, I lifted the slate tiles, replaced the boards and loosened the soil and added some rough home made compost. This half of the plot is almost sorted so I just need to sort out the other half now.

The first job will be to rebuild the Chicken pen and sort out a coop. Then sort out the area in the bottom half of the picture (where the carpet, longer grass is), it will eventually have a Polytunnel, more beds and a seating area there. Thanks for reading.

Freebies

Bark and other stuff

Today I finally finished relaying the paths in this half of the plot. I had to put (freshly chipped) bark chippings back down as I couldn't get hold of any gravel (free). I was very reluctant to use chippings again as the lot I took up in January where full of weeds but since my belief is to use as much free/recycled or very cheap/recycled materials as possible, I wasn't left with much choice. I took delivery of this lot on Monday night (about 5:30, it was a race against time to move it before it got dark) and all it cost me was a small delivery charge.

On the growing front.....   I made a improvised propagator (out of bits I had lying around the plot) a couple of weeks a go, I put some trays in it and filled them with home made compost and left it. On Sunday I sowed  some seeds in to the trays (Tomatoes, Chillies, Aubergines and Cucumbers) and to my surprise when I checked them today 2 seedlings (Chilli and Tomato) are popping up, it looks like my little throw together propagator is working.
On a finishing note, the first spring flowers of the year are coming out, thanks a lot for reading.

http://www.benhowardmusic.co.uk/music/

As Radio 1 call it "Farm Music" , but in my eyes the best up and coming "English" singer/song writer. I enjoying nothing more than potting around the plot listing to Ben Howard........

Free seeds

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Beds and planters

Spring supposedly

Well, we are supposed to be in "Spring", the weather we have been having means Spring is still a long way off yet. It's really frustrating as all I want to be doing is sowing seeds in the Greenhouse but with this weather there is no point at the moment, so I've been plodding on with some other jobs around the plot, one of which  is putting a couple of new small raised beds in (which hopefully will have some veg in, in the not so distance future). The Greenhouse got a good tidy today which just leaves the glass to clean but in this weather the water is likely to freeze. The old Chicken pen off last year (It was just a trial run as I'd never kept Chickens before) is now completely dismantled ready to build a better, more permanent one for getting some chickens for real this time. Thanks for reading,

                                                                                                       

Update pic 2