I now have a veritable forest of tomatoes and other heat loving things on my kitchen windowsill.
5 types of tomatoes, 1 type of chilli, 1 type of pepper, 1 kind of aubergine. Plus some pansies, busy lizzies, lobelia.
Next will be squashes, gerbera, pinks, and marigolds.
I'm aiming for a bed fiull of flowers and a greenhouse full of tomatoes.
The compost is now where it needs to be for this year.
Keep your eyes on the compost ladies and gentlemen as I shuffle the BINS
We have peas! Ambassador, and Kelvedon Wonder are coming up. Nothing from the Starlight ones yet.
It is lovely to see those bright green shoots popping up.
I also checked out the temperatures we have been getting. I have a weatherstation in the greenhouse and put the little remote sensor in the propagator (also in the greenhouse) with the peas.
It has got up to 27.8ºC and down to -2.6ºC in the greenhouse and up to 20.3ºC and down to -1.6ºC in the propagator itself, so although it isn't keeping them particular warm it is ironing out the extremes a little, which is good.
I'm reading the Sorrows of Young Werther at the moment by Goethe, and came across this quote which I liked:
"Happy is it, indeed, for me that my heart is capable of feeling the same simple and innocent pleasure as the peasant whose table is covered with food of his own rearing, and who not only enjoys his meal, but remembers with delight the happy days and sunny mornings when he planted it, the soft evenings when he watered it, and the pleasure he experienced in watching its daily growth."
I'm quite excited today, my tomato seedlings have started to get their true leaves.
Only one has died before getting to this point, the Banana Cream. I remember not having much luck with that last year, it took ages to germinate, so I'm assuming it needs much higher temperatures. I'll leave it til later in the year.
The others are looking strong and healthy, if still tiny. I got worried about night temperatures after the Banana Cream started to shrivel so I put plastic bags (with vent holes poked in the top) over the pots. They look a lot happier since I did that. I whip the bags off to let them have a bit of air during the day.
So,
 raspberries . . . |  blackberries . . . |
 strawberries . . . |  and rhubarb! |
Yesterday was such a beautiful day, and I got a serious case of allotment joy! It was an amazing day, I was working in short sleeves and we sat outside the shed in the sun to eat our packed lunch.
I had been a bit disheartened by the number of weeds, overgrown grass, and messy looking beds but we got a grip on a couple of them yesterday and I started to feel a lot more positive. I can really see it coming together again quickly now.
I also realised that two of my purple sprouting broccoli plants were salvageable; I had about 6-8 and I thought all of them were too tiny and stunted from the rubbish wet year we had. So, when I went to totally clear out the bed that they were in, I was delighted to discover might actually get a 2008 crop.
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Or something like that!
I've been enjoying seed variety names today. I put 2 types of tomato, 1 sweet pepper, 1 chilli, and 1 aubergine into the heated propagator today and was luxuriating in the marvellous sounding titles. I think Purple Calabash is my favourite, but Red Robin comes a close second as it just seems so descriptive of the lovely little bushy plants of cherry tomatoes that it will produce - perky and cheeky!
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Well we got ourselves organised and planted the J. Artichokes today. We made a separate bed last year as there was a wasted bit of space at one side of the allotment, so we figured that was a good space for them. It is a bit sheltered from the wind and also not connected to any other bed, so volunteer ones next year (which seem to be guaranteed from what people say).
We also dropped off our 2 new fruit bushes, bought from Lidl for 99p each. We got raspberry, gooseberry, redcurrant and white currant last year. They all did well and we got lots of fruit off them, so we decided to add blackberry to the mix. They will go into the hedge on the western edge of our plot, which is where moved our tayberry to last week. Edible hedge here we come.
In a lovely bit of serendipity my first batch of 'seed' Jerusalem Artichokes arrived today, and Hugh Fearnley-Whitinstall featured some lovely recipes for this knobly veg in today's Guardian.
I know it will be a year before I will be able to use them, but it pleased me that they both came to my attention on the same day. I'm going to pdf them and save them.
We are going to try and get them into the ground tomorrow, but if they ground is too hard the (good and clear Organic Gardening Catalogue) planting instructions say that we should store them in damp soil until we can. So either way it is a trip to the plot.
We have another box to come (I confused myself when ordering!) so we are going to do a swap with another friend for something else. I'm hoping he has squash seeds.
We had a look at our home compost heap today, as it needed a tidy around it, and it seems to be doing quite well. We just have one of the subsidised 'council' bins. You can check with Recycle Now by putting in your postcode to see if there is a deal via your local council.
We have been throwing in all our 'fresh' kitchen waste, shredded bills/receipts, sometimes our cat's paper based litter, and a minimal amount of cuttings and weeds from our small garden.
The big issue will be what we do with it once it is done. Our garden in too small to use it (and mostly paved) so we will have to work out a transport system to get it to the allotment. Could be an interesting day!
