A sunny spring day

Sowing seeds was my first job today. Radishes and garlic chives in the plastic bed, lovage and parsley in small modules and left outside, two types of basil and pak choy in modules in the conservatory and nasturtiums in modules outside again along with some chard.

Pak choy up on 26th March, basil on 28th, radishes on 1st April.

I also prepared bed 1 for this year. The seaweed and leaves was raked in, the whole bed was forked over to disrupt the tree roots which had grown. It was nice to see a few worms this time. The bed was dressed with 150g of lime and 200g of BFB, raked over and fork-smoothed.

Hay bale

I planted a squash (Metro) into the hay bale today. The trowel slipped easily into the bale. It seems to have composted inside OK - but then out came a million ants! They have decided it's a good place for a nest. I don't think they are very pleased about the soaking I gave the new squash plant. I await developments. What else will go in the hay bale? - Answer: A couple of days later, another nasturtium and a butterpie squash.

Salad days

On Monday I planted out my third sowing of rocket and my first of mizuna. I sowed another set of each in the conservatory along with a tray of purslane. I added my outdoor San Marzano and Gardener's Delight tomatoes to the beds too. Black Russian is already in the broad bean bed.

The salad bed is beginning to look productive now but growth is still limited due to the persistent cold weather.

Some of my weakest larkspur have been planted out by the greenhouse along with a border of trailing nasturtiums. Other nasturtiums have been planted out the front on the garage bed and some in pots to trail down the "pillars" in the back garden. One of these pots has some of my white cosmos in as well.

Broad beans, both whole pods and shelled beans, along with carrots and leaf beet in tonight's dinner.

More plants out.

On Saturday I planted the rocket seedlings and the coriander seedlings into the salad bed. The latest set of leaf beet seedlings went into the ground too. And I sowed 2 squares of chard. The modules of rocket and coriander were resown for a later crop, and a module of mizuna was sown. One of the nasturtiums sown into the haybale has come through.

My parsleys were  planted out on Sunday and the module reseeded.

On the flower front, 7 larkspur, 12 cosmos and some catnip were all potted up.

More seeds up

The marigolds have been up for  few days now and the nasturtiums put in an appearance today. The first two nigella seedlings are up too. And, after giving up on my sowing of cucamelons they came up a couple of days ago. Three out of four germinated. That was about three weeks.

We've moved on to a mild week of weather now so it's probably safe to put more things into the ground. I planted the sweet peas yesterday around an "obelisk" that I've been saving. They may make a good show in the bean bed. I also put up my French bean supports. It's a very sturdy affair this year made from home grown bamboo sticks. The plants may go in tomorrow.

Still sowing

Today's sowings included 2x15 trays of nasturtiums, 1x24 + 1x9 of marigolds, small trays of catnip and valerian, all outdoors.

First candy tuft seedlings up today in the greenhouse.